We
first meet Douglas Menzies [40's] waist deep in the sea below towering
cliffs in North West Scotland. His badly chafed and bleeding hands haul
on a rope lashed to a huge whisky cask. With a mighty effort as though
taming a wild beast Douglas pulls the cask ashore and rolls it into a
cave. Catherine [21] looks down on him from on top of the cliff. Watching
his struggle her eyes well with tears.
In contrast to this wild and deeply romantic image, we find the dry rationalist David Urquhart [30] in a university lecture theatre in London. Slides of ancient cave paintings illuminate his anthropological lecture. When David dismisses the paintings as being of little scientific value beyond their depiction of hunting and man's social grouping, Davies, a student argues that as the first examples of art and creativity surely they're of vital importance. He goes on to make a strong case for wanting to understand what first drove primitive man to paint, but David casts this aside as irrelevant. For him all scientific discovery must be based on sound evidence, and as primitive man is no longer available for interrogation the subject is not worth their attention.
But David is unsettled. His discomfiture during the brief debate is made all the worse by the presence of his student lover, Helen, who listens intently on the front row. After the lecture things get worse. Davies and Helen contend that contemporary scientific discoveries are calling much conventional wisdom into question. They take David to see the famous 'double split experiment' in the neighbouring physics laboratory. The classic quantum physics demonstration shows that even atoms regularly flaunt rational laws of cause and effect. The students' point is that the pragmatic objective route to unravelling the big questions of life and the universe is no longer acceptable. Scientists have to approach their subject as creatively as artists and musicians. David is furious and pleading another appointment walks out.
No comfort here either. David's friend Alan Townbee, who edits a literary magazine, called "The Serpent" confesses he eavesdropped on David's lecture and heard his contretemps with Davies. Townbee criticises David for turning into a stuffy accademic. But the possibility of redemption is at hand. Alan has received an extraordinary short story, "The Cliffs" from a composer, Douglas Menzies. The editor describes it as primitive and raw and reading more like wild music than literature. The author's message seems to be that destruction lies at the heart of creation. Within us we have the seeds of our own disintegration and this destructive force Menzies calls the Wrecker. Alan teases David that it's probably too irrational for him. Nevertheless in an attempt to stir the creative instinct in David, Alan asks him to visit the remote Scottish village of Dalaskir during the university vacation and track down Menzies to find out if he has any more of this material. In challenging David to open his mind to other influences Alan quotes from Hamlet, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
David accepts the mission. He begins by simply seeking Menzies the man, but unknown to him his quest will expand into a personal and philosophical journey which will change his life. As a philosophical detective he will tangle with challenging and heady ideas at every turn, though always leavened with romance, emotion and the elemental landscape of North West Scotland.
But before leaving David falls out badly with Helen. He taunts her about her infatuation with her new found fad, quantum theory, and she rails against him for being narrow minded. As the antagonism rises he accuses her of being unfaithful with Davies. Helen angrily and tearfully denies it and walks out on him.
Later, as David's train ploughs northwards through a terrible storm, he reads "The Cliffs". This sequence is cross cut with another night and another storm - the night Menzies' wife Anna died. We glimpse images of Menzies raging against the maelstrom and at dawn quietly kneeling beside her bloodied body. He despairs out loud that he didn't know enough.
As David arrives at Dalaskir’s only hotel he is watched by a Menzies and his dog, a wolfhound, hidden in the darkness. It is as if Menzies is already aware of David’s quest; the master is guiding his pupil to the well. From inside the hotel comes the sound of a raucous ceilidh but as David enters a solo singer takes the stage and sings the haunting yet overwhelmingly romantic Gaelic ballad, "The Land of Heart's Desire". At his first sight of the beautiful young singer, Catherine McGillivray, David is spellbound. This is love at first sight. Nothing rational about that. We recognise Catherine as the girl in the opening scene with Menzies.
Away from the ceilidh the landlord Sam introduces David to a party of English guests at the hotel. They're headed by the robust Major, bullish, Empire red, but capable and intelligent. The Major is adored by a Widow, who hangs on his every word. The other guests are a barrister and a pair of solicitors and their wives. They're discussing the introduction of hydro electric power to the highlands. The Major regards it as progress invading his playground.
While the advances of technology in the 1950's affected peoples' lives in general, the bringing of electricity was to have a revolutionary impact on the Highland way of life. The first stirrings of these developments wind their way through the film.
The guests discussion is interrupted as the ceilidh spills into the room in the form of Catherine's father, Lachlan drunkenly playing the bagpipes. David witnesses the clash of cultures between the visiting elite and the indigenous population as the English Major balls out Lachlan, his ghillie, though Lachlan gets the better of the exchange.
Later David suggests the Major staged the whole performance for his benefit, but it had backfired. The Major ribs David for knowing nothing of the real world, but only the lecture theatre. Despite this, the Major reckons that he and David have more in common with each other - a reference to their shared rationalism. As they talk the hotel’s gas lights fade and plunge them into darkness and they repair to an outhouse to crank up the hotel’s gas generator. The Major guesses that David has come to see Menzies who he regards as a symbol of a dying Gaelic culture. David is startled to hear from the Major about a recent shipwreck in a storm and a woman who dies. This is the very stuff of Menzies' story, "The Cliffs".
The following morning, Helen telephones the hotel to tell David she will join him to patch up their quarrel. But while on the phone David hears Catherine, also the hotel chambermaid, humming The Land of Heart’s Desire, and realises he is on a new path now, falling in love with Catherine, and dissuades Helen. Teasing David, Catherine pretends she didn't notice his arrival, but explains that the song was Anna Menzies' favourite. To David's surprise Catherine also intimates that Anna is dead.
Davidlater sets off alone to find Menzies. Unknown to him he is watched by all the key players, including Menzies himself. On his way David hears a disturbing metallic crash. Looking down into a dell he sees the surreal sight of tangled metal girders being pushed from a donkey cart by a couple of gypsies.
David and Menzies meet beside a ruined chapel. A rowan tree winds its way through the crumbling stonework and claws for the sky. In Gaelic culture the rowan tree was cultivated to keep evil spirits away. David feels intimidated by the almost heroic, visionary presence of Menzies and his growling dog, who also disorientate him by their apparently eerie ability to move unseen around him. Menzies offers him a drink from his hip flask, which David eagerly accepts. It's the rawest dram he's ever tasted, and he chokes. David asks Menzies whether "The Cliffs" is based on a real event - a storm and a wreck, and a death. Menzies suggests he examine the evidence.
They walk to the cliff top and look down. Far below waves swirl round a rusting shipwreck. Menzies asks David whether this satisfies his curiosity, or even helps him understand the story any better and David confesses that it doesn't. He's none the wiser. Menzies chides him for needing evidence and in terms similar to David's earlier trouncing by Davies - the universe is intrinsically irrational and illogical. If it was otherwise, we'd understand it, and so, Menzies claims, God must have another system - one we haven't fathomed yet. Menzies advises David to return to London and his warm bed. But there's no way back for David. He's come this far, he's got to stick it out with Menzies. By taking Menzies proffered flask a second time he signals his willingness to leave the safety of his rationalism and follow Menzies on the path to another landscape.
