1988 · fantasy · drama · arthouse

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey

Directed by Vincent Ward · 1h 32m · 1988

Cumberland, 1348. The plague is spreading in medieval England. The remote village of little Griffin is also threatened. But the 9-year-old boy has a recurring dream that holds the key to a tiny hope of survival: a lake with a coffin floating on it. A white church with an iron cross. A falling glove. A falling silhouette. A torch tumble through a dark shaft into infinity. With his brother he recognizes in it a prophecy to escape the Black Death. So they embark with a few men on a journey to a distant cathedral, where they want to set up an iron cross as an offering to God. Her path leads them through a deep and dark mine shaft into an unknown land and completely outlandish time - into the present-day New Zealand of the 1980s.

Our read: The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988) reads as a sombre, steady, surreal fantasy · drama · arthouse entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook, with a strong directorial signature.