The Ballad of Wallis Island Review - A quaint, heart swelling dramedy

Chase Gifford
Jul 2
6 min read

“Sorrow makes us all children again – destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Simplicity in cinema can often be the easiest route to the greatest depths of the human experience. And I think part of growing up is learning that grief and humor are not necessarily opposing concepts. The obvious relation is laughter alleviating pain if only for brief moments of time. It can be a deep breath in a time of feeling like all you can do is hold your breath. But more than this I think humor can act as a window to expose the vulnerabilities we have with those we want to open up to but feel a kind of hesitation. There is some truth in all fiction. Whether it’s a joke or a completely fabricated story, there is always a crumb of truth to it. To laugh during times of great loss can be the small glimpse that those around us need to see to find our rawest emotions. It is the sad clown putting on a brave face for the rest of us.

One of my favorite displays of loneliness is The End of the Tour. Directed by James Ponsoldt, starring Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg. Segel plays real-life author David Foster Wallace at the end of his book tour when a Rolling Stone journalist joins him for a multi-day interview in congruence with his book release. During these five days it’s a clarifying conversation about what it means to be human with all the foibles and secrets that come with being alive. It’s about an aspiring author idolizing a man who practically resents his position of notoriety. They both view each other with confusion as to why the other could possibly not be content with where they are in life. Despite their vast differences, odd personalities and confrontational deviations they still find one another in a similar place of loneliness. There is a beauty in it, to feel so isolated only to realize you are not alone despite the path they took to reach you and how significantly different it was from your path. All of this self-discovery in what amounts to a ninety-minute conversation. Simple. Powerful.

These two forms of sadness, grief from loss and immense loneliness are prevalent themes in The Ballad of Wallis Island. The focal characters are two men so incredibly different finding one another in the darkness of regret, in the cold of loneliness and the endlessness of grief. But it often falls under the guise of comedy. At its surface it feels like a typical Odd Couple cliche. One man is a fan of a musical artist and the other is the artist himself. One is highly isolated, literally living on a tiny island with little to no human contact short of the small, local shopkeeper. He has his eccentricities as a result. Kind hearted but odd. His musical idol is a man by the name of Herb McGwyer, one half of a former folk duo known as McGwyer Mortimer. Herb has a bit of a self-inflated ego, nothing egregious but enough to leave a slight aroma of arrogance in the room after he’s left.

Herb is at a crossroads with his career, less than enthusiastic about the state of his solo efforts. He doesn’t feel the authenticity in any of it anymore. Not since the days of McGwyer Mortimer. Charles, folk music enthusiast and tiny island inhabitant, has a lot of time on his hands, as well as a small fortune with which he mostly has no need for. So rather than waste it on materialistic things, having traveled around the world as a younger man, his only desire now is to reunite his favorite folk duo for a private performance on his isolated but undeniably gorgeous beach front property. What Chris doesn’t fully understand is the complexity of Herb’s relationship with his former singing partner and ex-lover, Nell Mortimer. Well Nell has just arrived and Herb didn’t know, opening up old wounds but also reconnecting Herb to his love of music that’s been missing for years now.

It doesn’t take long for Herb after his arrival to realize how alone Chris truly is. Chris has a tendency to never, and I mean never, stop talking. He’s kind, well-intentioned and wholly accommodating but in moments where silence is best, where a quiet presence is most needed, there’s Chris yammering endlessly. He seems nervous, oddly meandering and incessantly making his guests, if only slightly, uncomfortable. His isolation is an overwhelming influence on his behavior. But at times you can see a break in his demeanor, as if to suggest it might be a facade. He’s hiding something and it has to do with McGwyer Mortimer. Clues in his behavior, in his long, listless stares toward the horizon, his brief cracks in the everlasting smile on his soft, innocent face point at some kind of loss. He’s missing something, or more likely, someone.

Although there are some moments of mudslinging between them, Nell and Herb find that connection that once bonded them and guided the early days of their musical careers. What doesn’t help is Herb’s old feelings coming to the surface even with Nell’s husband by her side. Nice enough, Michael is well aware of Herb and what he’s missing without Nell in his life. He’s nice enough, but a fool he is not. As the day of the performance comes closer, so too does the past with all its nostalgic blindness and fantastical memory distortion that allows two former lovers to momentarily forget why they left all of it behind. But reality has a way of bringing all of it to the forefront of our minds and in this case, it has its unfortunate results that jeopardize the likelihood of their reunited performance.

Right before it all falls apart, Herb and Nell discover Chris’ true intentions. While he does in fact love their music, they learn his deceased wife was the bigger folk lover. On the day they are to have their performance is the anniversary of his wife’s death and to celebrate her memory, he invited her favorite folk duo to perform one last time. But like I said, reality has a way of interfering with even our best laid plans.

This movie is quite funny. It has many moments of uncomfortable exchanges between a man who is unendingly optimistic and a pessimistic musician who is regretting every moment he agrees to stay on this island with a man he perceives as nothing but a hapless, ignorant loner with too much time and money at his disposal. They are polar opposites of one another but as time goes on, may just be the very thing the other needs to find something, a missing puzzle piece or a push to move forward in life; in several contexts as infinitesimal as learning why you would put a smartphone in a bag of rice to something as monumental as finding your next chapter in life, whether it will be a story of love or a change in career.

Tim Key is Chris. He is a seemingly foolish but likeable character, a negligible kind of blissful ignorance. He is fragile, determined to persevere but unable to fully conceal his heartache. Key portrays these small moments brilliantly, with a devastating kind of heart wrenching pain that makes you weep and want to hug him if only to comfort him for a moment. He is wonderfully unaware of himself which only adds to his effervescent personality. He is awkwardly hilarious, in a dad joke sort of way which only endears himself to his visitors even more, with the exception of maybe Herb, at least at first.

Tom Basden is Herb and plays the pessimistic, anguished artist perfectly. He bounces off of Chris like a boulder and a mountain, almost violently but contained within Herb’s constant disdain for this whole occasion. Chris very much included. Carey Mulligan is brief here but as Nell she effortlessly brings with her a tenderness but also maybe a bit of naivety that whatever her and Herb once had is no longer an issue. You can see their unfortunate encounters most powerfully through the prying gaze of Chris who can’t fathom why they simply can’t get along.

He never says anything but when you learn of his loss you can see his almost kind of envy for Nell and Herb’s opportunity to come together again whereas Chris of course cannot reconnect with his wife despite his unspoken earnestness to do exactly that. He wants his wife back and to see these two he perceives as soulmates not finding a mutual appreciation for one another is confounding to Chris. It shouldn’t be this difficult but alas, reality has set in and their nostalgia has faded away.

This is a wonderfully small, contained story of human connection and past transgressions. The performances are authentic, heartbreaking at times but always truthful whether it’s the funnier side of things or deep in a chasm of regret or unbearable loss. Much like real life, its conclusion may not fully close the wound it creates but there is a catharsis there if you embrace it for what it is and not what you hoped it would be. It’s a simple example of humanity being unremarkable but no less human. In all of our shortcomings and triumphs, we are the human experience as it carries on whether we want it to or not.