Rose of Nevada

Went to the Rose of Nevada at the Ritzy yesterday. Vivid colours. Shocking like street trees in blossom. Sometimes an empty black screen. It's about ghosts, and the experience of ghosts lived by Nick. A ghost ship, the Rose of Nevada, appears in Cornwall. How? Don't need to know. Appears in a town almost like Newlyn. It’s the 2020s. This town is poorer, deprived like Cornwall is, flaking like the paint on the houses and the red telephone box. Gutted. Killed by heedless UK negotiators with the EU. Fishermen know that, know the heedlessness of privilege, and remember.

Not fair.

A mother, demented by grief for her fisherman son, who went down with the Rose of Nevada 30 years ago, lives next door to Nick’s house. A crack in Nick's ceiling. It rains. Water drips. Gushes. Nick climbs the roof to mend it and falls through the crack.

He seems to have fallen backwards in time. He joins the boat as a fisherman with a nameless other crewman and a perennial captain, who, bonded to the boat, never goes ashore. The boat steams out and returns laden with catch. Nick disembarks to town. Now, he sees, is before his time, for everyone, and everything. Time has become time before he and his family will be born. His house is dilapidated, as it used to be. Up for sale. Waiting. Like his mates, he’s lost his name. For everyone else, he is Liam, the drowned son. Time has reversed. Dementia has reversed. Paint is not yet flaking.  

The mother, now his mother, adoring and intelligent, knows that time is a carousel. A clock that returns to the beginning. Now, for Nick is not his proper time. His mate says that names don’t matter. The Rose of Nevada sails out. The film stops. I liked it.