Seachd
The Inaccessible Pinnacle
Seachd
• Director: Simon Miller
• Writers: Simon Miller and Joanne
Cockwell.
• Filmed in 2006 on the Isle of Skye
• First screened at the Celtic Media Festival
2007
• Edinburgh International Film Festival 2007
Seachd
• First feature film to be made entirely in
Gaelic.
• The film revolves around a young man’s
quest for the truth about his parents’ death
when he was a child.
• But other quests are intertwined in the
action.
Seachd
• As a young man Aonghas visits his dying
grand-father in hospital, but memories of
his childhood after his parents’ death fill
his mind.
• He can only find some kind of meaning
about his parents’ death by climbing the
‘inaccessible summit’ on the island.
Seachd
• The rocky summit stands as a metaphor
for a young Gael’s challenge to come to
terms with the death of his parents and
reconcile himself with his dying Gaelicspeaking grand-father who raised him and
tried to instill in him pride for his culture.
Seachd
• Aonghas is seen as a young boy rejecting
Gaelic and Gaelic culture as something
that is ‘dying’, or dead like his parents.
Seachd
• Four Gaelic folkloric stories are told by the
grand-father to help Aonghas.
• These stories (apparently from a ‘storybook’) are an essential part of the film.
• Unsentimental view of contemporary
highland culture.
Seachd
• The film takes place on two time levels:
• Aonghas as a boy, looked after by the
grand-father.
• As a young man meeting his grand-father
again in a hospital in Skye. His grandfather is on his death-bed.
Seachd- An Analysis
• This is a film about the young boy growing
up, but it is also a story about the Gaelic
world in which he is growing up in.
• A world he rejects and then seems to
accept. Rather like his attitude towards his
grand-father.
Analysis
• Much of the significance of Aonghas’
struggle is reflected in the stories told by
the grand-father.
• Are they traditional, or made up by the
grand-father? Does that matter?
The accident
• At the very beginning of the film we see
Aonghas’ parents and another person at the
summit of the mountain.
• The weather is poor, and part of the
mountaineering equipment comes loose. The
gloves worn by the father play a significant part.
• On the way down, there is an unseen accident
where the parents are killed but the third person
survives.
Aonghas/Aonghas
• What are the circumstances of the death
of Aonghas’ parents?
• Why were they on the mountain?
• Is there a connection with the first tale told
by the grand-father.
• As he tells this tale at home to the
children, the accident is taking place
(Christmas).
Aonghas and the accident
• ‘it wasn’t a story. It was the truth’.
• The contrast between ‘truth’ and ‘stories’ is
a major element in the film. Aonghas
makes the contrast (meaning?); his grandfather seems them as part of the same.
• His grand-father filled his life with stories,
and it wasn’t easy to tell stories from
reality.
The grand-father
• The grand-father is also called Aonghas.
• The beginning of the film shows Aonghas
arriving at the hospital in Skye where his
grand-father is dying.
• Aonghas is shown remembering that
traumatic time (Christmas) when his
parents died.
• Golden coin chocolates (Spanish
Armada?). Suggestion of future choices?
The First Story-the lovers
• We are taken into the past- middle ages?.
Two lovers. He is called Aonghas.
• It was a secret love. A. made a special
balm from a pink flower.
• The ‘plant of the dead’ (frequent motif in
the film).
• She suffers from a ‘sleeping death’.
The First Story-the lovers
• Only one cure was possible: the Crimson
Snowdrop, a very rare plant.
• After seven (seachd) years of searching.
• He goes to the inaccessible pinnacle.
• He tastes the petals, but for his loved-one,
he is too late.
• The slow heartbeat. 1000 years.
Aonghas
• After the death of his parents he comes to live
with his grand-parents.
• Escape to Glasgow (later as a young man, he
will)
• Rejects the world of his grand-father (music);
speaks English
• He rejects his name (response of the grandfather)
• ‘they’re all dead’ (Aonghas)
• ‘I hate Gaelic’ (Aonghas)
The Second Story-Akira Gunn
• As an antidote to hate, the grand-father
tells the story of Akira Gunn.
• A dark time of hate. Highlanders
persecuted.
• The landlords (early 19th century) had
complete power over their Gaelic tenants,
they could take all:
• ‘your name and your home and your
tongue’
The Second Story-Akira Gunn
• The cottage of Akira and her father is set
alight (to get rid of tenants).
• Lock and the Magician (‘an draoidh’).
• The Magician takes her under his wing,
and teaches her ‘magic’.
• She discovers how to curse in Gaelic and
learns a traditional formula.
The Second Story-Akira Gunn
• Later in a confrontation with the landlord,
she curses those who have (apparently)
killed her father. She magically
disappears.
