This film is a joy.
Its wider messages of rural decay are evident but its specific scenes are portraits of individuals, relationships, landscapes and history that are worthy of consideration independent of the bigger theme.
A yellow mobile library is allowed Big Picture time to cross a whole screensworth of green Welsh mountain. This beautiful scene alone is worth the watch. The library's aesthetic and romantic appeals hold hands with the utilitarian demands of its users who value and use this service.
Meeting points are charted and cherished - school, the fair, church, shops, sheepdog trials, tea.
Weather and the seasons frame but don't constrain the 'story'.
The past is present, maybe the future is not, but this film is about now and, though (I feel) elegiac, not morbid.
The unscripted (but deftly edited) humour (non-compliant sheep, frozen posted owls and mobile library health & safety, that would all do Coogan/Brydon/Gervais proud) adds both lightness and gravity to the mix.
The darkest picture in the film, a curtain flapping in a deserted farm house near the film's end recalls 'Time Passes' in Virginia Woolf's 'To The Lighthouse'; the message may not be hopeful, but this film finds Lily Briscoe's line.