WARNING: SPOILER AHEAD
This short film (just under one hour) from the accomplished aboriginal director Rachel Perkins (`Radiance') is said to be based on a real-life incident in a remote part of South Australia in 1932. Little Bunny (Ruby Hunter), six years old, living with her parents on a desolate sheep run, is entranced one night by a full moon to leave her bed and follow it into the rough countryside. Her absence is discovered by her mother (Karrin Fairfax) within a few hours and Ryan, her Dad (Paul Kelly) rides into town to get help. The veteran police sergeant, (Chris Haywood) brings along his black tracker and a group of volunteers. Incredibly, Ryan refuses to have the tracker on the property, and the scene is set for tragedy. After days of futile searching, Mum enlists the support of the tracker, who finds the girl within hours, despite the trampling of the trail by the earlier searchers. But of course it is too late. Dad does the decent thing and blows his brains out.
The film is in semi-operatic form and much of the characters' thoughts are expressed in song. The background is the truly and harshly beautiful Flinders Ranges, right at the limit of pastoral settlement, and a powerful symbol of pre-European Australia. Against this magnificent landscape we have a story of mind-blowing stupidity born of bigotry. But this time it's the bigot who suffers.
Paul Kelly, a singer rather than an actor, doesn't have much of an acting range, but looks the part of a careworn, dirt-poor farmer, and of course sings very well. Karrin Fairfax is convincing as the downtrodden but loving mother and Kelton Pell puts in a dignified performance as the tracker.
Assuming this film does convey the story accurately, there's one puzzling thing. Why didn't the copper who well knew the ability of the tracker, just tell the father he was just going to have to put up with one sworn police blackfella on his property? If there's one thing calculated to fire up a copper, especially a senior one, it's a challenge to his authority. Anyway he didn't require the owner's permission for search and rescue. The cop wasn't beholden to local landowners, the South Australian police was and is a statewide organisation his boss was back in Adelaide. Any landowner who tried to impede a search today would be locked up for obstruction.
It's a simple story poetically told with a true sense of time and place.
This short film (just under one hour) from the accomplished aboriginal director Rachel Perkins (`Radiance') is said to be based on a real-life incident in a remote part of South Australia in 1932. Little Bunny (Ruby Hunter), six years old, living with her parents on a desolate sheep run, is entranced one night by a full moon to leave her bed and follow it into the rough countryside. Her absence is discovered by her mother (Karrin Fairfax) within a few hours and Ryan, her Dad (Paul Kelly) rides into town to get help. The veteran police sergeant, (Chris Haywood) brings along his black tracker and a group of volunteers. Incredibly, Ryan refuses to have the tracker on the property, and the scene is set for tragedy. After days of futile searching, Mum enlists the support of the tracker, who finds the girl within hours, despite the trampling of the trail by the earlier searchers. But of course it is too late. Dad does the decent thing and blows his brains out.
The film is in semi-operatic form and much of the characters' thoughts are expressed in song. The background is the truly and harshly beautiful Flinders Ranges, right at the limit of pastoral settlement, and a powerful symbol of pre-European Australia. Against this magnificent landscape we have a story of mind-blowing stupidity born of bigotry. But this time it's the bigot who suffers.
Paul Kelly, a singer rather than an actor, doesn't have much of an acting range, but looks the part of a careworn, dirt-poor farmer, and of course sings very well. Karrin Fairfax is convincing as the downtrodden but loving mother and Kelton Pell puts in a dignified performance as the tracker.
Assuming this film does convey the story accurately, there's one puzzling thing. Why didn't the copper who well knew the ability of the tracker, just tell the father he was just going to have to put up with one sworn police blackfella on his property? If there's one thing calculated to fire up a copper, especially a senior one, it's a challenge to his authority. Anyway he didn't require the owner's permission for search and rescue. The cop wasn't beholden to local landowners, the South Australian police was and is a statewide organisation his boss was back in Adelaide. Any landowner who tried to impede a search today would be locked up for obstruction.
It's a simple story poetically told with a true sense of time and place.