They walk to a remote cliff top cemetery - and Anna's grave. Here David learns that "The Cliffs" is about Anna's death, but that Menzies had written it before she died. David is bewildered.
David learns - and through a flashback we see - that Menzies had been composing film scores and had met and fallen in love with Anna. In an extraordinary temporal echo of David's later meeting with Catherine, Menzies had first seen and been captivated by Anna when she sang "The Land of Heart's Desire" in a bar. But the marriage had been difficult. While heavily pregnant and working on a sculpted bust of Menzies, Anna had received a telephone call which led her to suspect Menzies infidelity. Running blindly to the studio where he was working on the score for a film about a shipwreck, she had fallen under a dray horse and lost the baby. A dramatic sequence cuts between Menzies conducting the orchestra as they play his shipwreck score and Anna’s fateful journey through the London streets and falling beneath the horse's hooves.
In a sequence which combines Anna's awful memory of the rearing horse with Menzies' lure of the sea the couple determine to move back to Scotland. It's the perfect place to recover from the tragedy and for Menzies to turn his back on commercial work and write his masterpiece - a symphony.
At first life in Scotland had been blissful. Their happiness is captured through a sequence of pure sunshine as Menzies arrives back at their new home having collected his piano from the local station with the help of Dalaskir’s decrepit breakdown truck and the motley crew of local characters who double as ghillies and are soon to become the bane of the Major’s life. Playing the piano as it sits atop the swaying truck Menzies creativity and joy are undiluted. But things had soon gone sour. The composing had hit the rocks, money ran short and Menzies was on the verge of giving up the symphony. Unbeknown to Menzies Anna had kept them in funds by writing twee articles about Highland life for metropolitan magazines. In flashback we see Anna’s last ditch attempt to shift Menzies' creative block. She suggests he write the themes of the symphony in a short story - this is what becomes "The Cliffs", and which is submitted to The Serpent. Menzies block is shifted, but at a price. He realises that through the writing of the story that the female character aboard the ship must die, and that is also what must happen in the symphony. The fateful catch is that he sees this through a premonition of Anna’s death.
Meanwhile,Anna has become pregnant again - a result of lovemaking again designed by Anna to shift Menzies' out of his rut. And then disaster. During an awful storm, while the community battled to save a stricken boat, Anna had died in childbirth. Menzies had tried everything he knew. He ran for help at the hotel, only to find the place deserted, but for the Major forlornly stoking a dying fire. The telephone lines to the Doctor were down, the nurse was away. There was no hope. At the ruined chapel Menzies inveighed against the storm - a comparison to King Lear on the 'blasted heath' is invoked. Anna dies of a haemorrhage and the earlier scene of Menzies by her bloody body is reprised.
In conversation with Menzies, David learns how he had retreated from the community to mourn his loss and also through the completion of the symphony to try and find where Anna had gone beyond death, the other landscape where the meaning behind an irrational universe can be found. In other words to find the creator’s other system.
Now up to date with the composer's history, David abandons his rational approach and desperately tries to keep up with Menzies’ quest. At Menzies' home, known as the White House, the composer takes David through the genesis of the symphony. The sea theme came from the film he had been composing the score for in London. The journey to the Land of Heart's Desire was his and Anna's return to Scotland - and the storm, otherwise known as the Wrecker is the "black electricity from the vaults of space". Menzies proposes two principles in creation; good and evil. Well, evil was having an undisturbed innings. Is the Wrecker God himself, wonders Menzies? The destroyer at the heart of his own creation? At the climax of this intense dissection of the creative impulse Menzies and David 'see' Anna in the room. She is arranging flowers in a vase. She appears not as a ghost, but a reality created by Menzies' strength of will, a phenomena known throughout Gaelic culture as 'second sight'. David passes out.
David wakes with the effects of a hangover in Anna's painting room and comes face to face with her sculpture of Menzies. David makes his way back to the hotel. Passing a small inland loch he spies the Major and Lachlan aboard a dangerously rocking rowing boat having a stand up argument. Their feud is continuing.
Back at the hotel David runs into Catherine, who is keen to know how he got on with Menzies. There is tension between them. David finds Catherine is very protective of Menzies, and is keen to discover how friendly they are. Catherine is coy. David scores a point when he discovers that she doesn't know about the story, "The Cliffs".
Later the Major quizzes David on his interview with Menzies, and this time it’s David’s turn to be reticent. However he does learn from the Major that Catherine is a student at Glasgow University - just like Anna used to be. The Major teases David for his lack of anthropological insight and wants to know where Menzies gets his drink. When David isn't forthcoming the Major accuses him of going native. The local estate agent, Maclean has a quiet word with the landlord, Sam, from which David gathers that Menzies has money trouble.
The next day while out walking David again spies the gypsies carrying girders on a cart. Maclean driving past offers David a lift to the local fishing harbour. As they talk David hatches the idea to pay Menzies' rent. At Maclean's office, David soon realises that it doesn't suit Maclean to have Menzies rent paid. Maclean is so obstructive that David accuses the estate agent of being more interested in evicting Menzies. This hits the nail on the head. David is enraged and accuses the stunned Maclean of being a Wrecker.
But it's not all bad news. Catherine is paying her own family’s rent in the adjacent office and has overheard his row with Maclean. She catches up with David fuming over the harbour wall that his suspicions are right. Maclean wants Menzies out so he can sell the house. David has resolved to help Menzies in any way he can. Catherine is touched by his concern and compassion and also agrees to help the cause. David reels away from their meeting even more hopelessly smitten by Catherine - almost to the point where he forgets about Menzies.
Back at the hotel he confides his feelings to Alan Townbee in a letter. He confesses he's fallen in love. He writes that he's been opened up to a completely new world, but then claims it's not a new world at all only the old one with the blinkers of rationality taken off. He refers to the experiment which Helen and Davies had shown him back in London - which we now see again - and he claims that Menzies can see through the barriers of everyday existence and into what he calls "the vaults of space". As evidence he cites 'seeing' Anna the night before, "Through Menzies' will, she was with us. He made her live again".
This is all very well, but it doesn't cut any mustard with the Major, who has also heard about David, as he calls it, interfering in Menzies' affairs. Over dinner he warns David to keep a perspective and a sense of objectivity. The Major is in his darkest mood yet, and he wanders off into the night to summon up Lachlan for a fishing trip on the morrow. Sam the landlord reveals the Major's past. He was a diplomat in the East, but was recalled. Some said it was to do with a woman, but others say the Foreign Office was more concerned with the oil.
The next day, David's world caves in. Out walking again, he spies Menzies and Catherine on the beach. They appear to be embracing. David is devastated. He feels a fool, deceived, and heartbroken. He commandeers a stray donkey to ride back to the hotel. The donkey has other ideas and tips him into a dell. David tumbles down a bank and lands on his back looking up at the donkey, who stares contemptuously. Now David is aware he's not alone. An old woman emerges from a sagging gypsy tent. Behind her stands the donkey cart loaded with girders. The woman withdraws and David confides to the donkey that he's returning to London and his warm bed.
