SOME KIND OF DARKNESS SYNOPSIS

“SOME KIND OF DARKNESS”: A FEATURE FILM SYNOPSIS

2003. On a final year trip to Cornwall, JERRY a young Oxford student, meets fellow American NEAL, a Special Forces dropout from the Afghan campaign: rich boy meets poor boy, but doesn’t like him much at first. In Cornwall JERRY’s parents buy him an old classic VW Camper Van, and, prompted by DAD, he offers NEAL a lift to the Edinburgh Festival, where JERRY’s Oxford college troupe is performing MACBETH, in which Jerry stars. First they drive JERRY’s parents to London to see a show and catch their plane to the US. DAD, a Vietnam vet, befriends ex-soldier NEAL, who promises DAD he’ll look after JERRY on the road north. DAD and NEAL, as disillusioned former soldiers, discuss the current invasion of Iraq, the demos etc., with Dad prophetically foreseeing another Vietnam and the mess that is to come. In London NEAL secretly murders a ticket tout to secure the family’s theatre tickets. JERRY picks him up on the road north to the Edinburgh Festival next day. In Glasgow they collect PETE, Jerry’s fellow student and best friend and the show’s musician. His twin sister RACHEL, playing Lady Macbeth, is also there - Jerry’s ex. The Scottish siblings are very close. RACHEL watching PETE and JERRY together flashes back to her loneliness and pain at the Oxford May ball after JERRY left her, an emotion which she keeps concealed. After a dispute in the pub, a thug waylays JERRY and is about to kill him when NEAL rescues JERRY, fulfilling his promise to DAD by severely hurting JERRY’s assailant. In a frenzy of fear and rage, encouraged by NEAL, JERRY finishes the guy off. JERRY has to help dispose of the thug’s body, and is racked with guilt and horror. On the road to Edinburgh the trio discuss the future. JERRY plans to quit his hobby, acting, and take the more certain route to success - be a corporate lawyer and return to his American roots, PETE wants to be a musician, and NEAL, who talks mysteriously of “going beyond good and evil,” just “wants to see the Northern Lights...” PETE and NEAL write a song “City Living”. As they do this we get a partial flashback into Neal’s past - the 2001 massacre of Afghan prisoners of war by air strike at Qalai Janghi fortress Afghanistan, with Special Forces operative NEAL protesting that “it ain’t right...” They pull over to get some fuel. Almost casually NEAL dispatches a third victim, a surly old Scotsman in a lonely petrol station. When they stop for the night in Jedburgh we see on the pub TV news footage of the invasion of Iraq. But it’s just television… Arriving in Edinburgh they find the other students/actors going wild. RACHEL seduces NEAL, not realising she is playing with fire. But NEAL leaves when he realises RACHEL is still in love with JERRY. He continues north into the Highlands on his quest “to see the Northern Lights”, and in the course of an idyll in the woods kills a gamekeeper and two policemen. He escapes the hue and cry in spectacular fashion, crashing down a mountain at night in a stolen Land Rover. Meanwhile back at the Edinburgh Festival the strange new authenticity JERRY is giving his role as MACBETH (after his experiences with Neal) is winning PETE and JERRY’s production a big Festival prize. In the middle of all this buzz of excitement with the student theatre gang, NEAL calls from “the ferry across the Styx” - the ferry to Skye - and PETE invites him back for the show’s final night celebrations, promising him the chance to perform “CITY LIVING” in front of a record company exec. But PETE goes mad at the final night fling and instead of waiting for the record exec to play the song with Neal he leads the drunken drugged up students into a wild orgy in Edinburgh Castle fountain below the pub. JERRY is seduced by RACHEL. At dawn they wake to find PETE facedown in the pool. RACHEL, heartbroken and embittered, cursing JERRY, heads south on the train with PETE’s body. JERRY stays in Edinburgh, stunned. When NEAL phones from the road he says something to make JERRY think he has killed PETE in disappointment at the blown-out record deal. JERRY drives north to rejoin NEAL and take revenge. Finally, after fighting almost to death on the spectacular heights of the Quirang Hills on Skye, JERRY realises that NEAL didn’t kill PETE and is his “brother from the States” after all. The fight has brought them closer.But it’s too late....and NEAL, after we flash back to the action that led to his being dishonourably discharged from the army for trying to blow the whistle on the Afghan massacre he was involved in, at last fulfils his suicidal purpose by driving JERRY’s van, solo, off the top of the cliff into the sea a thousand feet below. We realize that he feels responsible for the unsporting airstrike massacre of 47 prisoners of war with their hands tied behind their back, and this is what has driven him beyond good and evil to a place where he might as well kill as not.In a simultaneous flash forward we see JERRY and RACHEL becoming famous as PETE and NEAL’s song, recorded live at PETE’s final disastrous gig, becomes a hit after the notorious and now almost legendary death of PETE. RACHEL makes hay in the celebrity mags as PETE’s sexy sister who happens to be a great actress, and Fringe First prizewinner JERRY can now be a successful actor and her partner, they will be “the new Jude and Sadie...” - even as NEAL finally sees his Northern Lights, hallucinating them through the window of the VAN...…as we cross-cut to subsequent future history, the bloody future of Iraq, the 7/7 bombings in London, and newspaper headlines and clips of the TV pundits and the politicians and Tony Blair refusing to regret it all at the Iraq enquiry in 2010.Back in 2003 JERRY’s old Volkswagen CAMPER VAN finally hits the water, and the sea closes over NEAL as if he has never been. (END)