Claustrophobic and atmospheric, a salty period two-hander awash in ashy grays, inky blacks, and the psycho-sexual tension of men in isolation. Tracking the ebb and flow of Wake and Winslow’s relationship in detail was challenging, maybe more so than it needed to be; I extracted meaningful plot points (i.e. Winslow’s experience as a lumberjack) from the mire of unintelligible dialogue with only partial success. The period speak does provide essential texture though, and what’s more absorbing anyways is the general sense of unbearable confinement and barely bottled-up desire that Eggers gets across visually. Stormy skies and waves crashing on the craggy rocks (very Bergmanesque) evoke a sense of mounting, (literally) maddening distress, and compositions emphasizing the island’s remoteness as Winslow goes about the daily drudgery exacerbate a sense of the misery in trudging through the muck, cold and horny, in solitude. Winslow hates that arrogant fucking seagull because it can do what he can’t: leave.