Film Review - Wild Mountain Thyme (2020)

If the song’s name doesn’t ring a bell, the tune most definitely will. And that’s where the confusion starts in John Patrick Shanley’s Wild Mountain Thyme, because the lilting song is often thought to be Scottish. Or Irish. In fact, it’s a mixture of both, based on a Scots poem and adapted by a Northern Irish musician. The film, incidentally, is set south of the border, in County Mayo, with its luscious green pastures, torrential rain and occasional brilliant sunshine.

The befuddlement continues in a storyline that sees Rosemary (Emily Blunt) and Anthony (Jamie Dornan) caught up in a feud over a small patch of land that separates their neighbouring farms. Since they were children, Rosemary has always had her heart firmly set on Anthony, despite his constant inability to see what’s right under his nose. Now, even though he does all the work on the land, his crabby dad Tony (Christopher Walken) announces that he’s going to leave the farm to his American cousin Adam (Jon Hamm). And, to make matters worse, said cousin takes something of a shine to Rosemary. Will the proverbial “star crossed” would-be lovers ever get it together?

More to the point, do we care? Because the so-called dispute over the land feels like a feeble contrivance to keep them apart. We know full well that Jon Hamm in his flashy Rolls Royce stands no chance of winning Blunt’s heart and we can’t really see a good reason why she and Dornan didn’t get together years before. Apart from the fact that he’s really hopeless when it comes to expressing his feelings and isn’t so much half soaked as downright wet. It all sounds like the premise for a rom-com but to bill it as such would be in contravention of the Trades Descriptions Act: it’s not especially romantic and the remnants of what was clearly meant to be humour are embarrassingly obvious or downright trite. Either way, they certainly don’t get close to raising a smile.

How Shanley (known for Moonstruck and Doubt) has turned his original stage play, Outside Mullingar, into such a frustrating, emotionally flat experience is baffling, especially when it’s set in a country known for its colourful and inventive use of language. There’s none of that on show and the lamentable attempts at Irish accents from the key players would have struggled even further if the dialogue had attempted to be anything approaching lively. Yes, we did say Christopher Walken is in it. Yes, he does attempt an Irish accent. And, yes, he is to the Emerald Isle brogue what Dick Van Dyke was to Cockney.

Does it have anything going for it? Stephen Goldblatt’s cinematography capitalises on the gorgeous scenery, even managing to make torrential rain look glitteringly beautiful. The Irish Tourist Board will be very happy. But that’s about it. What we’re left with is shallow and leaden, with both Blunt and Dornan hopelessly mis-cast and adrift in a strange time warp. It’s supposed to be set in the present day, yet mobile phones are noticeably absent, even in the New York scenes where you’d expect everybody to be surgically attached to them. It can’t be a coincidence that the film arrives on digital in a week packed with new releases, including one big Oscar winner. If its distributors hoped it might be drowned out by all the noise, chances are they’ll get their wish.