I watched The Ballad of Wallis Island with admiration and a little envy. It’s a gentle, deceptively simple film written and directed by Tom Basden, who also stars as folk-rock singer Herb McGwyer (whose real name is Chris Pinner) summoned to a remote Welsh island by an eccentric millionaire fan. I know Tom a little, and have long admired his work as a sharp satirist and comic writer. This film is a departure: a quieter, more emotionally sincere note, though not without its wry wit.
Here’s what stayed with me, and what I think writers, teachers, and artists can take from it.
1. The Island Is the Story
The premise is irresistibly allegorical. Charles Heath (played with beautiful awkwardness by Tim Key) is a twice-lottery-winning recluse who lives alone on Wallis Island. He offers Herb and his former musical partner Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) half a million pounds to perform an exclusive reunion gig—for him alone.
That’s it. They travel by boat to the windswept island, grudgingly, cautiously, in need of money and unsure of what they’re walking into. And the island does what all good islands do in fiction: it strips everything away. Fame, vanity, image, distraction: all fall away, until what’s left is just the ache of human relationships, unresolved.
From The Tempest to The Magus, The Wicker Man to Castaway, Lord of the Flies to The Island of Adventure, islands in literature and film act as pressure cookers for the soul. Here, Wallis Island becomes a place of quiet reckoning. As someone currently writing a novel about Grace Darling—who lived much of her life on a remote Northumbrian archipelago—I found the setting hit a nerve. Isolation doesn’t just reveal truth. It demands it.
2. Carey Mulligan’s Nell Is the Heartbeat
Nell now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her new partner, sells homemade chutney, and clearly wants nothing to do with her musical past. She returns only for the money. Yet the film’s most powerful moments occur when she and Herb (Chris) are left alone to talk—really talk—about the collapse of their band, their romance, and the mutual betrayals they’re still not sure how to name.
Carey Mulligan is, unsurprisingly, superb. When she’s given space, the film hums with tension and sadness. Her performance anchors the emotional realism. She doesn’t get enough screen time, but when she does, the stillness is electric.
There’s healing here—but not in reunion. In honesty. In letting go.
3. Writers, Don’t Be Afraid to Get Surreal
This is where I wanted more.
Charles is a fascinating character: an obsessive fan, grieving the death of his wife, Marie. He’s part stalker, part saviour, part cipher. But I couldn’t help wishing he’d been just that bit creepier. A little more ambiguous. Stranger.
The setup invites it: a man alone on an island summons two musicians to perform for him—and maybe absolve him. It flirts with John Fowles’s The Magus, but never fully plunges in. We don’t get hallucinations, strange rituals, surreal reversals of time or truth. We get awkwardness, kindness, confusion. All lovely. But part of me longed for a darker note, a wilder crescendo.
There’s a version of this story that could go full Nicholas Roeg or early Charlie Kaufman. Where the past bleeds into the present. Where the island speaks. Where songs haunt people. It doesn’t have to be grotesque—but I would encourage writers: don’t be afraid to push beyond realism. The tools of surrealism, when used with purpose, can reach deeper than naturalism ever could.
4. Fame Is a Costume You Forget to Take Off
Basden plays Chris Pinner with weary detachment: a man who used to be somebody, now drifting. The name Herb McGwyer, once his invented, marketable folk persona, has come to eclipse the real him. He doesn’t quite know where Chris ends and Herb begins.
The film gently but clearly critiques fame culture, especially in its post-peak form. There’s a beautiful scene where Chris plays a stripped-down gig on a stony beach to just two people. It’s clumsy. But it’s real. The film suggests that meaning doesn’t come from crowds or money or image. It comes from connection.
As someone who’s spent decades balancing public and private roles—as a writer, teacher, parent—I felt that deeply. We forget how much our self-image is curated. And how often it traps us.
5. There’s a Kind of Healing That’s Just… Acceptance
I didn’t fully buy the final emotional climax. It felt a little too neat. But I did believe in the quiet healing the film offers: the kind that comes not from resolution, but from surrender. To what is. To what can’t be fixed. To the limitations of other people.
This is what stayed with me: the mundane, healing rhythm of it. No one gets what they want. But everyone gets a little closer to honesty. Charles stays alone. Nell returns to Oregon. Chris leaves the island not reborn, but reminded of what music can be. Something true. Something shared.
The best art often leaves us with questions, not answers. The Ballad of Wallis Island did that. It reminded me—again—that authenticity is rarely loud, that white teeth and perfect album covers are illusions, and that life is found in quiet songs, homemade chutney, and the spaces in between.
6. I Found My Own Interior Island
The film stayed with me. It made me think about the islands we all carry inside us. The Inner Islands. The ones we can visit when we need to find what we’ve lost.
This poem came out of that feeling. It’s an allegory inspired by the film, but also by my own inner journeys. A ballad not of Wallis—but of the landscapes we sail to when something within us calls.
The Ballad of the Interior Island
Come sail with me to the Interior Isle,
Beyond the noise, beyond the guile,
Where broken artists seek the shore,
And lovers lost return once more.
No map will chart this drifting land,
It lies not far, yet far from hand,
It waits inside, in hush, in flame,
A place with neither pride nor name.
There on the beach of salted doubt,
You’ll meet the self you cast far out;
The song unsung, the grief unwept,
The promises your silence kept.
A Magus waits, a conjured guide,
With winking eye and arms spread wide;
He shows you rooms you locked for years,
And teaches you to hear your fears.
The Lost One walks a little ahead,
In eyes the words you never said;
You quarrel, cry, then sit, then stand:
You do not touch, but understand.
The Artist wakes with aching hands,
And scrawls strange glyphs in silver sand,
No fame, no crowd, no stage, no gloss,
Just echoes whispered through the moss.
The Magician calls you one last time,
You climb the hill, you speak in rhyme:
You rest beneath a twisted tree,
And hum a song you used to be.
Then, quietly, the tide comes in,
It lifts your feet, it strokes your skin;
You leave the Isle, not whole, not new,
But with a self more known, more true.
So when the world grows loud and hard,
When joy feels fake and love feels charred,
Step inwards, there’s a boat, a breeze:
The Island waits beneath the seas.
7. A Creative Visualisation: Visiting Your Own Island
This final lesson is not from the film directly, but from the journey it triggered. After watching, I found myself imagining my own Interior Island. So here’s a prompt—a practice—for anyone who might need it.
Sit quietly. Breathe. Close your eyes.
Now imagine you are on a boat. It’s dusk. The sea is calm. Ahead is a small island, low and dark and wooded. You arrive. Step ashore.
What do you see? Who meets you there?
The self you’ve forgotten? A long-lost love?
A figure who seems familiar but can’t be named?
Let yourself wander. Let a story unfold.
Rest beneath the twisted tree. Speak aloud a line of truth.
When you leave, take nothing with you—except the feeling of having seen yourself more clearly.
Return whenever you need to.
The Island is always there.