On A Clear Day
We live in a disposable society. It’s really great for surgeons and preventing the spread of disease. But it’s horrible for the environment and especially when it happens to people. On A Clear Day, an award-winning Scottish film in theaters this spring and set for release on DVD later this month, profiles one man’s response to feeling broken and discarded.
“Things aren’t made to be fixed nowadays,� laments Frank Redmond, a 55-year-old shipbuilder in Glasgow, Scotland, who finds himself among 6,000 “made redundant� from the only job he has ever known. He suffers a panic attack while visiting the unemployment office. He tries to ignore his wife’s efforts to get a job as a city bus driver. And he’s bewildered by his adult son’s willingness to be a stay-at-home dad in support of his working wife. Frank’s relationship with his son has been estranged since the death of a second son at age 12 in a swimming accident. This distance even is visible to Frank’s grandson, who tells his father, “Pappy doesn’t like you.�
“What are you looking for?� asks a friend who meets Frank aimlessly wandering at the library. “I don’t know,� Frank replies. “But whatever it is, it’s not in here.�
If Frank’s trying to find the answer in a place, it seems to be the Glasgow swimming pool. Frank (portrayed by Peter Mullan, previously featured in My Name is Joe, Braveheart and Trainspotting) works out daily as if he’s swimming for his life, or for the life of his dead son. One day, an offhand remark by a co-worker, “on a clear day, you could swim to France,� leads Frank to consider a 20-mile-plus swim across the English Channel. “How mad do you have to be to swim it?� Frank asks his friends. “Totally,� one replies.
On A Clear Day debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2005, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. But the Scottish film is in broader, but limited, U.S. release this spring and is scheduled for a June 16 release on DVD. Filmed in Scotland, the Isle of Man and Dover, the 99-minute film’s location and circumstances have certainly brought about comparisons to The Full Monty. Although the challenge of the athletic feat serves as the focus of the film, the strength of On A Clear Day lies in the relationships between its characters.
Danny Campbell, one of Frank’s younger co-workers, is the film’s comic show-stealer. Portrayed by Billy Boyd (who played the hobbit Pippin in The Lord of the Rings films), Danny’s one-liners and antics add timely levity to offset the rising interpersonal tension. Indeed, the healing power of laughter seems to be embodied in this film’s screenplay by Alex Rose.
As Frank wrestles with whether he should swim the Channel, he meets a physically disabled boy who expends all his energy simply to swim one length of the pool. In seeing the boy struggle through his brokenness to achieve his goal, Frank gains inspiration for his own attempt on the Channel. Yet why does Frank seek to accomplish this goal?
Frank, himself, doesn’t really seem to understand why he needs to swim this distance, much like St. Paul in his own confessions: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.� One of Frank’s friends, a Chinese shop owner, tells him, “A gem cannot be polished without friction; neither a man perfected without trials.�
As with Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams, Frank is driven to accomplish a task by something outside of himself. Even though neither man understands consciously what he is struggling for, the struggle itself leads them through brokenness onto the path of healing.
In this gap, this lack of conscious understanding of motives and purpose, these men find the leading of Providence. Just as creation one day will be set free from the bondage of decay, these men learn that their sufferings bring redemption they did not anticipate but which was their greatest hope.
“Things aren’t made to be fixed nowadays,� laments Frank Redmond, a 55-year-old shipbuilder in Glasgow, Scotland, who finds himself among 6,000 “made redundant� from the only job he has ever known. He suffers a panic attack while visiting the unemployment office. He tries to ignore his wife’s efforts to get a job as a city bus driver. And he’s bewildered by his adult son’s willingness to be a stay-at-home dad in support of his working wife. Frank’s relationship with his son has been estranged since the death of a second son at age 12 in a swimming accident. This distance even is visible to Frank’s grandson, who tells his father, “Pappy doesn’t like you.�
“What are you looking for?� asks a friend who meets Frank aimlessly wandering at the library. “I don’t know,� Frank replies. “But whatever it is, it’s not in here.�
If Frank’s trying to find the answer in a place, it seems to be the Glasgow swimming pool. Frank (portrayed by Peter Mullan, previously featured in My Name is Joe, Braveheart and Trainspotting) works out daily as if he’s swimming for his life, or for the life of his dead son. One day, an offhand remark by a co-worker, “on a clear day, you could swim to France,� leads Frank to consider a 20-mile-plus swim across the English Channel. “How mad do you have to be to swim it?� Frank asks his friends. “Totally,� one replies.
On A Clear Day debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2005, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. But the Scottish film is in broader, but limited, U.S. release this spring and is scheduled for a June 16 release on DVD. Filmed in Scotland, the Isle of Man and Dover, the 99-minute film’s location and circumstances have certainly brought about comparisons to The Full Monty. Although the challenge of the athletic feat serves as the focus of the film, the strength of On A Clear Day lies in the relationships between its characters.
Danny Campbell, one of Frank’s younger co-workers, is the film’s comic show-stealer. Portrayed by Billy Boyd (who played the hobbit Pippin in The Lord of the Rings films), Danny’s one-liners and antics add timely levity to offset the rising interpersonal tension. Indeed, the healing power of laughter seems to be embodied in this film’s screenplay by Alex Rose.
As Frank wrestles with whether he should swim the Channel, he meets a physically disabled boy who expends all his energy simply to swim one length of the pool. In seeing the boy struggle through his brokenness to achieve his goal, Frank gains inspiration for his own attempt on the Channel. Yet why does Frank seek to accomplish this goal?
Frank, himself, doesn’t really seem to understand why he needs to swim this distance, much like St. Paul in his own confessions: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.� One of Frank’s friends, a Chinese shop owner, tells him, “A gem cannot be polished without friction; neither a man perfected without trials.�
As with Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams, Frank is driven to accomplish a task by something outside of himself. Even though neither man understands consciously what he is struggling for, the struggle itself leads them through brokenness onto the path of healing.
In this gap, this lack of conscious understanding of motives and purpose, these men find the leading of Providence. Just as creation one day will be set free from the bondage of decay, these men learn that their sufferings bring redemption they did not anticipate but which was their greatest hope.
