Snowtown is a really hard film to watch, and I don’t mean ‘hard to watch’ in a so-deeply-disturbing-and-harrowing-and-confronting-and-interesting way, (which it should be) I mean ‘hard to watch’ in a stupidly-pretentious-and-up-it’s-own-arse way, which is just so fucking disappointing isn’t it? Yet another missed opportunity to resurrect audience’s faith in Australian filmmaking. Sigh. True-crime-film is a delicate genre, and, unfortunately, Snowtown hasn’t pulled it off.
Let’s get one thing straight before I begin, Lucas Pittaway (who plays the lead Jamie Vlassakis) is nothing, whatsoever, like Heath Ledger. Sorry to start with such a snarky and seemingly inane point, but all the lead up hype to this film has been banging on about Pittaway being Heath Ledger and it’s been really irritating, it’s just such absurd, PR, rot. Ignoring the fact he’s not got even half the looks Ledger had, HEATH LEDGER WAS A FUCKING ACTOR. Pittaway, like most of Snowtown’s cast, is not, and it damn well shows in his far, far, less than mediocre performance. Justin Kurzel has attempted to tell a ‘humanised’ version of the story by centring the film around Pittaway’s character, Jamie, and show the seduced-and-corrupted-by-the-desperately-craved-father-figure angle on the tragedy. However, sadly, what with not actually being an actor, Pittaway doesn’t have the range required to pull off the angle…(Let’s not even get into whether this a tad sensationalised and irresponsible, insensitive, way to tell the story… Surely the kid had agency in the horror that shouldn’t be filmically excused with a but-he-was-corrupted-and-coerced telling of the story?) Snowtown is littered with stupid shots of Pittaway not doing much. Pittaway ‘acts’ by looking blanky at the camera in the hope the audiences will do the work and insert complicated emotions. It makes sense, he’s a non-actor so he’s been directed by Kurzel not to do much, because the camera is a sensitive eye and picks up everything, so the best thing to do with non-actors is to get them to stay still and then they won’t over act. In this way, Pittaway delivers an adequate(ish) performance, punctuated with moments when he gasps a bit and dribbles tears in a mildly moving manner. It is certainly not an embarrassing performance but it isn’t enough to make the boy the lynch-pin of the story. We’re supposed to see the story through his eyes and understand him to an extent, but as nothing much goes on in his eyes (apart from when he cries) we just don’t and the whole story merely lingers around him, weakly.
Casting non-actors was one of Kurzel’s many pretentious choices that didn’t end up paying off in his artshit-house film. A choice that means Daniel Henshall, (who plays John Bunting,) being the only trained actor in the film, has to carry the entire film, and, while his performance is sound, it’s not good enough to carry or save the film. The performance Kurzel didn’t pay enough attention to, (but I’m betting audiences will) is that of Louise Harris, who plays Elizabeth Harvey, Jamie’s mother. It is Harris, not Pittaway that is the really exciting fluke of the non-actor casting. It is with Harris that Kurzel did find that gritty combination of performance and real. That terrifying, and heartbreaking, edge of artifice, that honesty and earnestness that can come from a truly gifted non-actor who is free from all the pretension/wank/ambition of having acting as their vocation. I feel, it would have been a truly fascinating film, if told through the eyes of Elizabeth rather than Jamie. Her journey is heart-wrenching and Harris goes well beyond doing justice to role. She embodies vulnerability and strength. She explores the (sickening and terrifying) love that Elizabeth felt for Bunting. Her performance is complicated and nuanced and heartbreaking and breathtaking. She is the little bit of human that makes this dreadful film watchable. Harris is sensational but at the end of the day, (and the way-too-fucking-long-film) I think the non-actor thing was a really silly call and didn’t do the powerful thing that Kurzel was banking on it doing… but then, the whole film didn’t do the powerful thing Kurzel was banking on. Kurzel has delivered a really adequate film. It’s not a masterpiece and it desperately wants to be, and pretends it is oh-so-profound, which is really awkward to watch. The aesthetic is cold and bleak. The film starts abruptly in a we’ve-been-whisked-away-into-this-frightening-world sort of way and begins with mood-setting voice-over and heart beat like score. The cinematography (by Adam Arkapaw) is really wanky. Heaps of self-consciously artful shots like shots through blinds or from between poker-machines behind ashtray, or reflections from arcade games. It’s very look-at-me-be-an-artist. Which is annoying. Kurzel needed to get on with telling the story and not spend so much time loudly proving how clever and interesting a film-maker he is. I really disliked the disorienting way the story was edited too. It is mostly chronological but you never really know where you are in the story and you don’t get enough of a sense of ending at the beginning. The story does come the full circle, but by the time we get there we’ve forgotten where we were because the beginning was kind of forgettable. Meh. I’m bored of writing. Save your time and money and give Snowtown a miss. Australian film will make its comeback one day. But not just yet… Sadly…
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