But back at the hotel, there's pandemonium - the Major is missing, last seen on Loch Dubh. Sam tells David that apparently after the Major and Lachlan had another of their famous rows Lachlan stalked off. Later thinking better of it, he returned to the loch to discover the boat adrift and no sign of the Major. The Widow is inconsolable, and the ghillies are getting a search party together. Their haphazard and almost celebratory demeanour contrasts with the Major’s English compatriots, Brown and Sneddon who are also tooling up to trawl the loch. The feeling amongst the English guests is that Lachlan has done away with the Major, but David leaps to Lachlan's defence.
The search party arrive at the loch without any real clue as to what to do. Some favour leaving the scene of the 'crime' to the police, while others start dredging the loch with inappropriate nets. The gillies throw stones at the boat which still lies adrift. Although there is tension in the air, the scene is played for comedy. Then Lachlan approaches morosely insisting on his innocence. Now Menzies and Catherine arrive. David watches them from afar. In his eyes it's confirmation of their togetherness. Sam calls off the search saying it's better left to the constabulary.As the hotel guests settle down to a sombre evening meal the Major's chair is conspicuously empty. The talk is sotto voce, broken only by the Widow's sighs. But suddenly a heavy tread sounds from without and the door is flung open to reveal the Major dressed for dinner. The Widow almost faints with excitement, a maid drops her tray in shock and the Major's joy is complete. He has everyone's full attention. His explanation of the afternoon's event is very condemning of Lachlan, who the Major claims had left him in the lurch. David and Sam indicate in a glance they both know it's a tissue of lies.
Later, David armed with a bottle of whisky goes to the Major's room and accuses him of setting up his 'disappearance' to cause Lachlan maximum discomfort. The Major doesn't admit it, but David is right. The light fades as before and the Major lights some candles and the conversation turns to Menzies. The Major is fascinated by the composer, but refutes everything he stands for. He claims Menzies' search is a waste of time; that there is nothing beyond what he calls 'the black wall' of death. But David insists that Menzies is right, there is another landscape, another universe behind the one we can see. As the drink flows the Major and David trade insults. The Major tells him that Catherine's used him, and David retorts by claiming that there's nothing left for the Major except to play endless childish games with Lachlan.
Asleep, David dreams about the Major cowering within a stockade of hundreds of candles on top of a towering but slender sea stack. As the camera rises further it passes through the orbits of planet like spheres spinning furiously round the stack. The image represents the insignificant Major attempting to shut out the universe and the very atoms in its elements.
Suddenly smoke obscures the image and there is the sound of shouting - David wakes suddenly. His room is full of smoke. He sits up in alarm and crashes his head on the wall. The Major’s candles have done their worst. His room has caught alight and is a fiery belching hell. David emerges into the corridor and discovers a drunken Lachlan with the ghillies quenching the flames with the hotel's ancient hosepipe. They take the opportunity to give the Major a thorough dousing. The other guests alarmed by the commotion and fearing the fire attempt to leave the hotel. Lachlan turns the hose on them dislodging the Widow's false teeth and creating mayhem. The guests are outraged.
Order is restored by the combined efforts of Sam, David and Catherine. Lachlan and the gillies are sent home. Catherine offers to tend the cut on David's head. There follows a brief scene in which Catherine aware of David's changed mood asks him why he's sulking. David claims in a double edged way that he's hurt. The point is that now Lachlan's got his own back on the Major and Catherine’s told Douglas about the rent, David's job is done. He's leaving. Catherine asks him not to, but David's disenchantment is complete. Catherine watches him return to his room still not understanding his mood.
The following morning, David presents himself at reception to settle his bill. Sam is sorry he's leaving, there's still work to do on Menzies. He fears the composer will go the same way as his wife unless somebody - pointedly - is able to pull him back into the community. Not only that, after last night's display the English guests are out for Lachlan's head - he needs all the support he can get. Catherine appears, to add her voice to David staying.
A 'court' has been set up in the bar. On the bench, the English anglers - Sneddon, Brown and another English guest, Lockworth, a lawyer, officiates. In the dock, are the ghillies amusing themselves by playing cards, and a very, very hungover Lachlan. Sam takes the floor and in lugubrious Charles Laughton style states the case for the defence. Lockworth, who is intent on going fishing with Dan Macllellan drives a path between the guests angling for blood, the need for justice and Sam's convoluted but humourous summing up. David takes his place on the bench and whispers a solution to Lockworth. To Brown and Sneddon's horror, Lockworth announces that Lachlan is to be rewarded by large double whiskies from all concerned. Brown and Sneddon only realise the wisdom of this 'punishment' when they see Lachlan's face turn a ghastly green at a trayfull of malts. Catherine mouths a grateful 'thank you' to David, and Sam books him a table for dinner. David is staying.
David rows out in a boat between the cliffs and the sea stack. He waves at Dan and Lockworth lobster fishing. As he drifts past the cliffs he is fascinated to discover the cave where Menzies struggled with the cask. He pulls in to investigate. Inside the cave David is amazed to discover a whisky cask lodged above the high water mark.
Suddenly something moves behind him and he turns to see the silhouetted figure of Menzies in the cave's mouth. David is embarrassed to be caught like this and apologises for intruding in Menzies’ affairs. Menzies in a lighter mood offers him a drink. David wise to the last time Menzies made him this kind of offer accepts and drinks more warily. David tells him everyone was interested to know where Menzies got the drink. This provokes a flashback to Menzies hauling the cask ashore, which took place shortly after Anna's death. The cask was part of the debris from the shipwreck.
As we see Menzies' struggle with the cask, he explains that death produces an incredible energy. Rescuing the cask in the cold and wet reduced Menzies to the bare essentials of his existence, drove him back to a primeval state, in which his senses took command. He became so wet, cold and exhausted that he felt an integral part of his surroundings. At one with the cave and the rocks. This generated in him a glow of thin fine delight. He felt he'd found the road to finding Anna.
Explanation complete, Menzies stares towards the cave's mouth. David follows his gaze to see a further 'second sight' of Anna. She stands in the entrance to the cave, her hair in natural disorder. Behind her the sun streams through the spray of crashing breakers. This time David isn't afraid. His mind is opening to the mysteries of the universe - though it is on earth that there are matters he still needs to get straight.
Menzies leading, he and David climb the cliff. For David it’s a terrifying and perilous experience. At the top they find Catherine. David is surprised. Menzies leaves them to each other and strides briskly away.
What follows is a reconciliation scene between David and Catherine. She tells him that she is very fond of Menzies, but it will always be Menzies and Anna. She'd loved them both. She'd gone to see him and they'd gone to the beach, but 'things had fallen away between them'. David realises he's misinterpreted what he'd seen. Hidden from sight beside the ruined chapel Menzies still pulls the strings. He plays Land of Hearts Desire on the flute. David invites Catherine to dance. They do so with ever increasing joy and exuberance. Suddenly Catherine breaks away. She must go. David hands her a sprig of heather. Catherine kisses him and runs off. David collapses back into the heather. Menzies looks down on the scene smiling.
