The Golden Spurtle

For 30 years the village of Carrbridge has hosted an international competition. For three decades gladiators have gathered from across the globe to do battle in the mightiest of arenas, its village hall. For potentially hundreds of competitors, or at least a few dozen with plenty of repeat visitors, their form has been scrutinised, their methods judged, their efforts weighed. Their prize a golden trophy, inset with a single subtle jewel. The shape of their struggle?

Porridge.

A spurtle is a traditional Scottish stirring stick. There's some speculation as to what makes it better than a spoon for the purpose, and it might be its ability to get into the corners of a pot. Turned on a lathe, including by the competition's own chief, the hint of a thistle in its shape and its rotational symmetry make it as distinct a culinary artefact as the wok or the balti. The Golden Spurtle is awarded to the winner of the annual international porridge making competition, a celebration of a national dish.

It's that which makes The Golden Spurtle most interesting, a sense of place, community. The railway runs through Carrbridge, the river too. It's crossings over that which give the place its name, otherwise perhaps a somewhat unremarked stop between Glasgow and Edinburgh and Inverness. It's on the map for a variety of reasons, but it's livestreamed via satellite for one.

Porridge.

Constantine Costi's film is charming, allowing its subjects to speak for themselves and directly to camera. Their stories are briefly woven through the events of the 2023 competition and like the Carrbridge Tapestry that hangs in the village hall what we see might reel on for longer but here is cut off. We see contestants, committees, the competitors at home and at work. The film starts with a land acknowledgement as Costi and much of his crew, as well as one of the oaty athletes are Australian. That sense of seeing as others see us is thread that runs through the film, an outside perspective reinforced by shots through windows, doors, and repeatedly the serving hatches some of us call 'bowly holes'.

There's room for meditations on all sorts of things, from what competition means to any given individual to the notion of nations. Though James Alcock has done heroic work to edit together as many disparate strands at times his efforts and Costi's as writer and director are undercut by heavy-handed use of Simon Bruckard's score. At times it seems the music is attempting to cue emotional response rather than reflect it, but that is perhaps me, like some of the porridge, being a little salty. The room for those meditations is in part because the film has found its subject but time and distance have allowed it time to settle and cool. The skin of porridge has some controversy attached, but not digging past it leaves us with a surface view.

There's a scale model of the village hall, one where we get a run through of events with the aid of pieces from chess sets. I spotted The Fellowship Of The Ring and a pupil from Hogwarts and there's definitely something in the sets of synechdoche from these small soldiers. Traditions start somewhere, identity too, and in making replicas of things that never existed we start to arrive at something real. Middle Earth and Middle England and the boarding school story hark back to a shared imagined past, and ultimately these and other fictions bind us as surely as borders.

The Golden Spurtle does a little bit of stirring, but it's a gentle course. There's little to nothing that boils over, no resentment simmering, and it's a gentle welcome that's appropriate for one of the first films at the 78th Edinburgh International Film Festival. That tone and consistency does mean that as pleasant as it is it remains a little bland, maybe even inconsequential. Unlike the dish it depicts it's not massively fulfilling, so while audiences are likely to be left wanting a little more they'll likely be looking somewhere else.

Reviewed on: 17 Aug 2025