by Danny Peary
On May 17, 2018, the Australian feature film Cargo, starring Martin Freeman, Simone Landers, Caren Pistorius, Natasha Wanganeen, Anthony Hayes and David Gulpilil, will release in cinemas across Australia. On May 18, 2018, US time, the film will be available on Netflix around the world, except Australia. No doubt, its success in Australia will reflect whether this kind of a release model is feasible in this country.
The feature film expands on the short film, which has amassed in excess of 14m views, and is co-directed by the short’s creators, Yolanda Ramke (also writer) and Ben Howling, who we sat down with recently when the film enjoyed its successful international premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Where were you both born and how did you meet?
Yolanda Ramke: I was born in Queensland, you were born in New South Wales [pointing at Ben]. We met on a reality TV show, actually [Big Brother].
Ben Howling: Working on a reality show, not starring.
YF: We weren’t in it but behind the scenes on a reality TV show, 10 years ago now. We just became friends, had very similar sensibilities. We were making short films separately for a while and always working on each other’s projects and then when the short film concept came along it was just something we’d developed together.
Did you go to film school?
YF: Yes. I went to Griffith Film School in Queensland.
BH: I went to Southern Cross University in Coffs Harbour which is a small regional university.
And were you both into horror movies?
BH: We’ve got very eclectic tastes. There’s not much that we don’t like kind, but genre’s definitely a particular like.
YF: It’s where our tastes really cross over.
Why did you pick the word Cargo; out of every word in the world, why Cargo?
YF: From the short film perspective it was just as simple as what he was carrying. And the fact that it was this precious thing, and it’s short, sharp and snappy. That was the scope of our thinking for the short film and then I guess when the feature came along, the name just stuck. There was talk of other titles which were just not good.
Martin Freeman plays a British person. Was that in the script?
BH: It was actually something Martin asked us in one of our first discussions with him about coming on board. He was like ‘is the character British just because you want to cast me?’ And no, it was actually something Yolanda had painted into the script very early on.
YF: In trying to expand the film from short to feature, it was about trying to dig into additional layers and deeper undertones thematically in terms of social commentary. Hopefully not in a didactic way but there were things that we thought would be interesting to touch upon and for us, having the Indigenous component in the film, incorporating that culture, looking at Indigenous survivors, there was just a layer there that we thought was quite interesting in having an English man coming into the orbit of these Indigenous characters who are thriving. Just a reflection of Australia’s own colonial history which is all quite dark and unresolved and ever-present. And we never wanted to get preachy or exploitative about that fact, but we liked the idea of it just sitting in the background for people to either pick up on or not. That was our thinking.
You can’t tell in the short film where he’s from…
YF: The short film was made purely for Tropfest. That was the intention, can we do a 7-minute version of a zombie film? Could we add something fresh to that? That was our MO and because we were very much in the infancy of our career, it just never really occurred to us to start developing a feature because we didn’t really think that opportunity would be around. It inadvertently became a proof of concept, but initially we didn’t set out with that in mind.
It’s surprising that you have adapted the short film and set it in Australia.
YF: Being Australian filmmakers, that’s what we know for one thing. Even in our early conversations when we first started talking to American producers about the project, the sense that we got from an international perspective was that setting it in Australia would actually make it more unique or exotic internationally as well. It’s that tricky line of being accessible for foreign audiences but then the other side of that is by being something that is a world that maybe international audiences aren’t so used to seeing, does that then make it more enticing to watch?
BH: And thankfully we just had films like District 9 come out which had shown that it could work. District 9 reinforced the fact that the world was actually very open to hearing stories from different cultures, particularly South African which is like a voice that you actually don’t hear very often at all and so if people can deal with a South African accent, I think they can handle an Aussie accent.
This world that they live in, is The Walking Dead on TV in this world?
YF: That’s always the thing isn’t it, when you’re seeing characters walking around in a zombie film, you’re like ‘well, do they know what a zombie is?’
BH: We actually don’t refer to them as zombies ever, so I imagine that zombies don’t exist in this world because if it was in the zeitgeist they’d probably be saying the word zombie in reference to this. So, yeah, they probably don’t have any kind of zombie experience.
Zombies aren’t supposed to be dead. One of your interesting things here is a virus where you don’t just immediately become a zombie. How did you come up with that?
BH: There was a long…
YF: A lot of thought…
BH: A lot of different ideas that went out for how we can make our virals, our zombies, a point of difference. And then a lot of it, thankfully fed into the actual story in what we’d already been doing in terms of making the landscape in a very Australian kind of way. We started grabbing hold of things in Australia such as the goo that seeps out of their face being inspired by the look of sap. It was sealed up and made this cocoon that was kind of like a chrysalis, like insects that do that back home. Everything fed back into the story and then once we had the makeup artist come on board, thankfully, everyone in our department team was very story oriented. Every decision we made, we actually rooted it in story and detail and stuff that fed back into the world.