Back at the hotel David, full of the joys of love, discovers Sam showing an insurance assessor the damage following the fire and the deluge. The conversation between Sam and the assessor, Swithin, brings out a comedic battle of wits between the wily Highlander and the sceptical bureaucrat. David helps Sam’s case by praising the efforts of the hotel staff without whom the hotel would have burnt to cinders. Furthermore, he adds, his room needs attention. Sam is delighted and they go up to David's room. While Sam and Swithin discuss the cost repainting the blood smeared wall - caused when David woke in alarm on the night of the fire and smashed his head - David is transfixed by the sight of a sprig of heather sticking out of a glass, and now augmented by a single flower. Clear evidence of Catherine's affection.
As Sam and Swithin argue to and fro about wallpaper and blood being thicker than water, David breathlessly catches up with Catherine on the stairs and they make a date to meet at the ruined chapel at lunchtime the next day. David can barely wait and finds it difficult to contain himself while the Major and the guests discuss what wallpaper they'd prefer in their rooms. The Major who is trying to redeem himself after the disaster of the fire is swept aside by the women, who take over the pattern book. Lockworth and Dan invite David for some deep sea lobster fishing, but David declines. He has other fish to fry. Lockworth and Dan can guess who.
David and Catherine finally meet at the ruined chapel. When David tells her he's 'seen' Anna, Catherine flirtatiously accuses David of being in love with Anna - she adds that some say she and Anna are on the same path. They're so passionately involved with each other they fail to see the increasingly ominous sky above them.
By the time Menzies runs through the grass towards the ruin in a fearful reprise of the night Anna died, the sky is in full storm. He cries an alarm to David and Anna, sleeping together in the heather after their first love making that there's a boat in trouble. It turns out to be Dan and Lockworth. They're unable to negotiate the sea stack through the swelling waves and are in desperate danger.
Menzies takes the initiative and in the gathering storm climbs down the cliff. The ghillies arrive with the hotel breakdown truck and prepare the winch. Amidst the huge breakers Menzies catches a rope thrown from Dan and winds it round a large rock. Menzies succeeds in holding the boat, but Dan and Lockworth are emptied out into the sea. Watched from the cliff top by a fearful Mrs Macllellan and the Dalaskir community Menzies manages to clamber out and rescue Lockworth's floating figure. Next he wades out to Dan and pulls him to the shore in a struggle which recalls his fight with the cask.
Using the winch Dan and Lockworth are hauled to safety, but not before Menzies effects a dramatic release of the rope from half way up the cliff where it has snagged whilst Dan is being winched up. Although Menzies is the hero of the hour he silently leaves the scene and returns to the White House alone.
Later in the bar David is deputed by Sam to call on Menzies and offered a bottle of whisky to take as a restorative for him. He agrees, and asks the Major if he'd be interested in coming to. They spar as they did from the beginning. David chides the Major telling him he understands Menzies more than he will admit. But the Major won't be shifted. He's stuck in his trench. And when Lachlan arrives and apologises to the Widow for the incident with the hose, the Widow graciously declares she knows he wasn't aiming at her, the Major is ready to blow his stack. He does so silently when Lachlan offers to buy the Widow a drink and she accepts.
As David approaches Menzies house through the stormy night, he slips and Sam's bottle smashes. The sound of splintering glass seems to spark off the theme of Menzies' symphony, distracting David from the lost whisky. He listens as the music slips in and out of the wind ranging and raging through space. Menzies is playing the piano. The rescue has released Menzies' creativity and he's back to the symphony. Above moonlight shifts through the racing skies.
The same skies race above the hotel outhouse where the Major cranks the generator handle. Halted by an unseen force, he turns to open the door and shivers. Later, the Major is discovered in a drunken sleep, an empty bottle lolling in his lap.
On the shore waves and spume swill around the wreck of the trawler.
We've come to the final exchange between Menzies and David at the White House. But this time there's a sense that David is catching up with Menzies. The pupil is able to talk - though perhaps not yet on equal terms with the master - but certainly on the same level. David says that Menzies took a chance climbing down the cliff and rescuing Dan and Lockworth. Menzies counters that probability makes the world go round. But atoms the very stuff we're made of, know exactly how the universe is arranged. David recalls the 'double slit experiment'. Things are making more sense to him now. Atoms communicate, and understanding how is to discover the mind of God. This is the other world Menzies is trying to penetrate - to find Anna.
Menzies admits it is his guilt that is at the heart of his symphony – guilt at his affair that led to Anna losing her baby in London. David tells him the music is Menzies' answer to the Wrecker. The light against the dark. The music is all Anna wanted. Through the music Menzies and Anna had survived. What he must do now is finish the symphony. Menzies goes back to work. David visits the room where Anna died - he 'sees' the moment of her death, an experience which Menzies describes provoked in him 'an immense otherness . . . a grasp of a much bigger and more staggering dimension than I could ever have imagined'.
It is perhaps an experience beyond description in words, but David understands it through the music, he heard it against the storm. Menzies hasn't beaten the Wrecker, but he's broken through, he's beyond his reach. The startling visuals during this sequence begin by plunging deep into Anna's eye and invoke the huge dimension of the universe and the galaxy. They cast back to the cave paintings and man's early struggles to represent himself and his place in the scheme of things.
David and Menzies are discovered at the ruined chapel - the fountain of the idea of "the other landscape". While Menzies is silhouetted in the arched doorway David sits at the base of the rowan tree. This image time lapses through to dawn. As the shafts of early sunlight pierce through the white house window Menzies plays the last bars of his symphony. Released at last Menzies proposes climbing down the cliff again to get a drop from the whisky cask for Dan to commiserate with him the loss of his boat. David protests, but Menzies is insistent and begins the descent. David watches heart in mouth as Menzies slips, but then manages to retain a hold.
Back at the house his dog senses that Menzies is in danger and knocks over a lamp in his race to reach his master. In the end it's too late for both of them. Menzies weary after both the rescue and the culmination of his quest loses his grip and falls to his death. The dog overshoots the cliff edge and plummets after Menzies in a scene from the dogs own POV as it hurtles onto the rocks beside its master.
David stares down at the dead bodies. His attention is momentarily distracted by a figure running along the foreshore. He 'sees' Anna splashing through the surf towards Menzies. In fact it's Catherine. David and Catherine embrace beside Menzies' body, the score of the symphony safe in David's hand. The whisky cask is carried out to sea on the retreating tide.
The White House is ablaze. David’s copy of The Cliffs is burnt to ashes. The completed symphony is heard playing above the inferno. Meanwhile as the fire reaches Anna's sculpture, the imperishable clay image of Menzies' face stares out through the flames.
A postscript. Anna's gravestone is now superscribed, "and Douglas Menzies". A heavily pregnant Catherine lays a bunch of flowers on the twin graves. Behind her stands David. As they walk slowly away the camera rises high up above the graveyard, eventually revealing the improbable sight of booted feet on a steel girder, seemingly suspended in space. The camera continues up to reveal workmen assembling the top of an electricity pylon. In the distance below Catherine and David walk along the cliff edge path as the camera swings out to reveal the sun glinting on the distant sea below.
To a powerful theme - Christus Vincit - a dramatic aerial track skims low over waves crashing on the rocks following the endless line of towering cliffs.
