Stories of estranged brothers. Stories of prodigal sons returning home. Stories of emotionally abusive fathers, gone but regrettably not forgotten. These stories are not exactly breaking new ground in our cinematic landscape. But when it’s the feature directing debut of one of our most cherished acting elder statemen, and he also stars in the film, and he’s collaborating with two other Scottish acting treasures, then maybe it’s worth sitting up and taking notice.

That’s the case with Glenrothan, the directing debut of Succession alum Brian Cox, who once helmed an episode of the TV show Oz but has never yet sat in the director’s chair for a feature. His directing instincts may not be as good as his acting instincts – there a few moments of wobbly technique – but with overall instincts as good as Cox’s, we’d be wise to pay attention. And Cox largely rewards us for that decision.

Alan Cumming plays the prodigal son in question, Donal Nairn, who left the Scottish highlands 40 years ago and never looked back. His mother told him never to dwell in the past, before she passed, and that’s what he did when he moved to America. The man who tormented her all their married life, and then started doing the same to their sons, never gave him a reason to return.

Now his older brother Sandy (Cox), with whom he had a falling out after their mother’s death, is himself sick, and has pleaded with Donal to pay a visit to the homeland. It’s something Donal’s daughter Amy (Alexandra Shipp) and granddaughter Sasha (Alexandra Wilkie) have been doing annually for years, but Donal could never bring himself to make the same gesture.

Now makes a good time for that return to his native Glenrothan. A fire has gutted the jazz club Donal owns back in the states, where he plays piano with Amy singing. While insurance matters are getting settled and the club rebuilds, Donal no longer has an excuse to freeze out the Glenrothaners who still remember him, including Jess (Shirley Henderson), who was in love with him back then but was collateral damage in his impetuous decision to leave. There’s also the matter of what will happen to their whiskey distillery, in the family for two centuries, when Sandy is no longer with us, as Sandy has no children of his own.

Any wariness about overly familiar material is squelched pretty much immediately by the scenery. Just in terms of being photogenic, the Scottish highlands are a top five locale globally, and Cox has given them enough of a platform in Glenrothan for anyone in the viewing audience to put their hand up and volunteer to go run that distillery.

The film wouldn’t make it as a travelogue alone, and here’s where Cumming enters the picture. He’s had a career’s worth of character actor roles, but it takes smaller and more intimate projects like this to put him front and centre, and thereby get every bit of his skills up on the screen. Many of those roles have been of the bigger variety and made use of Cumming’s rubber face, such as the Spy Kids movies, so it’s really nice to see him appearing in a role that is not essentially comedic. Neither is it overly sober, as Cumming is good at mixing his bitterness with whimsy. We do feel the conflict in his breast as he looks out over the highlands while smoking a cigarette contemplatively.

Henderson is the other Scottish acting treasure referenced in the opening paragraph, and her scenes with Donal really show the weight of the years of resentment that must be tempered now by remnants of lingering hope. She’s key in establishing the flavour of this region, heading up a group of smaller supporting characters who all feel like the real McCoy.

Cox may at times be a bit too fixated on the Scottishness of the film. It’s unclear whether this is meant to be a running joke in David Ashton and Jeff Murphy’s script, but you could almost make a drinking game – appropriate in a movie about whiskey – for every time a character uses the word “wee.” From the moment Sandy tempts his long-lost brother with the two-word query “Wee toddy?” – proffering him a tea spiked with bourbon – there isn’t the passage of five minutes on screen without someone using the word “wee.” And it never has to do with going to the toilet.

The family stuff? It’ll resonate for the people in the right frame of mind or with the right life experiences to receive it. When a film relies on flashback to dramatise the baggage characters carry with them, there’s always a bit of a ceiling on how immediate it can feel. As we know there’s something simmering in Donal but we don’t know what it is until the movie is halfway over, there’s the potential to feel a bit let down by the reveal. But perhaps the nature of family dysfunction is that it rarely has a perfect moment that demonstrates just how toxic it is. Besides, the conflict is now as much about Donal’s decision to leave, and other questionable decisions that are also revealed, as it is about whether their father was a right bastard and whether Sandy did enough to stand up to him.

As Brian Cox is now 80, it isn’t particularly likely that he’s got a big directing career ahead of him. But if this was an itch he wanted to scratch, it’s more than clear he could have been doing it for a couple decades now and making more than passable fare. His own performance is not even essential to why Glenrothan works. He does get to shine in a few spots, but more than anything else, Glenrothan demonstrates his generosity to other actors, his trust in their ability to deliver. And they do.

 

Glenrothan opens today in Australian cinemas.