As is stated at the start of the film The New Boy, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Australian government put a scheme in practice to ‘breed out the black blood’. This shameful doctrine saw many young Indigenous Australian children separated from their families, and their beliefs, to be entrenched in Christianity and the white education system. Warwick Thornton’s new film takes an abstracted look at that period, while also drawing upon his own experiences in Catholic boarding schools.
In the film, an unnamed Aboriginal boy (Aswan Reid) is captured by local lawmen, and delivered to a wartime monastery, and into the care of Sister Eileen (Cate Blanchett). Here he watches with a mixture of fascination, boredom, and bemusement at how life in this quaint churchly orphanage slowly drags past. While Sister Eileen and Sister Mum (Deborah Mailman) try to steer the boys into being good Christians, George (Wayne Blair) the handyman, seems more suspicious of this boy who reminds him uncomfortably of his younger self. While there is no abuse perpetrated upon the boy after his initial kidnap, it’s clear that no-one else understands him, nor he them, speaking not a word of English.
The New Boy is something of an odd film. While many others before have tried to tackle the antipodean anxiety with the treatment of the Aboriginal people, usually they dwell upon the injustice and horror of it, such as in Rabbit-Proof Fence, or The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. However, Thornton instead seems rather more concerned with the literal pitting of Christianity against his native beliefs, and the literal magic it seems to confer on him.
The magical realism element of the film is also where the film becomes most head scratching. There is a statue of Jesus, which blinks and moves when the boy looks at it, yet it’s antics are unseen by all others. He can summon a burning sparkly fireball of healing energy, yet the film is unclear if it really exists, despite him using it to heal someone in front of Sister Eileen and George.
There’s that same dreamlike ethereality which so often suffuses New Australian Cinema is present here, but suffers from the same detachment, and stumbling awkwardness as the story. Despite there being threads of a solid set of ideas here, they’re disparately strung throughout a movie that generally feels rather aimless a lot of the time. It’s hard to say if this is a result of the 10 minutes lopped out of the film since it premiered at Cannes, but if not then it perhaps was a wise choice to shorten an already gangly and unfocused production.
There is a gentle cosiness to the tale, despite the deliberately bloody conflation of religion and the toll it literally takes on the new boy. It’s largely that lack of antagonism, or struggle which makes the whole film feel rather without purpose. The ideas that do threaten to turn the whimsical and beautifully dreamlike experience into an actual story, are almost immediately tossed aside. One such thread is that the monastery’s legal owner has died, and Sister Eileen is continuing the place off the books, but this has no real payoff other than a single comic scene, and a couple of terse exchanges between the grown-ups.
While Blanchett is as good as you’d expect. Blair and Mailman both do well with the material given to them. Reid is excellent as the ‘new boy’ and manages to suffuse his scenes with a wonder that isn’t ever quite paid off, as the film seems uncertain if we’re supposed to find his actions logical or confusing.
It’s a real pity, as the cinematography is excellent and it’s clear that Thornton saw this as some deep artful and soulful pondering. Yet what we have in the end is a beautiful but confused muddle, which screams loudly, saying very little, until it decides to wallop home a blunt and facile metaphor with neither grace nor subtlety.
On limited release in cinemas now