Inscription on black:
Though nothing of this other might be known, or nothing that could be conveyed, yet equal to it, and indeed in some mysterious way going beyond it, was the sheer wonder of man's being on its quest. For of that now I had no doubt.
Neil Gunn, 1954
In contrast to this wild and deeply romantic image, we find the dry rationalist David Urquhart [30] in a university lecture theatre in London. Slides of ancient cave paintings illuminate his anthropological lecture. When David dismisses the paintings as being of little scientific value beyond their depiction of hunting and man's social grouping, Davies, a student argues that as the first examples of art and creativity surely they're of vital importance. He goes on to make a strong case for wanting to understand what first drove primitive man to paint, but David casts this aside as irrelevant. For him all scientific discovery must be based on sound evidence, and as primitive man is no longer available for interrogation the subject is not worth their attention.
But David is unsettled. His discomfiture during the brief debate is made all the worse by the presence of his student lover, Helen, who listens intently on the front row. After the lecture things get worse. Davies and Helen contend that contemporary scientific discoveries are calling much conventional wisdom into question. They take David to see the famous 'double split experiment' in the neighbouring physics laboratory. The classic quantum physics demonstration shows that even atoms regularly flaunt rational laws of cause and effect. The students' point is that the pragmatic objective route to unravelling the big questions of life and the universe is no longer acceptable. Scientists have to approach their subject as creatively as artists and musicians. David is furious and pleading another appointment walks out.
No comfort here either. David's friend Alan Townbee, who edits a literary magazine, called "The Serpent" confesses he eavesdropped on David's lecture and heard his contretemps with Davies. Townbee criticises David for turning into a stuffy accademic. But the possibility of redemption is at hand. Alan has received an extraordinary short story, "The Cliffs" from a composer, Douglas Menzies. The editor describes it as primitive and raw and reading more like wild music than literature. The author's message seems to be that destruction lies at the heart of creation. Within us we have the seeds of our own disintegration and this destructive force Menzies calls the Wrecker. Alan teases David that it's probably too irrational for him. Nevertheless in an attempt to stir the creative instinct in David, Alan asks him to visit the remote Scottish village of Dalaskir during the university vacation and track down Menzies to find out if he has any more of this material. In challenging David to open his mind to other influences Alan quotes from Hamlet, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
David accepts the mission. He begins by simply seeking Menzies the man, but unknown to him his quest will expand into a personal and philosophical journey which will change his life. As a philosophical detective he will tangle with challenging and heady ideas at every turn, though always leavened with romance, emotion and the elemental landscape of North West Scotland.
But before leaving David falls out badly with Helen. He taunts her about her infatuation with her new found fad, quantum theory, and she rails against him for being narrow minded. As the antagonism rises he accuses her of being unfaithful with Davies. Helen angrily and tearfully denies it and walks out on him.
Later, as David's train ploughs northwards through a terrible storm, he reads "The Cliffs". This sequence is cross cut with another night and another storm - the night Menzies' wife Anna died. We glimpse images of Menzies raging against the maelstrom and at dawn quietly kneeling beside her bloodied body. He despairs out loud that he didn't know enough.
As David arrives at Dalaskir’s only hotel he is watched by a Menzies and his dog, a wolfhound, hidden in the darkness. It is as if Menzies is already aware of David’s quest; the master is guiding his pupil to the well. From inside the hotel comes the sound of a raucous ceilidh but as David enters a solo singer takes the stage and sings the haunting yet overwhelmingly romantic Gaelic ballad, "The Land of Heart's Desire". At his first sight of the beautiful young singer, Catherine McGillivray, David is spellbound. This is love at first sight. Nothing rational about that. We recognise Catherine as the girl in the opening scene with Menzies.
Away from the ceilidh the landlord Sam introduces David to a party of English guests at the hotel. They're headed by the robust Major, bullish, Empire red, but capable and intelligent. The Major is adored by a Widow, who hangs on his every word. The other guests are a barrister and a pair of solicitors and their wives. They're discussing the introduction of hydro electric power to the highlands. The Major regards it as progress invading his playground.
While the advances of technology in the 1950's affected peoples' lives in general, the bringing of electricity was to have a revolutionary impact on the Highland way of life. The first stirrings of these developments wind their way through the film.
The guests discussion is interrupted as the ceilidh spills into the room in the form of Catherine's father, Lachlan drunkenly playing the bagpipes. David witnesses the clash of cultures between the visiting elite and the indigenous population as the English Major balls out Lachlan, his ghillie, though Lachlan gets the better of the exchange.
Later David suggests the Major staged the whole performance for his benefit, but it had backfired. The Major ribs David for knowing nothing of the real world, but only the lecture theatre. Despite this, the Major reckons that he and David have more in common with each other - a reference to their shared rationalism. As they talk the hotel’s gas lights fade and plunge them into darkness and they repair to an outhouse to crank up the hotel’s gas generator. The Major guesses that David has come to see Menzies who he regards as a symbol of a dying Gaelic culture. David is startled to hear from the Major about a recent shipwreck in a storm and a woman who dies. This is the very stuff of Menzies' story, "The Cliffs".
The following morning, Helen telephones the hotel to tell David she will join him to patch up their quarrel. But while on the phone David hears Catherine, also the hotel chambermaid, humming The Land of Heart’s Desire, and realises he is on a new path now, falling in love with Catherine, and dissuades Helen. Teasing David, Catherine pretends she didn't notice his arrival, but explains that the song was Anna Menzies' favourite. To David's surprise Catherine also intimates that Anna is dead.
Davidlater sets off alone to find Menzies. Unknown to him he is watched by all the key players, including Menzies himself. On his way David hears a disturbing metallic crash. Looking down into a dell he sees the surreal sight of tangled metal girders being pushed from a donkey cart by a couple of gypsies.
David and Menzies meet beside a ruined chapel. A rowan tree winds its way through the crumbling stonework and claws for the sky. In Gaelic culture the rowan tree was cultivated to keep evil spirits away. David feels intimidated by the almost heroic, visionary presence of Menzies and his growling dog, who also disorientate him by their apparently eerie ability to move unseen around him. Menzies offers him a drink from his hip flask, which David eagerly accepts. It's the rawest dram he's ever tasted, and he chokes. David asks Menzies whether "The Cliffs" is based on a real event - a storm and a wreck, and a death. Menzies suggests he examine the evidence.
They walk to the cliff top and look down. Far below waves swirl round a rusting shipwreck. Menzies asks David whether this satisfies his curiosity, or even helps him understand the story any better and David confesses that it doesn't. He's none the wiser. Menzies chides him for needing evidence and in terms similar to David's earlier trouncing by Davies - the universe is intrinsically irrational and illogical. If it was otherwise, we'd understand it, and so, Menzies claims, God must have another system - one we haven't fathomed yet. Menzies advises David to return to London and his warm bed. But there's no way back for David. He's come this far, he's got to stick it out with Menzies. By taking Menzies proffered flask a second time he signals his willingness to leave the safety of his rationalism and follow Menzies on the path to another landscape.
They walk to a remote cliff top cemetery - and Anna's grave. Here David learns that "The Cliffs" is about Anna's death, but that Menzies had written it before she died. David is bewildered.
