The formidable Mullan delivers a tender performance in Sean Robert Dunn’s first feature, playing a cranky local historian obsessed with his obscure, unscrupulous ancestor
Peter Mullan brings his formidable presence to this quirky dramedy from first-time feature director Sean Robert Dunn: he is angry and weary, disillusioned but kind-hearted, someone who got his feelings hurt a long time ago … but wouldn’t dream of making a fuss about it. It’s Mullan who gives weight and flavour to a film that might otherwise be a bit watery and unsure quite how sharp a sting it wants to deliver.
Kenneth (played by Mullan) is a cantankerous local historian and widower in the fictional Scottish town of Aberloch, obsessed with the memory of his obscure ancestor Sir Douglas Weatherford, an unscrupulous 18th-century landowner and amateur surgeon given to vivisectional experiments on the lower orders. Sir Douglas’s writings on the importance of rational self-interest have caused him to be described by his descendant as a lost hero of the Scottish enlightenment: a mix of David Hume, Adam Smith, Dr Livingstone and Walter Scott.
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The formidable Mullan delivers a tender performance in Sean Robert Dunn’s first feature, playing a cranky local historian obsessed with his obscure, unscrupulous ancestorPeter Mullan brings his formidable presence to...
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