This ensures things start out hostile but as time passes they form a working relationship and begin to share tales of their life with each other.
When the tender fails to arrive and relieve them at the appointed time things begin to unravel.
Um.
This is filled with filthy work in terrible conditions, shit, masturbation, drunkenness, pornographic scrimshaw, rot, sinister gulls, flatulence and an endlessly honking foghorn.
Then the hallucinations start. Time has no meaning. The two men fight, dance, argue, cuddle, share secrets, lie etc etc.
Of course there's a mermaid. It wouldn't be a salty tale of weirdness without a mermaid. Of course there will be sex with the mermaid. Also tentacles.
The descent into madness is compelling while also looking exactly like when a comedy programme takes the piss out of pretentious arty cinema. It's even shot in a stupid aspect ratio to go with the black and white. So it looks amazing and full of self important bullshit at the same time.
It is both great and awful. I wanted it to end about halfway in but I didn't want to switch it off.
Don't bother 5/10. As good as the performances are it's also utterly empty of any actual content or meaning. It's like one of those AI generated pictures that have been doing the rounds this week. It looks like the thing it says it is but also absolutely isn't.