David learns - and through a flashback we see - that Menzies had been composing film scores and had met and fallen in love with Anna. In an extraordinary temporal echo of David's later meeting with Catherine, Menzies had first seen and been captivated by Anna when she sang "The Land of Heart's Desire" in a bar. But the marriage had been difficult. While heavily pregnant and working on a sculpted bust of Menzies, Anna had received a telephone call which led her to suspect Menzies infidelity. Running blindly to the studio where he was working on the score for a film about a shipwreck, she had fallen under a dray horse and lost the baby. A dramatic sequence cuts between Menzies conducting the orchestra as they play his shipwreck score and Anna’s fateful journey through the London streets and falling beneath the horse's hooves.
In a sequence which combines Anna's awful memory of the rearing horse with Menzies' lure of the sea the couple determine to move back to Scotland. It's the perfect place to recover from the tragedy and for Menzies to turn his back on commercial work and write his masterpiece - a symphony.
At first life in Scotland had been blissful. Their happiness is captured through a sequence of pure sunshine as Menzies arrives back at their new home having collected his piano from the local station with the help of Dalaskir’s decrepit breakdown truck and the motley crew of local characters who double as ghillies and are soon to become the bane of the Major’s life. Playing the piano as it sits atop the swaying truck Menzies creativity and joy are undiluted. But things had soon gone sour. The composing had hit the rocks, money ran short and Menzies was on the verge of giving up the symphony. Unbeknown to Menzies Anna had kept them in funds by writing twee articles about Highland life for metropolitan magazines. In flashback we see Anna’s last ditch attempt to shift Menzies' creative block. She suggests he write the themes of the symphony in a short story - this is what becomes "The Cliffs", and which is submitted to The Serpent. Menzies block is shifted, but at a price. He realises that through the writing of the story that the female character aboard the ship must die, and that is also what must happen in the symphony. The fateful catch is that he sees this through a premonition of Anna’s death.
Meanwhile,Anna has become pregnant again - a result of lovemaking again designed by Anna to shift Menzies' out of his rut. And then disaster. During an awful storm, while the community battled to save a stricken boat, Anna had died in childbirth. Menzies had tried everything he knew. He ran for help at the hotel, only to find the place deserted, but for the Major forlornly stoking a dying fire. The telephone lines to the Doctor were down, the nurse was away. There was no hope. At the ruined chapel Menzies inveighed against the storm - a comparison to King Lear on the 'blasted heath' is invoked. Anna dies of a haemorrhage and the earlier scene of Menzies by her bloody body is reprised.
In conversation with Menzies, David learns how he had retreated from the community to mourn his loss and also through the completion of the symphony to try and find where Anna had gone beyond death, the other landscape where the meaning behind an irrational universe can be found. In other words to find the creator’s other system.
Now up to date with the composer's history, David abandons his rational approach and desperately tries to keep up with Menzies’ quest. At Menzies' home, known as the White House, the composer takes David through the genesis of the symphony. The sea theme came from the film he had been composing the score for in London. The journey to the Land of Heart's Desire was his and Anna's return to Scotland - and the storm, otherwise known as the Wrecker is the "black electricity from the vaults of space". Menzies proposes two principles in creation; good and evil. Well, evil was having an undisturbed innings. Is the Wrecker God himself, wonders Menzies? The destroyer at the heart of his own creation? At the climax of this intense dissection of the creative impulse Menzies and David 'see' Anna in the room. She is arranging flowers in a vase. She appears not as a ghost, but a reality created by Menzies' strength of will, a phenomena known throughout Gaelic culture as 'second sight'. David passes out.
David wakes with the effects of a hangover in Anna's painting room and comes face to face with her sculpture of Menzies. David makes his way back to the hotel. Passing a small inland loch he spies the Major and Lachlan aboard a dangerously rocking rowing boat having a stand up argument. Their feud is continuing.
Back at the hotel David runs into Catherine, who is keen to know how he got on with Menzies. There is tension between them. David finds Catherine is very protective of Menzies, and is keen to discover how friendly they are. Catherine is coy. David scores a point when he discovers that she doesn't know about the story, "The Cliffs".
Later the Major quizzes David on his interview with Menzies, and this time it’s David’s turn to be reticent. However he does learn from the Major that Catherine is a student at Glasgow University - just like Anna used to be. The Major teases David for his lack of anthropological insight and wants to know where Menzies gets his drink. When David isn't forthcoming the Major accuses him of going native. The local estate agent, Maclean has a quiet word with the landlord, Sam, from which David gathers that Menzies has money trouble.
The next day while out walking David again spies the gypsies carrying girders on a cart. Maclean driving past offers David a lift to the local fishing harbour. As they talk David hatches the idea to pay Menzies' rent. At Maclean's office, David soon realises that it doesn't suit Maclean to have Menzies rent paid. Maclean is so obstructive that David accuses the estate agent of being more interested in evicting Menzies. This hits the nail on the head. David is enraged and accuses the stunned Maclean of being a Wrecker.
But it's not all bad news. Catherine is paying her own family’s rent in the adjacent office and has overheard his row with Maclean. She catches up with David fuming over the harbour wall that his suspicions are right. Maclean wants Menzies out so he can sell the house. David has resolved to help Menzies in any way he can. Catherine is touched by his concern and compassion and also agrees to help the cause. David reels away from their meeting even more hopelessly smitten by Catherine - almost to the point where he forgets about Menzies.
Back at the hotel he confides his feelings to Alan Townbee in a letter. He confesses he's fallen in love. He writes that he's been opened up to a completely new world, but then claims it's not a new world at all only the old one with the blinkers of rationality taken off. He refers to the experiment which Helen and Davies had shown him back in London - which we now see again - and he claims that Menzies can see through the barriers of everyday existence and into what he calls "the vaults of space". As evidence he cites 'seeing' Anna the night before, "Through Menzies' will, she was with us. He made her live again".
This is all very well, but it doesn't cut any mustard with the Major, who has also heard about David, as he calls it, interfering in Menzies' affairs. Over dinner he warns David to keep a perspective and a sense of objectivity. The Major is in his darkest mood yet, and he wanders off into the night to summon up Lachlan for a fishing trip on the morrow. Sam the landlord reveals the Major's past. He was a diplomat in the East, but was recalled. Some said it was to do with a woman, but others say the Foreign Office was more concerned with the oil.
The next day, David's world caves in. Out walking again, he spies Menzies and Catherine on the beach. They appear to be embracing. David is devastated. He feels a fool, deceived, and heartbroken. He commandeers a stray donkey to ride back to the hotel. The donkey has other ideas and tips him into a dell. David tumbles down a bank and lands on his back looking up at the donkey, who stares contemptuously. Now David is aware he's not alone. An old woman emerges from a sagging gypsy tent. Behind her stands the donkey cart loaded with girders. The woman withdraws and David confides to the donkey that he's returning to London and his warm bed.