• Later the magician meets her again and
she returns to her father’s cottage, to find
him alive, and apparently well.
The Second Story-Akira Gunn
• The episode ends with the grandfather
turning on the television (which he said
didn’t work) and watches a movie with
Peter O’Toole.
• Probably the 2002 film ‘The Final Curtain’
about an ageing gameshow host.
(entertainer like the ‘Magician’ or even the
grand-father?).
Aonghas
• A. practises cursing in the way he has
heard it from his grandfather’s story.
• Later the grand-father takes A and his
brother and sister out on the sea, which
leads to another (rather humorous) tale
involving a MacDonald and a Spanish
gentleman from the period of the Spanish
Armada 1588.
The Third Story-the Spanish
Armada
• A clash of two cultures?
• An exiled Gael on an island without fish
nearby, suddenly meets a ship-wrecked
Spanish gentleman.
• There is also a treasure chest which is
washed onto the beach. Gold.
• But the gold could not help them in their
predicament.
The Third Story-the Spanish
Armada
• They agree that MacDonald will go out to
sea in the treasure chest.(As a kind of
one-man boat)
• MacDonald lands but is thrown into jail.
The Spaniard languishes on the island.
• The Spaniard appears to commit suicide
(doesn’t), and arrives on the island where
MacDonald has now escaped.
The Third Story-the Spanish
Armada
• An argument ensues about dividing the
gold which the Spaniard has brought with
him.
• The Gael and the Spaniard nevertheless
remain friends.
• And are seen in an eternal squabble on
the beach.
• Motif of the ‘eternal combat’?
Aonghas
• This leads to the scene where a ceilidh is held.
• The very Gaelic nature of this event is evident
with the dancing and the solo Gaelic lament
(theme of death returns)
• Aonghas seems to be beginning to accept
Gaelic culture (goes to fetch the accordeon in
his room, and plays a few notes).
• This idyllic episode is soon upset by the arrival
of a visitor.
Aonghas
• This scene however is ruined by the arrival
of the survivor from the accident in which
A.’s parents were killed.
• The congenial atmosphere is destroyed.
• He had given A’s father his gloves
• ‘he murdered them’ (Aonghas).
• He again seems to reject ‘stories’ (the
books he throws out of his bedroom.
Aonghas
• The appears suddenly to reject the world
of ‘stories’ (Gaelic) in favour of his own
rather selfish view of ‘the truth’.
• He won’t listen.
• The grand-mother become very ill, and
asks her husband to tell Aonghas the story
of Sileas. ‘The Girl Who Would Not Listen’.
The Fourth Story-Sìleas
• Sileas is young but very selfish; she pays the
price.
• While collecting mussels on the shore, she sees
a beautiful white horse, almost immediately a
young man dressed in white appears, and
speaks to her.
• He is possibly the devil, since his price is very
high (her soul implied?).
• As she is carried away by the horse- the
grandmother dies.
The Fourth Story-Sìleas
• Another approach to the story which might
be possible is to view this episode as a
version of the Kelpie- a mythological
shape-changing horse that inhabits lochs
and rivers.
• It attempts to lure children to ride on its
back, but takes them to the watery depths
and drowns them. (death motif again?)
The ‘kelpie’ (each uisge)
• To what extent does the ‘kelpie’ figure add
to the understanding of Aonghas and how
he deals with the problems he faces?
Aonghas and his grandfather in
hospital
• ‘No one can tell the truth. Just stories’. (the
grandfather)
• ‘Not in the real world’.
• ‘Whose world, your world or my world?”
• ‘Return to your world, you don’t have to
stay to the end of mine’.
Aonghas and his grandfather
• A. leaves his grandfather and sets off for
Glasgow (where he lives and works).
• In the woods in Skye we catch a glimpse
of Akira Gunn, and then the grandfather
appears in the back of the car.
• Is he really there or not? They return to the
island (Skye).
Aonghas and his grandfather
• They return first to the grandfather’s house.
• Dark, no electricity. Is A. there alone or with his
grandfather (both?)
• When he wakes, we see him as a child again.
He looks at the map where the mountain is (as
he did at the beginning of the film).
• He takes the book of stories, but does not open
it.
Aonghas and his grandfather
• ‘They’ set off on their way ‘to the end of the
story’. They are making their way to the
mountain (first by boat).
• ‘it has to go back from where it came from’, The
Crimson Snowdrop.
• Aonghas climbs the summit and releases the
pressed flower.
• But you know the truth’, Yes, I do. The whole
truth of the story.
Aonghas and his grandfather
• The boy Aonghas opens the book of
stories, but each page is empty. He
becomes a young man again.
• His grandfather is dead.
• ‘the truth is in the story’.