The Guardians, French, set during the first world war among women working the land while their men are away fighting. It brought to mind a bit I've always remembered from the end of the film of Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie where he describes growing up in what he later came to realise was actually the final days of a way of life that hadn't really changed in a thousand years...."a world of silence; a world of hard work and necessary patience, of backs bent to the ground, hands massaging the crops, of waiting on weather and growth; of villages like ships in the empty landscapes and the long walking distances between them; of white narrow roads, rutted by hooves and cartwheels, innocent of oil or petrol, down which people passed rarely, and almost never for pleasure, and the horse was the fastest thing moving."
The Guardians brings that world to life, in slow, agricultural rhythms and muted colours, with long panoramic shots that simply record faces, twenty or thirty of them, and long, lingering scenes from pre-industrial life on the land: the toil, the toil, the toil. Staggering after the plough, flailing and binding and sifting and hauling, and bent double with a sickle alongside 30 others to harvest an ocean of wheat handful by scratchy handful. There is a story, and a genuinely moving one at that. But really it's all about a feel, a mood, and a way of life that lived a millenium and then, all of a sudden, was gone. Just wonderful.
On iPlayer at the moment, if it sounds like your sort of thing.