But back at the hotel, there's pandemonium - the Major is missing, last seen on Loch Dubh. Sam tells David that apparently after the Major and Lachlan had another of their famous rows Lachlan stalked off. Later thinking better of it, he returned to the loch to discover the boat adrift and no sign of the Major. The Widow is inconsolable, and the ghillies are getting a search party together. Their haphazard and almost celebratory demeanour contrasts with the Major’s English compatriots, Brown and Sneddon who are also tooling up to trawl the loch. The feeling amongst the English guests is that Lachlan has done away with the Major, but David leaps to Lachlan's defence.
The search party arrive at the loch without any real clue as to what to do. Some favour leaving the scene of the 'crime' to the police, while others start dredging the loch with inappropriate nets. The gillies throw stones at the boat which still lies adrift. Although there is tension in the air, the scene is played for comedy. Then Lachlan approaches morosely insisting on his innocence. Now Menzies and Catherine arrive. David watches them from afar. In his eyes it's confirmation of their togetherness. Sam calls off the search saying it's better left to the constabulary.As the hotel guests settle down to a sombre evening meal the Major's chair is conspicuously empty. The talk is sotto voce, broken only by the Widow's sighs. But suddenly a heavy tread sounds from without and the door is flung open to reveal the Major dressed for dinner. The Widow almost faints with excitement, a maid drops her tray in shock and the Major's joy is complete. He has everyone's full attention. His explanation of the afternoon's event is very condemning of Lachlan, who the Major claims had left him in the lurch. David and Sam indicate in a glance they both know it's a tissue of lies.
Later, David armed with a bottle of whisky goes to the Major's room and accuses him of setting up his 'disappearance' to cause Lachlan maximum discomfort. The Major doesn't admit it, but David is right. The light fades as before and the Major lights some candles and the conversation turns to Menzies. The Major is fascinated by the composer, but refutes everything he stands for. He claims Menzies' search is a waste of time; that there is nothing beyond what he calls 'the black wall' of death. But David insists that Menzies is right, there is another landscape, another universe behind the one we can see. As the drink flows the Major and David trade insults. The Major tells him that Catherine's used him, and David retorts by claiming that there's nothing left for the Major except to play endless childish games with Lachlan.
Asleep, David dreams about the Major cowering within a stockade of hundreds of candles on top of a towering but slender sea stack. As the camera rises further it passes through the orbits of planet like spheres spinning furiously round the stack. The image represents the insignificant Major attempting to shut out the universe and the very atoms in its elements.
Suddenly smoke obscures the image and there is the sound of shouting - David wakes suddenly. His room is full of smoke. He sits up in alarm and crashes his head on the wall. The Major’s candles have done their worst. His room has caught alight and is a fiery belching hell. David emerges into the corridor and discovers a drunken Lachlan with the ghillies quenching the flames with the hotel's ancient hosepipe. They take the opportunity to give the Major a thorough dousing. The other guests alarmed by the commotion and fearing the fire attempt to leave the hotel. Lachlan turns the hose on them dislodging the Widow's false teeth and creating mayhem. The guests are outraged.
Order is restored by the combined efforts of Sam, David and Catherine. Lachlan and the gillies are sent home. Catherine offers to tend the cut on David's head. There follows a brief scene in which Catherine aware of David's changed mood asks him why he's sulking. David claims in a double edged way that he's hurt. The point is that now Lachlan's got his own back on the Major and Catherine’s told Douglas about the rent, David's job is done. He's leaving. Catherine asks him not to, but David's disenchantment is complete. Catherine watches him return to his room still not understanding his mood.
The following morning, David presents himself at reception to settle his bill. Sam is sorry he's leaving, there's still work to do on Menzies. He fears the composer will go the same way as his wife unless somebody - pointedly - is able to pull him back into the community. Not only that, after last night's display the English guests are out for Lachlan's head - he needs all the support he can get. Catherine appears, to add her voice to David staying.
A 'court' has been set up in the bar. On the bench, the English anglers - Sneddon, Brown and another English guest, Lockworth, a lawyer, officiates. In the dock, are the ghillies amusing themselves by playing cards, and a very, very hungover Lachlan. Sam takes the floor and in lugubrious Charles Laughton style states the case for the defence. Lockworth, who is intent on going fishing with Dan Macllellan drives a path between the guests angling for blood, the need for justice and Sam's convoluted but humourous summing up. David takes his place on the bench and whispers a solution to Lockworth. To Brown and Sneddon's horror, Lockworth announces that Lachlan is to be rewarded by large double whiskies from all concerned. Brown and Sneddon only realise the wisdom of this 'punishment' when they see Lachlan's face turn a ghastly green at a trayfull of malts. Catherine mouths a grateful 'thank you' to David, and Sam books him a table for dinner. David is staying.
David rows out in a boat between the cliffs and the sea stack. He waves at Dan and Lockworth lobster fishing. As he drifts past the cliffs he is fascinated to discover the cave where Menzies struggled with the cask. He pulls in to investigate. Inside the cave David is amazed to discover a whisky cask lodged above the high water mark.
Suddenly something moves behind him and he turns to see the silhouetted figure of Menzies in the cave's mouth. David is embarrassed to be caught like this and apologises for intruding in Menzies’ affairs. Menzies in a lighter mood offers him a drink. David wise to the last time Menzies made him this kind of offer accepts and drinks more warily. David tells him everyone was interested to know where Menzies got the drink. This provokes a flashback to Menzies hauling the cask ashore, which took place shortly after Anna's death. The cask was part of the debris from the shipwreck.
As we see Menzies' struggle with the cask, he explains that death produces an incredible energy. Rescuing the cask in the cold and wet reduced Menzies to the bare essentials of his existence, drove him back to a primeval state, in which his senses took command. He became so wet, cold and exhausted that he felt an integral part of his surroundings. At one with the cave and the rocks. This generated in him a glow of thin fine delight. He felt he'd found the road to finding Anna.
Explanation complete, Menzies stares towards the cave's mouth. David follows his gaze to see a further 'second sight' of Anna. She stands in the entrance to the cave, her hair in natural disorder. Behind her the sun streams through the spray of crashing breakers. This time David isn't afraid. His mind is opening to the mysteries of the universe - though it is on earth that there are matters he still needs to get straight.
Menzies leading, he and David climb the cliff. For David it’s a terrifying and perilous experience. At the top they find Catherine. David is surprised. Menzies leaves them to each other and strides briskly away.
What follows is a reconciliation scene between David and Catherine. She tells him that she is very fond of Menzies, but it will always be Menzies and Anna. She'd loved them both. She'd gone to see him and they'd gone to the beach, but 'things had fallen away between them'. David realises he's misinterpreted what he'd seen. Hidden from sight beside the ruined chapel Menzies still pulls the strings. He plays Land of Hearts Desire on the flute. David invites Catherine to dance. They do so with ever increasing joy and exuberance. Suddenly Catherine breaks away. She must go. David hands her a sprig of heather. Catherine kisses him and runs off. David collapses back into the heather. Menzies looks down on the scene smiling.
Back at the hotel David, full of the joys of love, discovers Sam showing an insurance assessor the damage following the fire and the deluge. The conversation between Sam and the assessor, Swithin, brings out a comedic battle of wits between the wily Highlander and the sceptical bureaucrat. David helps Sam’s case by praising the efforts of the hotel staff without whom the hotel would have burnt to cinders. Furthermore, he adds, his room needs attention. Sam is delighted and they go up to David's room. While Sam and Swithin discuss the cost repainting the blood smeared wall - caused when David woke in alarm on the night of the fire and smashed his head - David is transfixed by the sight of a sprig of heather sticking out of a glass, and now augmented by a single flower. Clear evidence of Catherine's affection.
