Daniel Barber is the British film-maker who directed the urban thriller Harry Brown in 2009, with Michael Caine as a pensioner who takes on local thugs. His latest film (from 2014, getting a belated UK release) is a siege drama set towards the bitter end of the American civil war, written for the screen by the smart first-timer Julia Hart. Brit Marling and Hailee Steinfeld play two sisters in the south, Augusta and Louise, whose menfolk have all been killed; they live with their slave, Mad – a very good performance from Muna Otaru. These women are to come into traumatic conflict with two renegade Union soldiers, Moses (Sam Worthington) and Henry (Kyle Soller), crazed and bored with the horror of war. This is an intriguing slow burner of a film, whose pace sometimes decelerates to an almost Bergmanesque adagio: it’s beautifully photographed by the German cinematographer Martin Ruhe. However, I felt it didn’t come fully to dramatic life, and nothing in it quite lived up to its fascinating and shocking opening. Its two most charismatic performers, Otaru and Steinfeld, are the ones with the least to do. A serious and absorbing piece of work, nonetheless.
