Critics reviews

[An] assured feature debut... [where] tensions rise, until eventually the barriers break and the emotions – chiefly despair and a deep-flowing love – come flooding. [The film's] precisely and powerfully modulated climax lets the presence of talented new British filmmaker Dickson Leach be fully felt.

The slight flirtation with melodrama towards the climax may not be for everyone, but the yearning for understanding that lies at the heart of this film is something anyone can relate to, wherever they live.

There is such life and compassion in every frame that the film’s tune turns to a song of love. Plaudits to Kendrick and Troughton for playing these strained family ties with such sincerity and grace. As for Dickson Leach... with this tremendous first feature, her moment has finally arrived.

It’s a magnetic performance from Kendrick, at once lost and angry, agonised and tender... You feel almost washed out by the end of [The Levelling], which at least brings a sliver of redemption. This is skilled, unrelenting film-making on a microbudget; Leach is a talent to watch.

A modestly scaled film, one largely dealing with a tragedy with unsentimental honesty, [which] manages to hit you like a ton of bricks with even the smallest moment of uplift... The Levelling almost comes across as something of a British answer to Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone.

[An] excellent debut feature... superbly shot and piercingly acted ... The Levelling seem like the kind of film in which all the disquieting mood setting and establishing shots seem to be leading up to some jump-scare that recedes over the horizon. What remains is scary enough... [The film] stays with you like a remembered dream.

You can feel the mud squelching under your feet as you watch Hope Dickson Leach’s impressive, if dour and dark, debut feature... The Levelling is nothing if not authentic in its depiction of the unrelenting grind of daily life on a working farm.

[Leach] has clearly reverse engineered every element of her tale, knowing how every frame and every gesture will impact on and feed into every other. Watching someone get all the small things right is an unalloyed joy to behold... We really, really can’t wait to see what she goes on to down the line.

[The Levelling is] delivered with admirable insight, control, and nuanced subtlety by all concerned. It stays in the mind long afterwards.

The Levelling is a thoroughly assured, immensely promising piece... Its vision of how the sexes talk to and rub up against one another has stayed with me, and its final watershed is very moving indeed. Even at times of turmoil and outright despair, hope - and Hope - persists.

Always emotionally volatile yet never histrionic, The Levelling is an impressive directorial debut written, directed and acted with poise and a commitment to authenticity. The film seems an ideal union of creator, material and star, and sensitively plays tribute to the real-life sufferers of the 2014 floods while interestingly calling into question the reliability of human memory.

Nanu Segal's photography and Sarah Finlay's production design help Dickson Leach achieve a stylistic economy and agricultural authenticity... Unflinching in its depiction of rural reality, [The Levelling] may be a dour drama, but it has been made with sincerity and an exceptional sense of place.