As Sam and Swithin argue to and fro about wallpaper and blood being thicker than water, David breathlessly catches up with Catherine on the stairs and they make a date to meet at the ruined chapel at lunchtime the next day. David can barely wait and finds it difficult to contain himself while the Major and the guests discuss what wallpaper they'd prefer in their rooms. The Major who is trying to redeem himself after the disaster of the fire is swept aside by the women, who take over the pattern book. Lockworth and Dan invite David for some deep sea lobster fishing, but David declines. He has other fish to fry. Lockworth and Dan can guess who.
David and Catherine finally meet at the ruined chapel. When David tells her he's 'seen' Anna, Catherine flirtatiously accuses David of being in love with Anna - she adds that some say she and Anna are on the same path. They're so passionately involved with each other they fail to see the increasingly ominous sky above them.
By the time Menzies runs through the grass towards the ruin in a fearful reprise of the night Anna died, the sky is in full storm. He cries an alarm to David and Anna, sleeping together in the heather after their first love making that there's a boat in trouble. It turns out to be Dan and Lockworth. They're unable to negotiate the sea stack through the swelling waves and are in desperate danger.
Menzies takes the initiative and in the gathering storm climbs down the cliff. The ghillies arrive with the hotel breakdown truck and prepare the winch. Amidst the huge breakers Menzies catches a rope thrown from Dan and winds it round a large rock. Menzies succeeds in holding the boat, but Dan and Lockworth are emptied out into the sea. Watched from the cliff top by a fearful Mrs Macllellan and the Dalaskir community Menzies manages to clamber out and rescue Lockworth's floating figure. Next he wades out to Dan and pulls him to the shore in a struggle which recalls his fight with the cask.
Using the winch Dan and Lockworth are hauled to safety, but not before Menzies effects a dramatic release of the rope from half way up the cliff where it has snagged whilst Dan is being winched up. Although Menzies is the hero of the hour he silently leaves the scene and returns to the White House alone.
Later in the bar David is deputed by Sam to call on Menzies and offered a bottle of whisky to take as a restorative for him. He agrees, and asks the Major if he'd be interested in coming to. They spar as they did from the beginning. David chides the Major telling him he understands Menzies more than he will admit. But the Major won't be shifted. He's stuck in his trench. And when Lachlan arrives and apologises to the Widow for the incident with the hose, the Widow graciously declares she knows he wasn't aiming at her, the Major is ready to blow his stack. He does so silently when Lachlan offers to buy the Widow a drink and she accepts.
As David approaches Menzies house through the stormy night, he slips and Sam's bottle smashes. The sound of splintering glass seems to spark off the theme of Menzies' symphony, distracting David from the lost whisky. He listens as the music slips in and out of the wind ranging and raging through space. Menzies is playing the piano. The rescue has released Menzies' creativity and he's back to the symphony. Above moonlight shifts through the racing skies.
The same skies race above the hotel outhouse where the Major cranks the generator handle. Halted by an unseen force, he turns to open the door and shivers. Later, the Major is discovered in a drunken sleep, an empty bottle lolling in his lap.
On the shore waves and spume swill around the wreck of the trawler.
We've come to the final exchange between Menzies and David at the White House. But this time there's a sense that David is catching up with Menzies. The pupil is able to talk - though perhaps not yet on equal terms with the master - but certainly on the same level. David says that Menzies took a chance climbing down the cliff and rescuing Dan and Lockworth. Menzies counters that probability makes the world go round. But atoms the very stuff we're made of, know exactly how the universe is arranged. David recalls the 'double slit experiment'. Things are making more sense to him now. Atoms communicate, and understanding how is to discover the mind of God. This is the other world Menzies is trying to penetrate - to find Anna.
Menzies admits it is his guilt that is at the heart of his symphony – guilt at his affair that led to Anna losing her baby in London. David tells him the music is Menzies' answer to the Wrecker. The light against the dark. The music is all Anna wanted. Through the music Menzies and Anna had survived. What he must do now is finish the symphony. Menzies goes back to work. David visits the room where Anna died - he 'sees' the moment of her death, an experience which Menzies describes provoked in him 'an immense otherness . . . a grasp of a much bigger and more staggering dimension than I could ever have imagined'.
It is perhaps an experience beyond description in words, but David understands it through the music, he heard it against the storm. Menzies hasn't beaten the Wrecker, but he's broken through, he's beyond his reach. The startling visuals during this sequence begin by plunging deep into Anna's eye and invoke the huge dimension of the universe and the galaxy. They cast back to the cave paintings and man's early struggles to represent himself and his place in the scheme of things.
David and Menzies are discovered at the ruined chapel - the fountain of the idea of "the other landscape". While Menzies is silhouetted in the arched doorway David sits at the base of the rowan tree. This image time lapses through to dawn. As the shafts of early sunlight pierce through the white house window Menzies plays the last bars of his symphony. Released at last Menzies proposes climbing down the cliff again to get a drop from the whisky cask for Dan to commiserate with him the loss of his boat. David protests, but Menzies is insistent and begins the descent. David watches heart in mouth as Menzies slips, but then manages to retain a hold.
Back at the house his dog senses that Menzies is in danger and knocks over a lamp in his race to reach his master. In the end it's too late for both of them. Menzies weary after both the rescue and the culmination of his quest loses his grip and falls to his death. The dog overshoots the cliff edge and plummets after Menzies in a scene from the dogs own POV as it hurtles onto the rocks beside its master.
David stares down at the dead bodies. His attention is momentarily distracted by a figure running along the foreshore. He 'sees' Anna splashing through the surf towards Menzies. In fact it's Catherine. David and Catherine embrace beside Menzies' body, the score of the symphony safe in David's hand. The whisky cask is carried out to sea on the retreating tide.
The White House is ablaze. David’s copy of The Cliffs is burnt to ashes. The completed symphony is heard playing above the inferno. Meanwhile as the fire reaches Anna's sculpture, the imperishable clay image of Menzies' face stares out through the flames.
A postscript. Anna's gravestone is now superscribed, "and Douglas Menzies". A heavily pregnant Catherine lays a bunch of flowers on the twin graves. Behind her stands David. As they walk slowly away the camera rises high up above the graveyard, eventually revealing the improbable sight of booted feet on a steel girder, seemingly suspended in space. The camera continues up to reveal workmen assembling the top of an electricity pylon. In the distance below Catherine and David walk along the cliff edge path as the camera swings out to reveal the sun glinting on the distant sea below.
To a powerful theme - Christus Vincit - a dramatic aerial track skims low over waves crashing on the rocks following the endless line of towering cliffs.
Inscription on black:
Though nothing of this other might be known, or nothing that could be conveyed, yet equal to it, and indeed in some mysterious way going beyond it, was the sheer wonder of man's being on its quest. For of that now I had no doubt.
Neil Gunn, 1954