This searing portrait of nineteenth century settler life in Australia tells the story of a violent crime and its aftermath. Outback policeman Captain Stanley has captured the two youngest of a trio of outlaw brothers and makes a deal with the middle one – pardons for him and the teenage boy if he seeks out and kills the older brother and ringleader, holed up with other gang members in a mountain cave retreat. Stanley orders that the killing take place by Christmas day, otherwise the youngest will hang.

In a film combining brutality and lyricism, the director constantly calls attention to the characters’ inner dreams and yearning. During the opening credits a young girl sings ‘There is a Happy Land’ as backing to an album-like collection of photos depicting early European settlers. This is to be echoed later when the heroine caresses a catalogue image of a young girl in a flounced dress, expressing her frustrated longing for a child. Not surprisingly, with a screenplay by Australian musician Nick Cave, songs play a big part in the film, whether bringing a spiritual dimension to embrace even the villainous elder brother, with his reverence for literature and family ties, or suffusing the action with a haunting atmosphere of foreboding.

The tension is at its most unbearable in a harrowing central scene where the young boy is taken out and flogged at the command of a local landowner, the ironically named Eden Fletcher who adds yet another layer to the settler hierarchy. Performed, it seems, to appease the blood-lust of locals in the township where a family was murdered, it is really motivated by disapproval of Stanley’s methods and shaded view of justice.

The outlaws, played by Guy pierce and Danny Huston with tangled hair and greasy clothes make a terrifying, almost primeval group, whilst a chance encounter with John Hurt as a desert-dwelling bounty hunter allows yet another vile variation on the Irish settler personae. For the most part the aborigines are portrayed with a self-contained dignity which contrasts with the European straining against the punishing landscape.

Stanley, played by Ray Winstone reprising his flawed detective TV role, is wracked with guilt at having brought his refined wife to ‘this hellhole’ whilst he himself suffers from constant headaches and a sense of failure to wrangle his unsavoury crew of law enforcers, renegade aborigines and outlaw villains.

The close but playful relationship with his wife, convincingly played by Emily Lloyd in corsets and layered skirts, is based on gesture and detail rather than dialogue. Their striving for peace in a nostalgic pastiche of English domestic life is played out in a series of interior scenes where the Australian sunlight is excluded and where they celebrate Christmas with turkey and imported fir tree as the climactic and unexpected final scene explodes.

Superbly directed, written and acted, with award-winning cinematography by Benoit Delhomme, this film’s violence is realistic but never offensively lingered-over. It certainly puts the efforts of many recent Oscar-winners in the shade.





<Added>

Emily Watson

Good on yer Sheila.....

But what happened to all that cynicism?

At least anyone reading us gets a bit of passion, And that's what counts.

Best

Z

Emily Watson

Thanks, Cholero. A reminder to check names carefully before posting. It reminds me, too, how irksome it is that we can't edit these pieces properly, instead of just having to add on corrections .

Sheila

I agree Shiela, v easily done and annoying that you can't correct...(I bet Emily Lloyd would have done a good job tho, great actress.)