by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $15.99
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Richard Roxburgh, Rahel Romahn, Julian Maroun, Mojean Aria, Fayssal Bazzi, Yael Stone
Intro:
… an effective close-quarters depiction of a political prisoner, buoyed by its strictly interior focus and refreshing willingness to admit that, sometimes, all you can do is laugh.
After carving out a solid dramedy with the TV series Rake, the latest collaboration between actor Richard Roxburgh and writer Peter Duncan finds them dealing with a different kind of legal absurdity. Specifically, the incarceration of Aussie journo Peter Greste (Roxburgh), one of three Al Jazeera correspondents arrested in Cairo under dubious charges of terrorism.
Both Kriv Stenders’ direction and Geoffrey Hall’s cinematography work to keep the audience tied directly to Greste’s headspace for the full runtime, shifting back and forth between his time behind bars and an earlier pivotal moment while reporting in Somalia. While the somewhat one-man-play framing of Greste, along with a droning soundtrack, give it an unfortunate tinge of ‘made for TV’, they are still quite effective at putting Greste’s frequently aghast reactions at the forefront.
The circumstances behind his imprisonment are mostly through audio, with news snippets talking of the ongoing Egyptian Crisis and later, the outcry at his treatment. But we don’t see any of it, nor does Greste himself for the most part, which feeds into the surreal nature of the whole ordeal.
Sticking to his knack for dark satire as seen in Rake, along with Children of the Revolution, Duncan presents Greste’s imprisonment as aggravatingly Kafkaesque: in a prison for a crime he didn’t commit, being given diplomatic counsel that amounts to little more than a single boiled sweet, while his cohort Mohamed Fahmy (Julian Maroun) keeps trying to get him to play along in exchange for a shorter sentence. It’s shown as a situation where any concrete sense of possibility for freedom is as ethereal as the charges that brought him inside to begin with, which not only amps up the tension of what new spore of madness is coming next, but also highlights the strength of Greste’s resolve in the face of it.
Across his more high-profile work, Roxburgh has developed a certain reputation for chewing more scenery than Sunny Beaudelaire, but he absolutely crushes it with his more understated turn here. He lets the absurdist humour in Duncan’s writing shine through, while still keeping it grounded, showing off an incredibly endearing example of the Aussie sense of humour in action. The story plays out similarly to Shawshank Redemption or the equally-political Rosewater by Jon Stewart, but with the odd sprinklings of backgammon and just laughing in the face of a reality for journalists; a light within the bleakness. A light epitomised by someone who, despite intrusive thoughts that this might all be karma for past sins, refused to submit to them.
First and foremost, though, it’s a plea for this not to be the reality for journalists, and in light of recent events, its timing is depressingly apt. There will always be spleen venting from bad faith actors, who only exist to prop up ‘their guy’, but censure of those who only acknowledge what they see with their own eyes is a dangerous road to go down. Not to mention one that takes a long time to correct, as shown with Julian Assange’s return to Australia just this past year. At a time when it’s looking scarily likely that we’re in for another cycle of weaponised Fake News (not actual faked news, but declaring “Fake News” as a placeholder for thinking), history needs to be learnt from.
The Correspondent is an effective close-quarters depiction of a political prisoner, buoyed by its strictly interior focus and refreshing willingness to admit that, sometimes, all you can do is laugh. Its economical construction brings out the stark ridiculousness of the event, making for some of Kriv Stenders’ best work in years, not to mention a stand-out performance from Richard Roxburgh that helps tie it all together.
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