Review: Stangerland

The unfortunate thing about film festivals is that you’re inevitably going to watch a few disappointments as well as a few masterpieces. During this year’s Cork Film Festival I’ve gotten my fair share of both but Strangerland has outdone them all .The film revolves around the Parker family, who have moved to a new town due to an initially unexplained event that happened in their previous town. It is quickly revealed that Matthew and Catherine Parker’s 15 year-old daughter Lily had a sexual relationship with one of her teachers and now Matthew hopes his family can start a new life in this town. However, one night both children, Tom and Lily walk out into the desert, seemingly disappearing.From here, the plot doesn’t so much twist and turn, as it goes down one lane, realises its lost and then awkwardly backs out, only to get lost again a few minutes later. There are simply too many plot holes here to count: Why does Tom go walking in the desert at night when he can’t sleep, do Australian kids do that? When the police arrest one of Lily’s sexual partners, Steve, how could they possibly have “insufficient evidence” to try him of rape? What about “The Box”, the shack often frequented by the local boys built near the skate park? Surely a quick swab of that mattress will reveal some of Steve and Lily’s DNA, due to the extensive amount of time spent there? How does Matthew find Tom by just driving around the desert for a while? How did the police miss him during their days of extensive searching?The cinematography’s pretty good, I can’t imagine it’s too difficult  to shoot the Australian outback? I mean if you go out at sunset with a pretty decent camera in the Australian desert, you’re basically guaranteed a beautiful shot. While I’ve never been to Australia, I’m pretty sure that this film is not what 40 degrees looks like –everyone wears clean crispy clothes, no one ever seems to have sweat marks. The acting is  ok. Nicole Kidman, Joseph Fiennes and Hugo Weaving’s talents all play a part, however, special mention has to be given to Nicholas Hamilton and Maddison Brown who play Tom and Lily respectively and who deliver the best performances in the film.I would highly recommend that you don’t watch this film, mainly due to the disappointing ending which leaves you feeling wholly dissatisfied and makes the last two hours you spent watching the film feel pointless.There are plenty of brilliant films with open endings like Agnes Of God, Reservoir Dogs or in more recent times, Birdman. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having an open ending, but the difference here is that all of the aforementioned films dealt with serious themes which overshadowed the plot in terms of importance. Strangerland has no point –it deals with no themes. The only theme this film even comes close to touching on is the reality of sexual impropriety in families. At one point in the film, a policeman asks Catherine if it was possible that Matthew may have ever touched or molested his children –which would actually explain everything. It would explain Lily’s out of control promiscuity. It would explain why Tom watches yet does nothing as his sister accepts to go into “the Box” with two men. It would explain why Catherine dresses up in her daughter’s clothes and then attempts to seduce one of her daughter’s sexual partners. But most importantly it would explain why the kids ran away in the first place. However, the film just has a scene or two where Matthew says he never touched them and apparently that’s that. The producer and writer of the film spoke before the screening and said that the film was meant to portray how a family copes when something terrible befalls them –which is laughable. The film does allude to multiple explanations for the children’s disappearance: did their parents abuse them and the kids attempted to escape? Did the local townspeople abduct them? Did “the land” take them? But ultimately it is not the viewer’s job to fill in the plot holes in a film and a director certainly can’t excuse the absence of an ending with a sort of “what happened to the kids –you decide!” explanation.Ultimately this film is just insulting. The audience sit still for two hours and endure the lacklustre acting, the mind-numbing script and the rather pathetic attempt at melodrama, and then not even tell us what happened to Lily. I don’t even think this film qualifies to be a ‘so bad it’s good’ film, it’s just too long and too boring. Simply put, Strangerland is two hours of my life I will never get back.