Prince Of Muck

There's an elegiac sweep to Cindy Jansen's documentary, which profiles the life of ageing laird of Muck, Lawrence MacEwen, gently exploring the challenges and tensions that his older age brings with it. The Dutch filmmaker falls into the rhythms of life on this tiny island, the smallest of Scotland's Small Isles at just 2.5 miles from east to west and with a population of about 30.

Chief among them, at least for much of his lifetime, is Lawrence, who is a long way removed from the image of 'landed' gentry that many would imagine, mainly captured here among his beloved cows. Jansen discreetly watches life tick by on the farm, which he and wife Jenny share with their son Colin and his family. While we see the day-to-day comings and goings, from cow wrangling and cold baths to drop-scone making on a hot plate, Lawrence opens up about his life and reads snippets from the family diaries, which date back to his father's time. There's a rhythm here, too, each beginning with a weather report, often breezy, before noting the key developments of the day, from the installation of the island's first telephone to family births and deaths.

Lawrence is fiercely connected, not just to his cows but the land. He recalls a childhood in which he and his siblings were the only kids on Muck, running about barefoot constantly - noting that he even climbed Ben Nevis shoeless. Although he is firm in his views of the island, the frailties of age are also evident, from the sheer effort needed to lift a bag of animal feed to his use of crutches to help him get about from time to time. These physical diminishments are in sharp contrast to his big and bearded presence in archive footage included from the likes of Weir's Way, which shows him in the full glow of youth.

Sadness lurks at the edge of the film, not just the grief of family loss but of a passing era that Lawrence is unwilling to let go. "We mustn't have sudden changes," he tells a reporter in the earlier footage but it seems even the gradual shifts are causing him problems. Colin never speaks directly to camera and is only glimpsed in middle-distance passing but the tensions between father and son are woven through the film. When his wife suggests the "constant arguing is quite hard", Laurence maintains that they are not "constantly arguing" because "we don't talk to each other that much", elsewhere an admission that he wishes his son "would be nicer to me" speaks volumes.

Jansen is attentive without being intrusive, allowing the shape of the shifting picture to emerge, with Jenny summing up the unspoken father and son battle with the observation, "They both want to be on top". There's poetry here - some of it read by Lawrence, some of it leaping from the landscape - but also a pragmatism that runs deep. Things may change but, whatever the family's frictions, the sight of a children scampering over the grassland remind us that some elements of heritage will always endure.