THE NAVIGATOR is a singular experience, a time-warp, Chinese-box puzzle of a film that bespeaks the obsessed vision of its writer-director Vincent Ward. It begins in 1348 in Cumbria, England, where a psychic young boy, Griffin (Hamish McFarlane), dreams of a way to save his village from
the advancing black plague. He leads his brother (Bruce Lyons) and four other men on a tunnelling expedition that somehow transports them to present-day New Zealand, and presents them with a chance to ward off the plague. But Griffin has also foreseen that, along the way, one of their number will
be betrayed and another will die.
Ward has constructed a haunting fable that only occasionally lapses into self-parody, a la Monty Python. THE NAVIGATOR is certainly visually stylish, and employs a battery of cinematic effects--the mixed use of black and white with color, time-lapse views of clouds scampering across ominous skies,
dizzying tracking shots up spiral staircases, etc. Worth a look. leave a comment
