Wolfram Dir: Warwick Thornton ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Ten years after filming his successful outback western Sweet Country, Warwick Thornton returns to his hometown of Alice Springs. The Central Desert provides the arid and isolated conditions that existed at Hatches Creek in the Northern Territory, at a wolfram (tungsten) mine in the 1930s.
The inspiration for the film was the family histories of Thornton and co-screenwriter Steven McGregor, whose forbears were among the many children taken from their families to provide free labour to go down narrow mine shafts and dig out the mineral used to harden steel.
Siblings Max (Hazel May Jackson) and Kid (Eli Hart) have been taken away from their mother Pansy (Deborah Mailman), but they manage to escape their White ‘boss’. They are pursued as they try to find a way home, and eventually join up with Philomac (Pedrea Jackson) who is also desperate to escape his imposed slavery.
While the three fugitives are hunted by lawless men, their mother, who is nursing a small baby, is also searching for her stolen children, and leaving a trail of beaded tokens attached to trees and bushes.
Thornton’s outstanding cinematography captures the harsh beauty of the rugged terrain, and he has said that he wanted to create the tough, rough cinematic style of a brutalist film.
“None of this floaty stuff, but getting right in there, with lens flares in the hot sun and lots of flies. Showing a place where, visually, you don’t want to be.”
Thornton’s aim in capturing these brutal moments in Australia’s history is to fill the gap in what has been recorded in order to move forward.
“Not by feeling ashamed, but not by ignoring or forgetting the history either”. he has said.
Luna Leederville is hosting a Q&A screening of Wolfram with writer, director, cinematographer Warwick Thornton Live in Cinema on Sunday 19 April at 6:00 pm.
Lezly Herbert
