The Boy And The Ouseburn

A teenage boy steals money from the church’s collection tray and throws the coins in the river, only for the coins to turn up later in the belly of a fish caught by a local fisherman.

In the short nine-minutes that The Boy And The Ouseburn runs for there’s not an awful lot going on in the foreground for the viewer to hold onto. With the first thirty seconds given away to the main title card and then the next minute spent watching images come into focus, it’s clear that writer/director, Philip Finch, is in no hurry to throw his audience into the mix of a story, or to spoon-feed us with expository dialogue and extraneous characterisation.

Ostensibly, what we’re seeing is the moral turbulence experienced by a boy (Davidson) living on the banks of the Ouseburn, in Newcastle. After a strange dream filled with religious symbolism, he takes himself to the local church and deliberates over what to do with the money in the collection tray. After a ponderous amount of time, he hurries away from the church on his bike and stops off by the side of the river, his hands laden with the coins that he had eventually taken from the bowl. We see each coin in turn plopping into the water and drifting down to the riverbed where we would expect, much like The One Ring, they would stay for an age to come. However, in a twist of fate, or moved there by the Hand of God, a few of the coins somehow end up in the belly of a fish, only for that fish to then be caught and gutted by a local fisherman (Blake), who then finds them there.

With no dialogue, and no real help as to what’s really being driven at, The Boy And the Ouseburn lands firmly in the arthouse camp of cinema. The score from Oscar Beckett plays languorously over the visuals with its extended tones, helping keep the flow of the film slow and deep, much like the river itself. All the while, the scenes are also played long and slow, with nothing much happening in them for the most part, but just enough for the film to hang together and the themes to emerge. Almost every shot in the film is overlaid with another to fill the frame with double exposures, and a dreamlike quality is achieved as background mixes with foreground, and one location is superimposed onto another, to suggest that perhaps an omniscient presence is in charge of the whole affair.

There is then, of course, Matthew 17:24-27 to consider, and the story of the fish with the coin in its mouth, which was used to pay the temple tax for Peter and Jesus, and is considered to be one of Jesus’ miracles. With Finch citing a need for better representation of working class stories and working class professionals in UK film and television, it seems as though his themes are driven by the biblical story to show that creativity can come from the most destitute of places if only given the opportunity. Whereas Jesus bypassed the unfair tax by producing a miracle, Finch bypasses the unseen tax on the working class by filming his production on a non-existent budget and relying on his own creativity and talent, as well as the generosity and kindness of others, in order to get his project completed.

While there may not be an awful lot on the surface of The Boy And The Ouseburn, it is a case of still waters running deep which carries the film and the themes it portrays to the viewer. Once you understand the struggle of the working class to be seen and heard, as well as having access to the opportunities which historically land on the laps of those further up the food-chain, Finch’s film becomes a much stronger and in-depth tale with a surprising resonance to it. There is plenty going on, which perhaps could only be expressed through visuals and not language, and the symbolism of what is portrayed elevates the points that Finch is trying to make, almost to the point of reverence.

The Boy And The Ouseburn is an interesting tale, told in an interesting way, which highlights a major issue in the modern industry whilst keeping its feet firmly rooted in the land that it comes from.