Beautiful Kate
Beautiful Kate MA 15+, 101 minutes
RACHEL WARD has written a characteristically impassioned op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald today (August 27, 2009) calling for a more intelligent go for Australian films of the kind that don't star Paul Hogan or Hugh Jackman. She's right, I think, and I'd like to preface what's written below (and posted yesterday) with a quote from her, because what she says I can only agree with. Here's the quote:
"Here are a few other adjectives with which film writers might broaden their Australian film vocabulary: enlightening, redemptive, inspiring, compassionate, beautiful, transformative, intelligent, human, engrossing, tender, confronting and, yes, entertaining."
So, please insert any or all the above adjectives in what follows because they all apply to Beautiful Kate
Rachel Ward has, for most of her beautiful life, divided people. She is one of the better known faces in movies and TV, yet a sizeable portion of the movie going and TV watching public would admit they think she isn’t much of an actress, very often. Wooden is the most often heard description. On the other hand there are those who see in her a fiery spirit and unquenchable zest for fresh fields. And of course, she is unutterably gorgeous. And married to Bryan Brown which makes her part of a formidable pair (whether it’s half or not is debatable).
Then she comes up with Beautiful Kate and it becomes obvious in a moment of blinding clarity that the gorgeousness isn’t just skin deep. Ward is a major, major talent as a screenwriter and director: the mind is not only a steel trap but a dazzling, light-filled place where ideas and visions of bleak tenderness are nursed to fruition.
Beautiful Kate is one of the finest films to come out of Australia in recent years and is up there with the best ever. Ward adapted the script from a novel by Newton Thornburg and it’s been pigeonholed as an Aussie adaptation of Southern Gothic. In truth, the story and its characters are universal and particular, all at once.
Grazier Bruce Kendall (Bryan Brown) is dying slowly of congestive heart disease in his ramshackle homestead looking out across parched paddocks to the Flinders Ranges. He is cared for by youngest daughter Sally (Rachel Griffiths) and appears to be waiting only to see his long-estranged son Ned (Ben Mendelsohn) and give him yet another serve of rancorous bitterness before he succumbs. Ned makes this easier by coming home with a obviously unsuitable young waitress fiancée (b>Maeve Dermody whose flashy city togs are as jarring in the parched, bedraggled landscape as her ambitions to be “an actress”.
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At the rotten core of this shattered family are Ned’s twin sister Kate (Sophie Lowe) dead aged 14 in a long ago car smash and their older brother, Cliff, (Josh McFarlane) also no longer with us. Ward uses flashback via Ned’s attempts at a cleansing journal, which integrates the device and makes more sense of it than is sometimes the case.
It is unfortunate that pre-publicity and post-viewing discussion of the film has most often brought up the fact that incest is also central to the narrative. “Unfortunate” because it suggests something about the story that isn’t actually there and has put off some of the more delicately inclined from going to see it. Beautiful Kate is an unsettling, beautiful and utterly absorbing drama about ordinary people in relatively ordinary circumstances. There are no stereotypical monsters, no evil predators, no victims; instead there is a clear-eyed, unsentimental picture of the domino effect on two generations of unbearable loss, lack of love and understanding, guilt and the resulting rage and frustration. It’s an explosive mix and Ward has carefully laid a trail of black powder all the way into its centre and lit the fuse. The result is slow-burning and magnificent.
A hitherto unknown but preternaturally gifted Scott O'Donnell plays the young Ned and looks uncannily like Ben Mendelsohn, who is now craggily handsome and intensely interesting. The camera spends a lot of time concentrating on his inner thoughts and it pays off: his is a terrific performance. The same has to be said for all the cast. There’s not a pulled punch or over-stepped moment among them. Bryan Brown is heartbreaking as the toxic old bastard with the emotional range of a lizard; and Rachel Griffiths is as intelligent and subtle as you’d expect.
The score, by Tex Perkins and Murray Paterson is evocative and understated and, amazingly, their first movie sound track. Cinematographer Andrew Commis makes the most of the Wilpena Pound setting with the shading of white to gold light, dust, distant purple mountains and bleached skies.
Yet even though she doesn’t appear on screen for a second, the film belongs to and is a triumph for its writer-director Rachel Ward. Hers is a singular talent that has come into its own via a long and winding road. She has been working to get it made for nearly nine years and although she’s made three well-received short films, this is her first feature. To write is one thing, to direct is another; to put both together and produce a film as fine as Beautiful Kate is astonishing and exhilarating. I saw it a week ago and am still preoccupied by it. A remarkable achievement.
