Black 47 (2018)

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A slice of very harrowing social history set against the Irish potato famine (1845 - 49) and the subsequent land clearances carried out by British troops on behalf of the landed gentry and the English government. The clearances have also formed a dark part of Scottish history,which I don’t think has been articulated in movies and incidentally to my knowledge this is the first time that the potato famine has been the subject of an Irish movie. Both nations still show the scars associated with this inhuman type of land control.

The title of this movie is taken from the worst year of this devastating period - 1847. James Frecheville plays Feeney a  Irish Ranger who took the ‘kings shilling’ and has been fighting for the British Army. After  13 years he deserts and returns to his Irish homeland to reunite with his family. Even this hardened solider is shocked by what he finds on his return. The people are dying due to the potato famine and the brutalisation  by the overlords and their lapdogs. When he discovers that his mother staved to death,  his brother was hanged by the English  and his sister in law and her children had frozen to death after being forced out of the home Feeney sets out to avenge his family.

Injustice sometimes can only be put right by violent action and this story is one of these occasions, yes grisly, yes bloodthirsty but one cannot help side with Mr Feeney and his blood spattered actions.  Very well received in Ireland as one would expect, not sure if this movie has had a release in the UK, shame if it has not - but there’s always the DVD.

The Turning.

Fascinating is how I would describe the ten wee vignettes that made up the Australian film The Turning (2013). All ten stories shown in this 110-minute version are based on a collection of short stories by Tim Winton - the full version has 18 stories and extends the movies running time to 180 minutes. Winton is an Australian novelist and short story writer who allegedly draws his inspiration from landscape and places "The place comes first. If the place isn't interesting to me then I can't feel it. I can't feel any people in it. I can't feel what the people are on about or likely to get up to."[1]

First published in 2005, the collection was originally adapted into a play for the 2008 Perth International Arts Festival before becoming an award winning movie that was nominated for nine AACTA awards, one of which Best Actress was awarded to Rose Byrne. Each part of the anthology was directed by a different director including actress Mia Wasikowska on her debut directing gig, and as well as Byrne, the best known of the actors on display would probable be Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and fellow Australian actress Miranda Otto who you may have seen in I Frankenstein (2014) and the western The Homesman (2014).

The best of the stories are The Turning about a woman (Byrne) who along with her abusive husband and her two wee daughters live in a trailer park. When she befriends Sherry (Otto) she discovers God. In Reunion its Christmas Day and Vic and Gale (Blanchett) invite Vic’s mum Carol to join them. All three are invited to their relatives for lunch but Carol gets the address wrong and they end up in the wrong house and the wrong swimming pool.  I was also impressed with Aquifer a moving story directed by Robert Connolly about a High School music teacher who hears of a tragedy on the TV news broadcast and without a word to his family drives all night back to his hometown to face a secret from his childhood. Each of the individual film’s are linked by a common emotional bond, bound together by recurring themes; the passing of time, regret, addiction and obsession. Well put together and photographed with each of the directors putting their own stamp on they’re own individual piece of work.

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[1] The Sydney Morning Herald April 2008.

Bangkok Hilton.

A young woman, Katrina Stanton, goes in search of the father she has never known and who she originally thought was dead, that is until her mother passed away and she discovered a secret diary. It was Katrina’s grandmother who sent her father away because of his dishonourable discharge from the army.  Her search takes her from Australia to England where she meets her uncle who informs her about the details of Hal Stanton’s life suggesting she continues her search in Bangkok for a man who can not face his past, an ex lawyer who has turned to alcohol for solace. There she meets a charming young man, Arkie Regan, who unbeknown to her plants drugs in her luggage and deserts her when the authorities find them during a routine search at the airport. Following her imprisonment in the notorious Bangkok Hilton prison she awaits the decision of the authorities on whether she should face the death penalty. Her only contact in Bangkok is her father’s solicitor who refuses to divulge her father’s whereabouts but agrees to help her defence.

