Bait Movie Review

John Meyers lives and writes in Maryland. His work has appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Spartan, the Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, The Louisville Review, and elsewhere. John was a 2018 Best Small Fictions nominee. His website is hammeredinmetal.com

Bait is a movie about a Cornish fisherman named Martin, who is forced by economic circumstance to give up his boat and his home. Martin is a bitter man, who directs his poisonous rage at anyone remotely associated with the things he has lost. Bait is filmed in 16 millimeter black and white and is mainly a collection of extreme closeups of various characters, especially those with beards. Martin has the most impressive beard in the movie. Shaggy, yet not sloppy, it is a true fisherman’s beard. The black and white film gives the beard a sinister texture that evokes the rocky outcroppings, rough seas, and harsh weather conditions Martin no doubt encountered during his days on the water. Martin’s brother is also a featured character in Bait. He has an impressive beard, but it  is properly trimmed and seems the correct look for his current job as a guide for day trippers. Martin is angry with his brother for converting their fishing boat into a tourist vessel, and it’s fascinating to watch him cower in the presence of Martin’s majestic beard. In addition to Martin and his brother, there is another notable beard in the movie. It belongs to a young man renting a shack behind a seaside cottage. His beard is wispy and black, a fashion choice that does not suggest a life spent at sea, but perhaps suggests a life spent in coffeehouses writing  poetry. While this poet complains about neighborhood noise, Martin’s beard moves fluidly from location to location on screen. It enters into exchanges with various non-bearded characters. The effete businessman who purchased Martin’s home regularly pleads with Martin not to park his ancient pickup truck in front of the house. Eventually a confrontation erupts between the two men at a local pub, with the clean-shaven gentleman attempting to stand up to Martin, until Martin’s beard overcomes him the way heavy surf in this fishing village might overcome a weak swimmer. As the movie progresses, we anticipate the next time Martin’s beard will be featured in extreme closeup. We sense that when Martin’s beard is on screen, something important is about to happen, and this usually involves the beard delivering some sort of comeuppance to a soft and doughy character who has no idea what it takes to make a living on the water. When the movie ends, we stay in our seats and watch the credits roll, overcome by the sheer power of Martin’s beard and its determination to find its way back to a life on the water. When this happens - and we know that someday it must happen - the word “hardscrabble” will once again be used to describe life in this seaside town, and all tourists with pink, well-scrubbed hands will hop into their hi-performance sedans and go home.

Photo by Hunter Brumels on Unsplash