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Lucky Country (Film)

by Julian Shaw | July 14, 2009 16:23 | Edited July 14, 2009 16:25

A bizarre and enigmatic opus which loses some of its forcefulness under heavy emotions and elliptical editing.

When Kriv Stenders made his feature film debut in 2005, he did it with all the trappings that you'd expect from a promising first-timer - a government-sponsored production kitty, 35MM film stock, and local stars. That film, The Illustrated Family Doctor, also packed a bewildering, jet-black sensibility, making it sadly inaccessible for many. In a limited marketplace like ours, where a muted performance from your first film can make the second impossible, Kriv Stenders dug deep and brought his next works to life on a lo-fi digital canvas (Blacktown, Boxing Day), making soulfulness and heart-rending honesty his number one priority so that technical limitations became a joy rather than a hindrance.

 

Clearly hungry for a broader canvas, Stenders now takes on the unfamiliar world of early twentieth century Australia, but his keen eye for savagely real characterisations and men in crises remains unblemished. Aden Young (in a haunting performance sure to re-establish his big screen credentials) is Nat, a father with a young family, dislocated physically and spiritually in the outback, who is swooped upon from all sides after rumours of gold begin to swirl around his log cabin. Young Toby Wallace, as Nat's son Tom, becomes the backbone of the film, and it's a sterling, remarkably mature performance which glues the ensemble together.

 

Like the masterful Boxing Day, much of the action revolves around a single chamber-like setting, which begins to splinter under the weight of heaving emotions, but the elliptical nature of the editing makes for a sometimes too-opaque experience, and more linearity might have made for greater dynamism. Ultimately though, Lucky Country is a downright bizarre, blood-smeared opus that provides yet more evidence of a real-deal auteur at work on our shores.