The whole process of turning into a zombie is what makes it really emotional…
YF: That’s what we hoped for. I think we’ve all seen it done before with the shuffling of zombies and sometimes they can be really sad too, but I think a lot of what we talked about, we looked at references like Japanese Butoh and these sort of people with silent screaming faces and being in pain through this sort of experience. We just felt it would be a lot more relatable and sad if these people still had some glimmer of humanity about them and weren’t completely gory and rotting.
BH: We wanted to still humanise them.
Can you discuss loneliness versus community which is a theme of the film?
YF: The Indigenous characters in the film are operated from a community point of view and it’s about working together and creating a new safe haven for them, for themselves. A lot of our non-Indigenous characters are choosing to isolate themselves whether it be on a house boat or a compound. This kind of dichotomy between those two different approaches to surviving was one part of it and then Vic [Anthony Hayes] comes out of that. His need to possess, this need to own, which is so opposed to the Indigenous approach to land and taking care of land and a custodianship as opposed to digging things up to take.
How do you see Andy [Martin Freeman], is he a hero?
BH: He is modest in his own expectations of himself. He doesn’t see himself as someone that’s going to storm in and save the day but at the same time he’s also not afraid to take a risk if he feels it’s safe, such as going to the yacht and exploring that on his own, which is kind of like the whole downfall of that family. Kay [Susie Porter] points out the moment he makes that decision, they stop operating as a team.
YF: Ultimately, it’s a huge miscalculation. We also wanted to give him somewhere to go as a character even if it was just in increments. He makes mistakes, he does screw up and it costs him, and I think part of his path through the film is learning to become a father to his child, and also becoming a parental figure to Thoomi [Simone Landers], learning how to actually accept outside help and then at the end of the film there is an element of heroism.
Walkabout is one of my favourite films of all time, and that dealt with similar themes about surviving in this land, and David Gulpilil, of course.
YF: The theme of reversal of wrongs that have happened in Australia, and the idea that what if the land was to return to these people… What would happen with that? And how would that be different? And if we start from zero, and more of an understanding of how to take care of country… That was the thing that really interested us, and it was something we knew we had to try and handle as subtly as we could, and with Indigenous consultants and elders.
The metaphor for the baby is the future but also the bond between the two cultures?
YF: Absolutely. The representation of a new hope.
And Thoomi as well?
YF: We really liked that idea. I don’t think we wanted to get didactic about it but that idea of reconciliation or the idea of two cultures coming together and moving forward together was interesting to us. The idea of what happened in our country as past with white people taking Indigenous children away from their parents and reflecting that at the end of the film, in reverse.
Did you have to explain these things to Simone?
BH: It was interesting because she wasn’t an experienced actor and so we had a dramaturg with her early on, so just bringing her up to speed and teaching her some kind acting shorthand that we could work with. But at the same time, we were also very fortunate to have Martin on board, who was almost like a third director. We could obviously explain to Simone what was going on in the scene but the most effective person in actually getting a performance out of her would have been Martin because he’s there actually performing opposite her and so he could ease her performance. Making everything feel real in that moment allowed her to then actually buy into it more and invest in it more.
The role of the landscape in the movie, talk about that, why did you shoot it in South Australia as opposed to Northern Australia?
BH: The thing with Australia is that it could be southern Australia, it could be eastern but wherever you go, if you’re not in a city, the landscapes are vast and it’s particularly vast there because it’s just so stark. There’s not too much going on, so the landscape really helped reinforce things such as isolation which is one of the struggles Andy needs to overcome. So, we just used that visually by using really high wires and drones just to reflect that he’s not only fighting against his own disease, not only fighting against people with other agendas, he’s also fighting against the landscape, which is unforgiving and won’t allow you to travel anywhere quickly.
How were Andy and Thoomi alike?
BH: They’re both stubborn and determined.
YF: This is very obvious, but driven by love for their loved ones and a desire to protect even when they fail to do so. For Thoomi, she feels a guilt over the fact that she wasn’t able to fix her father and for Andy, it’s that he wasn’t able to fix his wife and that, in fact, actions he took caused her demise as well, and that he’s now also infected and he’s going to leave his child without a parent. There’s a redemptive quality as well to their joint journey in terms of trying to make up for where they’ve gone wrong before and hope that by working together, both of them, at least ensure the child will survive.
Find out for yourself when Cargo opens in cinemas from May 17, 2018. There are also special advance screenings of the film on Thursday May 10 at Lido Cinema in Melbourne with an introduction by the directors and Natasha Wanganeen; on Thursday May 10 at Classic Cinema in Elsternwick, followed by a Q&A with the directors and Natasha Wanganeen; in Adelaide on Tuesday May 15 at Wallis Piccadilly followed by a Q&A with the directors and Natasha Wanganeen; and in Sydney on Wednesday May 16 at The Ritz Cinema in Randwick, followed by a Q&A with the directors and Simone Landers.
