The Navigator is remarkable because of its absorbing story that links medieval fears and fortunes to our times , while confirming director Vincent Ward as an original talent. It is Cumbria 1348, the year of the Black Death. A young visionary tells his fellow miners that their community may survive the plague if they place a spire on a distant cathedral before dawn. So, from their own grim, snowbound Lake District, they dig down an old mine-shaft to the other side of the world, emerging in an Eastman-coloured present day Auckland,