Starring Maya Stange, Rufus Sewell and Martin Donovan
Opens Oct. 21 across Sydney
I liked this movie a lot. It's sensual and immediate with a genuine sense of discovery and awe rare in most movies. It's earthy and unpretentious, and it avoids the more typical decorousness of, say, The Thin Red Line. There are limits to these worlds, and the cameraman can't hang around all day waiting for one smile forcefully pried from the face of a native. Here large bodies of people move with unpredictable energy, and the film taps into the energy of its subject. Here nature is beautiful and brutal.
Ostensibly the film is a love story, yet it is also an analysis of what would most simply be described as "cultural clash". Despite this unexciting proposition, the film is quite different from any story of awkward multi-culturalism you care to name. We are not dealing with cultural monoliths here, predictable tales of old vs. new, cultured vs. savage. Each person here is a terrain, a complex landscape. The delicate intimacies of love are weighed against the larger matters of global affairs. The fleeting smell of a just-opened oyster is balanced against W.W.II.
At first the film is gentle and charming, but with each plot development or character shading a very real danger grows. Characters gently enter into a situation and then suddenly find they cannot extract themselves. What the film possesses is a haunting sense of responsibility. That is perhaps the films defining theme and the characteristic which ties it to Bennett's last film, Kiss or Kill. We trust people and they let us down. We then do the same to them. We enter worlds and make slight infractions, seemingly small points to us, and the whole world suddenly changes. All is fragile and delicate, and Bennett shows us a time and place where all previously clear boundaries are rapidly disintegrating.
The film is frequently breathtaking in its visual opulence, yet we don't have time to take in each painstaking shot as a finely wrought composition. Scenes pass quickly and the joy or sadness contained in them is fleeting. We are never safe in the delicacy of one scene for too long. Unrest is always lurking in the next scene. This approach is frequently jarring, and as a result the film ultimately feels a little misshapen and clumsy, yet in comparison to the safe narrative structures usually adopted by Australian directors (good evening Ms. Croghan) the film is exceptionally daring. Bennett is attempting a lot here, and in a relatively short amount of time, so these brutal shifts in tone are understandable. As the film progresses the rapid shifts in narrative, character and culture become the films defining characteristic, a continuing balance between private dispute and world war, intellectual debate and physical lust.
All three leads are excellent in their roles, especially Stange as the driven Evelyn, but this is really a filmmakers film. Director of Photography Danny Ruhlmann, Editor Henry Danger and Production Designer Nicholas McCallum all play crucial roles in the creative process and leave their mark on the film. Still, I'm not suggesting that this film is a flawless masterpiece, not by a long shot. It's just that its originality and unique texture are so enticing that the faults are extremely forgivable; you may in fact not even really be bothered by minor imperfections if you give into the film.
Australian cinemas are choked with romantic comedies and lazy-minded crime capers; the Australian film industry seems to respond by pumping out more and more in vain hope of competing with the US product. It's a waste of time, and to succeed is to fail eventually anyway. The only way Australian cinema can really compete in this scenario is to debase itself further. There's always a chance I guess. I'm very unsure of the box-office chances In A Savage Land has when it's released this week. People went for The English Patient so maybe they'll accept another romance with wider historical implications. I doubt it. In A Savage Land doesn't announce its worthiness with an inflated running time, and it deliberately avoids any major dramatic moments. It's a film of ellipses, of memories. There are tensions but they're oddly presented by Bennett. An original style is an incredibly hard thing for a director to attain, but it usually equals disaster at the box-office because it offers no easy point of comparison for viewers. The originality of the film eventually ends up being a reason to dislike it. Perhaps I'm being a little presumptuous, and the film will be a big success. I hope so. It's vital and alive, daring where so much else is timid and anemic.
adam rivett
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