Catherine goes in Lily's room to ask if she needs any clothes washed. Rae quickly puts his clothes on and asks Burtie to give him some advance warning. When Burtie brings nephew Jarrah home, the boy catches Rae naked in the bed of Jarrah's mother Coreen. They go to a skate park and meet up with Slug, who wears a Metallica T-shirt, and Steve, who is not wearing a shirt but has a large snake tattoo. Outside, Tom hands the money to Lily, who isn't wearing a whole lot more than before. Tom shows up at the pharmacy where Matthew works asking for money for ice cream. Catherine and Tom both complain about how isolated their new location is but are reminded why it was necessary to move there. She also says kids shouldn't have to go to school when it is over 40 degrees. She is told to put some clothes on but won't listen. Tom's father Matthew answers the door but then 15-year-old Lily, Tom's sister, shows up not wearing much. Burtie comes to the door ready to paint the house. Back at home, Tom's mother Catherine asks Tom if he was walking again and says he shouldn't do that. It i later stated he does this at night when he can't sleep, but at the start of the movie, the sun is out. This adds rather than removes oxygen to key scenes and stretches personal moments into a vast, emotionally diluting aesthetic.In an isolated town in the Outback of Australia, Tom walks around when no one is outside. Several vital situations comprising intense dialogue and times of epiphany and reflection are undercut by Farrant’s decision to swiftly segue to these long shots. Strangerland’s countless helicopter or drone shots, regularly reiterating the message that “Nathgari” is a synonym for “based in nowhere”, clearly weigh towards one explanation over the other. One of the questions around the location of the children is whether they are alone in the desert or somewhere in town. Things make more sense in the context of an unusual sexual undercurrent that eventually forms an integral part of the story, not before revealing some alarming sights, including a grubby sex den at a skate park and a battered and zombified Kidman in her birthday suit. Their characters eye each other off as if they know nothing about each other: again, arguably a correlation to the film’s title and again, not a very compelling one. Onscreen Kidman and Fiennes form a passion-deprived, near sterile chemistry, as flat as desert terrain. Both are prone to moments that suggest they are either acting out of character or indicate the screenplay, written by Michael Kinirons and Fiona Seres, hasn’t effectively established their personalities in order to legitimise surprise reactions to dramatic situations. We learn that “Tom walks, sometimes at night” (evidently nobody tries to discourage him) and when murmurs around town suggest the parents may somehow be involved in their children’s disappearance, there are fleeting echoes of Lindy Chamberlain’s story.Įxpanding the mystery along those lines – more whodunit and more cross-examination of key players – would have suited the ambiguous personalities of Strangerland’s principal characters, but Farrant’s focus seemingly lies elsewhere.Ĭatherine and Matthew are at times virtually impenetrable the latter completely lacking in empathy despite such traumatic circumstances and the former frustratingly unpredictable. Matthew is reluctant to divulge information about the family’s past – which, in the great tradition of remotely set Australian dramas, is rather morbid – so naturally David is the kind of cop who likes to fish through bedroom drawers and ask curly questions. After the kids go missing, a CGI-enhanced sandstorm hits, placing an urgency on finding them.ĭetective David Rae (Hugo Weaving) is in charge of the investigation. Catherine (Kidman) is married to British pharmacist Matthew (Fiennes) and is mother of 15-year-old Lily (Maddison Brown) and her younger brother Tom (Nicholas Hamilton). The Parker family have recently moved to the fictitious desert town of Nathgari. Perhaps this is a meaning insinuated by the film’s title if so, it’s not a very persuasive one. The cast feel dislocated from and unfamiliar with the environments captured by PJ Dillon’s alternately vast and close-up, glossy and dusty cinematography.
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