Lad: A Yorkshire Story (2013)
Cast: Nancy Clarkson, Oliver Exley, Alex Froom
Director: Dan Hartley
Country: UK
Genre: Drama
Editor’s Notes: The following review is part of our coverage of the Niagara Integrated Film Festival. For more information niagarafilmfest.com and follow NIFF on Twitter at @niagarafilm.
The gentle pastoral landscapes of the Yorkshire Dales roll outward to the infinite horizon, yellowish green wisps painted onto craggy stones offering sustenance to livestock corralled by natural stone fences that weather the ages in stoic silence. Even the beautiful secret corners of the world are subject to heartache and loss, and Lad: A Yorkshire Story follows the story of young Tom Proctor as he contends with the bountiful tribulations of life and learns that even the pain of losing a father will pass and the rolling plains made gray by winter and heartache will once again flourish with life and hope.
Even the beautiful secret corners of the world are subject to heartache and loss, and Lad: A Yorkshire Story follows the story of young Tom Proctor as he contends with the bountiful tribulations of life …
These lessons would be hard earned for this angry lad from Yorkshire as his life seemed to be falling apart with little hope looming in the distant gray horizon. The loss of his father meant the loss of his income as a quarry worker, and unforgiving financial institutions were poised to take away his family’s home if his mother could not find the strength to start life anew. An older brother whose footsteps once offered guidance and solace to the fiery hearted Tom would soon be off serving in the military, forging his own path to adulthood while leaving his younger brother feeling abandoned. In an act of admirable futility, Tom “borrows” a tractor and drives it to town to leave his dissatisfaction on the indifferent face of the bank that is poised to repossess his home in a slurry of animal refuse.
Tom would learn his own silent strengths, discover hidden talents, and earn his first kiss from a girl; encouraged by his new father figure who would teach him that pain and loss are unavoidable but how we face them defines the content of our character.
The punishment for Tom’s act of ineffectual youthful retribution would place him under the supervision of a Ranger of the Dales, and through the placid guidance of this new father figure he would learn the unassuming charms of the Yorkshire countryside and the temperance needed to survive in an indifferent and unfailingly challenging world. Tom would learn his own silent strengths, discover hidden talents, and earn his first kiss from a girl; encouraged by his new father figure who would teach him that pain and loss are unavoidable but how we face them defines the content of our character.
Lad: A Yorkshire Story is filled with the same unassuming beauty as the Dales that its cameras savor in misty golden sunrises, showing that tragedy and loss are intrinsic to even the most pastoral landscapes, but as long as the will to persevere remains there is always hope for a better tomorrow. Life moves on even as our deepest anxieties come to fruition and the cast of characters that color our lives is in a perpetual state of quiet flux, and our darkest days will one day be the foundation for our hardest earned strengths so long as we look ever onward toward the silent grace of the next inevitable misty sunrise.
Lad: A Yorkshire Story is filled with the same unassuming beauty as the Dales that its cameras savor in misty golden sunrises, showing that tragedy and loss are intrinsic to even the most pastoral landscapes, but as long as the will to persevere remains there is always hope for a better tomorrow.
