The Illusion Of Choice: Labour And Obligation In Mark Jenkin's 'Rose Of Nevada'

The Rose Of Nevada (Mark Jenkin, 2025); image by Steve Tanner, courtesy of Bosena

The Rose of Nevada doesn’t open simply; it instead offers glimpses at decay: rotting timber, lichen and images of a Cornish fishing town well past its prime. The opening scenes of the film offer a glimpse of the plot to come: a movie about time and what we owe to our community. 

Mark Jenkin’s final instalment in his loosely defined ‘Cornish Trilogy’ - following Enys Men and the highly successful Bait - follows an ill-fated fishing boat, the titular Rose of Nevada, that suddenly appears back in the town thirty years after an accident that lost both members at sea. The film is less concerned with a linear narrative or the traditional plot structure of the narrative pyramid arc, and instead, its driving force is a fragmented nature that plays with temporality.

Unsure of its whereabouts over the last thirty years, the boat is nonetheless prepared for fishing. Helmed by a crew consisting of the aloof and devoted father Nick, played by the magnetic George McKay, and the alcoholic drifter Liam, played by Callum Turner. Upon their return from their inaugural fishing trip, Nick and Liam find themselves returning to the town, more vibrant and significantly more populated. Amid the confusion and the revelation of mistaken identity, it is revealed that they have been transported to the date of the boat’s initial disappearance, taken for the original crew. Lost - so to speak - in space time, Liam, naturally, falls into the rhythm of his new life, while Nick attempts to get back. 

It is here that Jenkin’s main objectives in writing the film become evident. As Nick grows increasingly resistant to his new life and attempts to find multiple points of return, he slowly realises the town's economic dependence on them. ‘They need us’, he states, a culmination of his realisation that he is trapped in a town unable to let him go. 

Nick’s reluctant resignation to his new life, set against Liam’s cooperation, revealed Jenkin’s preoccupation with the individual's place within the cultural and economic system. What Nick grows to understand is that the town's entire cultural economy is dependent on fishing, and that he thus becomes not an individual but rather a cog within the system. Indeed, it would be impossible to conceive of the film as a love letter to Jenkin’s Cornish heritage, as it instead operates as a representation of communal labour. For Liam and Nick, their labour is not simply work, but instead a form of belonging and, more unsettlingly, a form of obligation.  

The film stands as a mark of Jenkins’s mastery as a filmmaker. The cyclicality of the film is reinforced through its soundtrack, composed by Jenkin himself. A large amount of the score is dominated by ticks and drips, small repetitive noises that evoke both the passage of time or the lack thereof. The close-up shots of decay and the repetition of seemingly insignificant scenes serve as ways to allow the audience to retrospectively understand their significance. Indeed, whilst the Rose of Nevada at times may not be easy to follow, it is undeniably compelling and a film that slowly weaves itself together after each watch. 

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Edited by Lara Walsh, Co-Film & TV Editor