No man is an island,” John Donne declares in his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. The Ballad of Wallis Island, a new film directed by James Griffiths, gives us not one but two man-islands, who naturally meet on an island, the fictional Welsh paradise of the title.
Charles Heath (British comedian Tim Key), five years a widower, lives alone on Wallis Island in a grand old mansion. He spends his days perfecting his serve on his grass tennis court, playing tetherball by himself, and listening to melancholy LPs from a long-defunct folk duo, McGwyer Mortimer, a favorite of his beloved wife, Marie. A retired nurse, Charles is fabulously wealthy. He won the lottery, spent everything traveling the world, then won the lottery a second time. “Two pounds well spent,” as he says.
As the film opens, Charles wades out to greet the taxi-boat that carries his musical hero, Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden, another British comedian), as he arrives at the island for a concert, which Charles has arranged and paid for, generously, from his lottery winnings. Since his musical and romantic break-up with Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan), Herb has pursued a solo career. He’s not a happy man: Oozing with self-importance and self-pity, his face is drawn, his demeanor surly. Though he now performs with pop artists, Herb retains his high-minded folk-singer disdain for “commercial” music. He knows his career is pathetic but prickles when others notice. When he insists his solo pieces are more musically varied than his earlier work, Charles flashes a skeptical look: “I don’t know, Herb. The harmonies?”
Unbeknownst to Herb, Charles has also invited Nell, hoping the duo can recreate their musical magic one last time. Though Nell is married to Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen), Herb wants to rekindle their romance too. Misunderstandings, confusion, and hurt feelings proliferate; the gig is on, the gig is off; Herb tries to leave more than once, but can’t decipher the schedule for the water taxi. In the end, Herb gives a solo concert late into the night on the pebbly shore of the island for an audience of two.
The Ballad of Wallis Island began as a 2007 short, and both short and feature were co-authored by Key and Basden, with Basden as composer. It’s a very funny movie, largely because of Charles’s logorrheic punning, many of them of the so-bad-they’re-funny variety. When Herb first walks into Charles’s house, he’s soaking wet. “Dame Judy,” Charles says, then, when Herb draws a blank, “Dame Judy Drenched.” Not all the jokes are bad puns. The first time Herb sees the tiny beach where he’s supposed to perform, he’s incredulous: “This isn’t where the gig is.” “You’re half right,” Charles answers, “It is where the gig is.” Herb’s phone falls into the ocean and he tries to dry it in rice. “Can I get some rice?” he asks Charles. “I need to make some phone calls.” “Amazing sentence,” says Charles. There’s no rice to be had, and Charles suggests substituting rice pudding. “Rice pudding definitely won’t work,” Herb complains. “Well, not with that attitude,” Charles primly answers.
The film brims with nostalgia, focused in an exquisite scene midway through. Michael, a birdwatcher, is on the other side of the island trying to get sight of a puffin, and Charles, Herb, and Nell enjoy a curry. Charles watches as Herb and Nell reminisce and playfully argue about musical genres, until Herb proves a point by grabbing a guitar and strumming. As McGwyer Mortimer sing harmonies on one of their old songs, the camera zooms in on Charles, his large eyes filled with tears, his lips twisting, his broad flat face a poignant mix of regret, grief, and joy. Even when moved to the depths, Charles can’t stop himself. “Wowsers in your trousers,” he says. “I’m speechless.” “No, you’re not,” Herb says with a grin.
Nostalgic, yes, but the thrust of the film is the need to outgrow nostalgia, to discover new harmonies when old harmonies grow dissonant or fade. Nell firmly rebuffs Herb’s romantic advances with “You’re not in love with me. You’re in love with the past . . . it was great but it’s gone. It’s time to grow up.” Herb does. Superfan that he is, Charles knows all the gossip and probes Herb with personal questions. Initially, Herb puts him off by saying he’s a “private person,” but he’s not. He’s just self-absorbed. Stuck on the island, he begins to unclench. He learns to love his past as past, and accepts Charles for who he is, a kindred spirit, a fellow human who also has suffered loss. (In a neat touch, Herb spends much of the film wearing Charles’s clothes, while his own Dame Judy clothes dry out.) Charles tells Herb that a famous actress once visited the island for a retreat. Wallis is a retreat for Herb too, an involuntary journey to self-knowledge. By the time Herb leaves, he’s been triply baptized—twice in the ocean, once by rain—and is drenched enough to become a new man with his face firmly set to the future. Motoring away from the island, he glances back and bites an apple, plucked, no doubt, from some tree of knowledge.
Charles brought Herb to Wallis Island to reunite him with Nell. He fails, but Herb turns the tables before he leaves and sets Charles up with Amanda (Sian Clifford), who runs the (riceless) general store. After the concert, Herb, Charles, and Amanda share a “helluva halibut.” At this meal, Herb is the third wheel, watching with satisfaction as Charles and Amanda awkwardly get to know each other. Another table; another harmony; another isolated island on its way to becoming part of a main. In the closing scene, Amanda shows up at Charles’s door holding a tennis racket. After five years of loneliness, Charles has a chance to learn how to return a serve.
