Unbalanced logo

Local Heroine

Here’s what makes Local Hero so fine

By Britni PepperPublished about a year ago 6 min read
Like
“A great pair of lungs” — still from Local Hero

Peter Capaldi, who goes on to play the twelfth Doctor Who, is Danny Oldsen, the dorky local operative of a massive Texan oil company with its sites set on a charming Scottish bay.

Jenny Seagrove is the aptly-named Marina, a diver with five oceanography degrees and a magnificent set of lungs. It is a long swim from Knox Oil’s offices in Aberdeen to the fictional village of Ferness on Scotland’s West Coast but she makes the distance several times during the course of the film.

At one point Oldsen, a cunning linguist with French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Turkish, Russian, Swedish, German, Japanese, Dutch, and Polish — but no Gaelic — is kissing his way along Marina’s leg — offering Japanese translations of her body parts as he goes — and he sighs, “You taste salty.”

“You're on the fresh side,” she tartly responds.

Love it!

Divers details

Local Hero is a film with dozens of subplots. Some of them link up to create something more, some of them are never explained but add to the atmosphere nonetheless.

Everything is slightly out of kilter — not so much as a fish out of water; more like a punk rocker with rainbow hair against the greys and greens of the Scottish landscape — and that just adds to the charm. Every bit of bizarre gives something for the mind to chew over.

Perhaps oddest is the fascination held by the oil magnate Felix Happer (deftly played by veteran Burt Lancaster) for the skies. He falls asleep when oil business is discussed but livens up at the thought of a comet. He wants to know every detail of the heavens above the tiny Scottish hamlet and when the feed of information from the sweet red phonebox at the water’s edge fed by a silver stream of 10p coins is not enough he makes his way over the Atlantic to take it all in.

It’s a film full of stars, with even the bittest of parts played crisply. Every character has a quirk of some kind and a scene to show it off. The film is full of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments and the whole shebang is just slightly surreal.

Which, of course, is part of the charm. Like the American executives, we viewers are seduced by the pull of the community. This is a step outside the normal world, if one may call the freeways and office towers of Houston normal.

I’ve been to both places — Houston and rural Scotland and I know which of the two I prefer. Houston for me was a bewildering maze of freeways that I was grateful to let the satnav sort out, and the Scottish coast was ridiculously scenic and quaint. I stayed in a village which was little more than a few houses along a country road. The locals taught me about Scotch in the snug little bar and when everyone was done drinking, the landlord locked up the alcohol and went home, leaving the guests for the night.

I’d go back in a heartbeat. I could photograph my way around Scotland; just point the camera in any direction and there’s heartbreaking beauty filling the frame. Every headland has a ruined castle and a history to match. Texas doesn’t have quite the same charm.

The other women

The are some minor female roles, played to perfection. Village shopkeeper Mrs Wyatt occupies a hutch where everything is in arm’s reach and the mere act of buying shampoo and toothpaste amounts to a medical examination:

Dry, normal, or greasy?

- Uh, normal. Extra normal.

She swoons — well, they all do — over the “Vulgar Boatman” who visits to check his stock portfolio and sing at the village Cèilidh where everyone gets cheerfully drunk.

In contrast to Marina the mermaid, Stella the publican’s wife is a definite siren, casting smouldering glances at the visitors when she is onscreen and apparently permanently occupied in bed when the camera looks away for a moment. Keep your eye on her; Stella’s a star.

The music of the spheres

The soundtrack famously made more money than the movie. Mark Knopfler — guitar legend — is outstanding. After beginning his career with Dire Straits he cast about for new projects, sending out feelers that he was keen to write music for films. Local Hero came up and the rest is history. (He also did the score for Princess Bride, an odd fantasy romance with a cult following.)

Forty years later and both Liverpool United — Knopfler’s home team — and Aberdeen begin their football matches with the theme music.

Knopfler’s lyrical guitar work fits perfectly with the Scottish scenes. This is exactly where a predictable, canned music score would sound false. Knopfler’s quirky style echoes the mood of the movie.

Comedy without jokes

The script could have been played for laughs. There is plenty of scope for the actors to ham it up, have a lot of fun, dig the audience in the ribs and send everyone home chuckling.

Instead director Bill Forsyth encouraged the cast to perform straight-faced and serious. The comedy is still there, just not as in your face as a cream pie. It is all the better for the audience to smoke the jokes in their own time. The laughs come at different times from different people, and not everybody gets every joke.

There are the obvious ones, such as the “She’s got magnificent lungs” line when Marina doffs her lab coat, hands it to Oldsen and dives into the water tank where the oil company scientists are simulating tanker operations for the proposed refinery. Apparently the scene had to be shot and reshot because the actors were unable to restrain their giggles.

And there are more subtle examples, such as the baby in a stroller that appears when the villagers are chatting outside. The American asks, “Whose baby?” and the locals — all men — look at each other nonplussed.

A comedy it certainly is, but quirky and subtle, again in keeping with the general mood of the film.

The heroine of Local Hero?

They will tell you that the real hero is beachcomber Ben Knox in his shack on the beach. He is not keen on selling and is immune to the tactics that the Americans use.

Where’s the door?

- There is no door.

How do you do business with someone who doesn’t have a door?

- The ethics are just the same.

But no. It’s Marina. She is the spirit of Scotland popping up like a seal from the chill waters, unmoved by the American intrusion, speaking with a calm assurance, changing her clothes to suit the mood of the moment. She wears a lab coat in the laboratory, an obviously intriguing black one-piece when she dives into the tank, flippers, wetsuit and scuba tank when cataloguing the wildlife in the bay, and a shimmering dress when she appears at the Cèilidh, echoing the Northern Lights in the sky above — or is it the scales of a mermaid?

Scotland charms and seduces with every frame of the film. The contrast with the slick steel and glass towers of Houston could not be more stark. Here is a place where the eyes can take in the long view, resting on the green hills and island-studded waters. No malls or freeways here, just a single narrow street and a tiny closet of a general store.

Everything a person could need in the world is here in a narrow compass of stone walls and the wider landscape beyond, lifting the eyes to the sparkling heavens above.

Scotland is all that in real life. Once you leave the cities all you get is a narrow road through farmland or forest where the scenery leans in through the window to touch your heart.

Britni

product review
Like

About the Creator

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.