The Last Keeper (2024)
Director: Thomas Opre
With: Thomas Opre, Alex Jenkins, Mary Jenkins
Running time: 90 minutes
The Last Keeper is the latest documentary from social justice filmmaker Thomas Opre, whose previous film was Killing the Shepherd (2021), about the poaching problem in Zambia. In keeping with his long career in conservation, Opre’s new film centres on the conflict surrounding land use in Scotland.
After a horrific prologue showing the aftermath of a brutal deer culling, Opre begins the film with a quick history of Scotland, courtesy of YouTube historian and comedian Bruce Fummey, establishing how the current system of estates and land ownership came about. This is accompanied by a series of animated illustrations, adding a brief dash of colour and visual interest that’s sadly lacking in the rest of the film.
The rest of the documentary follows the same visual structure, alternating between various talking heads and stunning footage of the Scottish Highlands. Opre himself appears on screen (he looks a bit like an American Billy Connolly) at regular intervals, sometimes directly interviewing his talking heads and sometimes just cueing up the next segment, as with this summary of the film:
“Scotland today is in the midst of a battle over land use – on one side are the so-called conservation groups, politicians and climate activists, on the other landowners and the rural communities impacted by the policy decisions. At the crux of conflict are sporting estates, which generate income that fuels the rural economy through recreational hunting of deer, grouse and pheasants.”
To that end, Opre interviews a wide range of people and is careful to present both sides of the argument, though it’s fairly clear which side he favours. Indeed, he tips his hand a little bit with his relatively aggressive questioning of a member of the John Muir Trust, who are part of the group responsible for deer culling.
As the title suggests, the film is broadly focused on one Keeper (essentially a gamekeeper, tasked with taking care of the countryside and wildlife on a large sporting estate), Alex Jenkins, and it’s heartbreaking to learn, by the end of the film, that the pressures of the ongoing land war have essentially forced him out of the job. Both he and his wife Mary speak movingly about the job, and Opre pointedly includes a shocking statistic about a high number of suicides among Keepers and those who make their living off the land in general.
The main problem with the film is that although the occasional segment is interesting (most notably Doctor Catherine Barlow, who talks about the Golden Eagle Project in some detail), the majority of the talking head segments are rather dry and frequently a little dull. There’s a brief moment towards the end when it looks like the argument is about to get personal (someone names and shames the head of the John Muir Trust for killing deer at night), but that ends up going nowhere.
Crucially, it’s difficult to imagine the film appealing to anyone who doesn’t already have a vested interest in the Scottish Highlands. Still, the landscapes are undeniably beautiful and if the film ends up increasing the flow of tourism to the area, that can only be a good thing.
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