Normally I would not blog a TV Mini Series, but in the case of Bangkok Hilton (1989) there are mitigating circumstances. Firstly it’s a very good series and secondly it stars Nicole Kidman in her pre-Hollywood days as Katrina Stanton.  This six part mini series was written for her by Terry Hayes and inspired by a true story, the Barlow Chambers case which took place in in Malaysia in 1986 when two men where hanged for heroin smuggling. Nicole appears opposite the experienced English actor Denholm Elliott who plays her father, Hugo Weaving, who was seen recently in Mystery Road (2013), portrays Richard Carlisle the family solicitor with Jerome Ehlers as Regan. Originally broadcast on Australian television as three two-hour episodes in November 1989 and on the UK TV in April 1990. The DVD release was split into 6 episodes at approx. 45 minutes each (no adverts of course).   

 

Nicole Kidman plays opposite....

the English actor Denholm Elliott.

Nicole Kidman was quite busy during this period with firstly Emerald City (1988) and then her breakthrough film Dead Calm in 1989 which would lead to her Hollywood debut opposite Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder in 1990. In Bangkok Hilton she is excellent, it’s quite rightly regarded as one of her best performances. With director Ken Cameron commenting ‘you are constantly surprised by the fact that one moment she seems to be a very young women enjoying herself and being completely spontaneous. The next minute she is a serious actress, capable of a performance that can move you in a way that you don’t expect from one so young. (She was 22 years old at the time) She looks wonderful, is enormously appealing on screen, and has something about her which belongs to the time. To have all these quantities is a rare thing’[1].   

Life in the Bangkok Hilton.

The whole project is superior to many movies. Very well written and acted, which like me I’m sure you will find gripping and authentic and although the ‘clothes’ may have dated the actual story could easily be happening right this minute.

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[1] David Thomson - Nicole Kidman 2006.

Mystery Road.

Ivan Sen is an Australian filmmaker whose latest feature film he directed, wrote, edited and composed the music and if that was not enough he was also the cinematographer. He describes it as a ‘genre film with a cultural perspective’[1], which he says makes it a little more unique and ultimately more interesting for its movie audience. It’s a story of mystery and intrigue that involves corruption, race relations, local politics and wild dogs! A modern day western emphasised by the dress code of the lead character with a style that references the look of the Coen's No Country for Old Men (2007) - it even has a spectacular gun fight!

 

The beautiful  countryside hides a bleak and dangerous existence for its indigenous population. 

Mystery Road (2013) is a murder mystery investigated by an indigenous detective Jay Swan, played by Aaron Pederson, an estranged family man with a young teenage daughter who lives with her mother Mary (Tasma Walton) and is running wild. Swan was born and lived in the area until he went away to a detective school. Ten years later he has returned to the community with the intent to make it a better place for his daughter to grow up. He’s back just in time to investigate the death of a young Aboriginal girl who has had her throat cut and her body hidden by the side of a desolate truckers highway in a storm drain.  Swan’s has two main problems, the first is that individuals do not want to talk to him, including his own people who regard him as a turncoat, secondly the white dominated police force do not seem to want the crime solved!

 

Jay Swan is on his own, no backup, no support....

The murder is based on a true incident involving a family member of Ivan Sen. It’s set in a nameless nondescript town but we know from the credits that it was filmed around the community of Winton, a town in Central West Queensland, and although the landscape has a certain raw beauty I don’t think the movie will attract many tourist to the area! 

 

....but he will get to the bottom of the young girls brutal murder.

As with all his feature films Sen did his own casting but in this instance Pederson helped him with the selection of the young aboriginal children and the teenage girls, who play quite a big part in this story, all of whom had not acted before. The main roles in the movie are played by some very well known Australian actors including Ryan Kwanten as the small town bigot, an actor best known for his role as Sookie Stackhouse’s brother Jason in the award winning TV vampire drama True Blood and Hugo Weaving (Oranges and Sunshine 2010, Captain America: The First Avenger 2011) as the rather threatening white policeman Johnno, a character  who we are never sure about?

 

Your never quite sure who's side  Johnno's on? 

A typical hard faced Australian crime drama that says more in its silent moments than some movies do in their complete running time, leaving the viewers at times to work things out for themselves which has the affect of drawing you in, making you a bystander rather than just part of a cinema audience.  It is a very well made film with an Australian cast that fills ever part with authenticity. The Queensland landscape plays an important role in the story underlining the bleak natural countryside - you can taste the atmospheric dust as it rises from the outback roads. Not to be missed and highly recommended.

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[1] Ivan Sen DVD Interview.