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There is a quiet disquiet about The Marsh King’s Daughter, a sense of creeping dread that serves its wafer-thin story well.
As the daughter and father caught in the hazy glow of a relationship that ended abruptly 20 years ago – made hazier and more aglow by the distance – Prince and Ridley as the young and older Helena, and Mendelsohn as the father Jacob, are excellent as well.
The film is also an accomplishment in brevity of language, keeping the talk simple and short, the silences capturing the unsaid more than words sometimes can.
Still, The Marsh King’s Daughter, based on a bestseller book by the same name, seems unfulfilling. Having got just right the marsh, the mood, and the mesmerising hold of menace, the film pulls in too many directions, spending far too long in some parts, leaving it very little time for its finale.
We meet Jacob and a 10-year-old Helena in the midst of one of their usual days through the marshes. Watched over by him, she learns the secrets of the woods, including how to read its smells, sights and tracks, as well as to hunt. From the point of view of Helena, Jacob is a hero who looms large, a “protector” who wears multiple tattoos as the marks of his bravery. He also etches them on her too to mark her “accomplishments”.
The spoiler in this idyll is Helana’s mother, a sad creature who ineffectually tries to keep her away from these hunting trips with Jacob. Then one fine day, with no warning at all, the mother takes things in her own hands and Helena’s world turns upside down. Is what she has relied on all this while entirely built on lies?
We meet her 20 years later, by when Helena is a mother herself, living a suburban life as removed from the jungle as it gets, in a job that involves meaningless numbers. She has learnt to hide her tattoos well, though the wonder she remembers of her childhood days keeps creeping up on her. Ridley conveys this dilemma of what she was, what she thought she would be, and what she is, very well. As she does, the sheer fears that Helena bears as a mother, with a “family to protect” now – her father once taught her that it was the first rule of the jungle.
It is around then that Jacob comes back into her life. How he does, where he does, is another sleight of economy on the part of director Burger (Divergent).
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Birmingham is in a rather walk-on role as the father figure in Helena’s life, who is anyway cruelly dispensable in the end.
The Marsh King’s Daughter would have been much better served focusing on the relationship in the title. Even without being kings of marshes, fathers are heroes for their little girls, hard to let go of.
The Marsh King’s Daughter movie director: Neil BurgerThe Marsh King’s Daughter movie cast: Daisey Ridley, Ben Mendelsohn, Brooklyn Prince, Gil BirminghamThe Marsh King’s Daughter movie rating: 2.5 stars
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