So here's the first of what I hope will be at least a few review-themed posts. They won't all be as long as this but I guess I just had a lot to say about this film... Next time I'm going to do a 'recommendations' post with bulletpoints and general quickness! Enjoy :)!
Snowtown, a 2010 film directed by Justin Kurzel and
written by Shaun Grant, really is
based on true events—those of the ‘Snowtown murders’ which occurred in Southern
Australia between 1992 and 1999. This is a fascinating if utterly repellent
study of the relationships between the ‘gang’ of murderers which developed and
ultimately influenced the outcome of one of Australia’s most notorious serial
murder cases. I’m not really informed enough about the case to discuss it here,
but it’s definitely worth a little internet research if you’re going to watch
the film. As far as I know the entire cast, excluding the actor who plays John Bunting, are all non-actors who were residents of the Adelaide suburb ravaged by the murders. If you do watch it look out for Louise Harris who plays the protagonist's mother--there's something very tragic about her performance, and it's my favourite of the bunch, although they're all fantastic! Also, snaps for being an independent low-budget movie.
So I watched Snowtown right off the back of Wolf
Creek because I think I was a little enthralled by the possibilities of
Australian horror, but also because I’d heard really great things about the
film. And man alive, if I thought Wolf Creek was terrifying because it was
realistic, was I in for an ungodly wake-up call with Snowtown. Snowtown is terrifying, but in a totally
different way to Wolf Creek, which feels hyper-kinetic and steeped in melodrama
(the good kind) by comparison. That’s saying something since many people criticize
Wolf Creek for being ‘dull’ due to its forty-minute let’s get to know the
characters before we shish kabob them technique (I loved it, audience cruelty
and all) and ‘obscene’ because of its cinema verite depiction of sadistic
violence. Really the only things the two films have in common is the fact they’re
both set in Australia and based on true murder cases in the country’s history
(with varying degrees of verisimilitude). Apart from that, there’s really
nothing of the relative fictitious safety of Wolf Creek to cling onto. Sure,
there’s no astounding geographical isolation, no Mick Dundee outback psychopath
running around with a Bowie hunting knife and a borderline torture-porn
mentality when it comes to offing his victims. But the inverted horror of
Snowtown is what makes it, for me, so terrifying.
At 119 minutes and with an emphasis on the nuances
of the characters’ relationships and psychology, Snowtown is what I’d call a
simmering pot. Calling it a slow burner would imply there’s some kind of
climactic explosion at the conclusion, which there isn’t. It’s more a very
chilling period, or a punch in the solar plexus that makes you bend double to
muffle the pain of the impact. When the film closes and the credits roll, with
a disconcertingly jaunty piece of music, you are left feeling cold and kind of
derelict—something like the abandoned bank vault where all the bodies were stored
alone and forgotten for so many years.
You know, thinking about it now I don’t even know
if I would call Snowtown a ‘horror’ movie, because it certainly isn’t a
conventional one. There is very little gore aside from some severed kangaroo
limbs (the noise that accompanies the image is even more disturbing) and a
particularly gruelling torture scene which plays a pivotal part in the
narrative—and it’s because the film is not exploring body horror (despite the
grisly subject matter), but psychological horror. Or, if this doesn’t sound too
pretentious, the many shifting faces of horror. The real achievement of Wolf
Creek was its exploitation of the landscape, the unforgivingness of nature. The
vastness and desolation of the outback crushed any possibility of hope in that
movie. The characters were stranded out in the middle of nowhere and nobody was
looking for them. The thing with Snowtown is that it all takes place in this
densely populated and moribund suburb of a major Australian city where crime is
rife and the authorities don’t care. In steps John Bunting, who in its despair
and abandonment, the community scraping by on government benefits looks to as a
leader, a dispenser of justice, and to the main character, a father figure.
Charming and charismatic, John soon ingratiates himself into the heart of the
community scarred by paedophilia and drug abuse. He champions ideologies which
border on hypothetical lynch mob operations against those deemed morally corrupt.
It becomes increasingly apparent, however, that John does not discriminate
between paedophiles and homosexuals, obese people, drug addicts and the mentally
handicapped. His highly amiable facade begins to crack and splinter, or maybe
he’s choosing to slip the mask off himself, giving glimpses of something truly
monstrous lurking just below the surface. It is the insidiousness, the
perniciousness, the snake-like perversion of domesticity which is truly
horrifying. John is like a black hole; as soon as he walks into the room you
are sucked into him with a force beyond human reckoning, no matter how much you
resist. He reflects no light, he is merciless, and yet he seems to seek
approval from the 16 year old protagonist—the transformation of whom from timid
victim to casual murderer is almost unpalatable.
I’m always fascinated in
situations like this when there is a pack of killers—because it definitely
feels predatory and calculated in the extreme—by the bonds formed between them.
Aren’t they afraid of one another? Are they so removed from humanity they
believe they are outside it, that they don’t suspect they could fall victim to
the same atrocities they are committing? How can they trust each other so? How
does one get to that point where killing one’s friend or brother or neighbour
is second nature, is so callous it’s almost banal?
The horror of it is the banality of the horror
itself. Does that make sense? The fact that an entire community was aware to
varying degrees of the horror unfolding, that so many people were complicit and
did nothing, didn’t question the abrupt messages left on answering machines by
loved ones? There’s a scene which sums up this centrifugal theme of evil finding
its place in the home when the complicit characters walk twenty yards from a
living room where a child sits watching TV to the backyard and a shed which
contains corpses stuffed into bin bags.
There were a couple of points in the film when I
thought ‘I can’t watch this, I have to get out’ because the level of reality
was so claustrophobic and intense, the pervading grimness so unrelenting. But I persevered, stamping my feet and
whimpering to compensate for the brutality of what I was witnessing, and the end
left me utterly drained. It is an exceptional piece of cinema.
As an addendum to the review, the score for
Snowtown, composed by the director’s brother, truly carries the film. That is
not to understate the film’s power in any measure, but simply to say that the
music so encapsulates the film that when the director first heard it he altered
the beginning and end of the script. It is the beating heart of the film, in
the same note both seductive and disturbingly insidious.
Predictably, as soon as I bought the album it
became available on YouTube, so go have a listen! My favourite track is ‘The
Dance’.
