(2007) This fascinating documentary film of megalithic monuments - written and presented by Rupert Soskin, directed and produced by Michael Bott - is not about the Rolling Stones (though Rollingright Stones in Oxfordshire, a site of myth where men were turned to stone, inspired William Blake to compose his hymn, which became the words to Charles Hubert Hastings Parry's "Jerusalem") nor even about Stonehenge, except in passing.

Rather the film takes us on an entertaining, enlightening guided tour, beginning at Land's End in Cornwall and concluding in the Orkney Islands, to dozens of the tens of thousands of ancient stone-structured sites in the British Isles. Not an academic, Soskin, who admits to being an amateur enthusiast (with whom a trek would be an enthralling experience), wants to presents us with the Neolithic and Bronze Age sites and his personal insights toward understanding the bigger picture of these "mysterious places and the people who built them."

The camera provides spectacular views and vistas of the vales and hills into which these stone rows, long barrows, stone circles, cairns, cists, standing stones, intaglios (such as the Long Man of Wilmingham or Uffington White Horse), and much more are scattered, like fragments in a strange but stunning puzzle.

Speculating on both the mundane and mystical, Soskin commences our journey with a look at Ballowall Barrow, musing on its meaning and function some 5,000 years after its construction. What was the purpose of a stone donut at Men-an-Tol? Hard to say beyond conjecture the original purpose of prehistoric structures such as the more than 60 stone rows in Dartmoor or the enigmatic quadruple stone circle. Many of the sites are isolated and out of the way, hidden to all but the knowledgeable seeker.

We travel eastward to London and north to Woodhenge near Stonehenge (which isn't a true henge - the word itself referring to a lintel - because the traditional trench isn't where it should be), giving consideration to the huge complex of interrelated sites. At Silbury Hill, some 150 miles away from Stonehenge, the stones were quarried and somehow transported to the famous landmark. Why? For astrological alignments or meetings of the clans?

Employing a computer-generated reconstruction of the stone circle at Stanton Drew, Soskin offers his theory of an arena for bloodsports, similar to Rome's Coliseum, with the outer trench protecting the audience from the wild animals within.

Burials in cairns and cists, obviously, such as at Waylands Smithy, have been found; but were these places originally megalithic tombs or only later? After thousands of years and recycling of the sites for different uses, little remains to define the primary intentions of the builders.

We enter Wales to find the rocking stone inside a stone circle, a huge capstone with a legend that sleeping beneath its weight can make one a bard, and the Druid's Circle at Anglesey, where in 60 AD the druids made their final, fatal stand against the Roman army. Inside a tomb Soskin shows us his own favorite find: a fossilized tree trunk - wood representing life, stone representing death - into which the live tree's bark had been carved before petrified!

In Ireland a series of drill holes in stones are similar to others found in Dartmoor - calcareous clues to a shared but lost cultural heritage, lurking magically within enchanted landscapes. Who built Maeve's Cairn and why? Just imagine the labor-intensive task, the man-hours necessary of raising such a mound.

On to the Isle of Man with its Mull Circle and Devil's Elbow before returning to the English shore and inland to Derbyshire to admire Nine Ladies of Stanton Moor in the mists. How and why was a twenty-six-foot tall monolith raised at Rudston? What function did the long Curcuses serve (perhaps for athletic contests)?

After visiting the Longdale Axe Factories (its axe heads were famous and sought after throughout the isle) and Castlerigg, sitting within a natural cathedral, we stop in Cumbria to contemplate Long Meg (inscribed with circular patterns, possibly a map) and Her Daughters. These enormous, complex sites, which exist by the tens of thousands, do not fit into a picture of small communities inhabited by simple farming folk.

Crossing the border into Scotland, Soskin takes us to Cairnholy and then to see examples of the recumbent stone circles (found nowhere else) at Clava Cairns. On the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides our guide, on a night of a full eclipse of the moon, reveals to us Callanish, a "work of Neolithic wonder" - more science than religion with its tracing the movements of celestial events.

In the Orkney Islands at the Tomb of the Eagles, as Soskin contemplates a prehistoric polished button, he wonders aloud in an effort to evoke "lives of ancestors in our minds."

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

Patrick Ivers can be reached via e-mail at .