Director: Bill Bennett
Starring: Maya Strange, Rufus Sewell, Martin Donovan, Andrew S. Gilbert, John Howard, Max Cullen
In a Savage Land is a film I’ve wanted to see for over two decades. It did not screen in my region on its theatrical release in 1999, evaded me on VHS and DVD, but is now streaming on Stan. While it’s entirely possible I’ve been looking for it in all the wrong places, the fact that a $10 million investment—chump change by Hollywood standards, but a fortune locally—can fall out of general circulation is a sorry indictment of both industry and audiences. That it found its way back into circulation where other films of the era remain in limbo—see Angst, A Little Bit of Soul, Dead Letter Office, to name a handful—is no small feat.
Anthropology student Evelyn (Maya Strange) marries her lecturer Phillip (Martin Donovan) and accompanies him on a field trip to the Trobriand Islands of Papa New Guinea. Phillip ingratiates himself with the male locals, and is taken aback that his new bride wishes to do the same with the local women, and is not content to be subordinate in both marriage and fieldwork. Further sources of tension arise in the forms of Mick Carpenter (Rufus Sewell), a pearl trader who Evelyn befriends, and the Second World War unfolding around and closing in on the Trobriands.
In a Savage Land belongs to one of my favourite niche sub-genres of Australian film which could be termed, for lack of an existing label, "Anglos abroad": stories of Westerners becoming embroiled in offshore political (Balibo) and/or romantic (Far East, The Year of Living Dangerously) intrigue in the recent past or volatile present. It’s a sub-genre that affords local directors an all-too-rare opportunity to concoct some exotic, old-fashioned, classic Hollywood hokum (Far East is essentially a Casablanca riff in Eastern Asia) and grants Australian actors a rare chance to play crusading professionals and reluctant freedom fighters; that is to say, movie star roles. It’s a collective to which I’d sneak in Rolf de Heer’s Amazon-set The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, perhaps the closest in milieu and international star casting, if not plotting and actual geography, to In a Savage Land.
In a Savage Land feels like it should be adapted from a novel, given its narrative sweep and thematic texture. In fact, the story was invented for the screen, albeit drawing on historical materials, and co-written by Bennett with his wife and regular producer Jennifer Bennett (it is her sole screenwriting credit). The film depicts colonialism in its various forms, illustrating how mercenaries, missionaries, and objective academics alike all meddle, impose, exploit, withhold, endanger, or encroach upon the locals in some way, with even the most benevolent of intentions lined with self-interest. The soiling of Phillip and Evelyn’s pristine white apparel over the course of the film as they grapple with moral quandaries visualises this theme. Whilst damning the colonial enterprise, the film nonetheless reflexively, perhaps inevitably, highlights the ‘otherness’ of the locals, especially when Evelyn sheds some of the trappings of civilisation. But the Bennetts’ script is intelligent and bucks the obvious at several junctures: most notably, a potentially hokey love triangle between Phillip, Evelyn and Mick does not unfold as expected.
This is the third Bill Bennett film I’ve seen, and I’m still getting a handle on his work. The trio of Bennett films I’ve seen is a disparate one: this handsome period production, the edgy and jittery Kiss or Kill, and laidback comedy The Nugget. As mentioned in my review of the latter, I’d call myself an admirer by default, and on In a Savage Land I was especially struck by Bennett's resourcefulness; for example, the way he conjures pre- and post-war Adelaide (before and after Evelyn’s Trobriands odyssey) through smart, economical use of locations.
Bennett also elucidates strong work from his capable cast, as he did on Kiss or Kill and The Nugget. Strange is an actress I know mostly from Garage Days; here she delivers an altogether different performance but, with her short curly red hair and sharp features, carries the same whiff of modernity, befitting a character who doesn’t belong in her surrounds and who chafes against patriarchal norms within academia and matrimony. Had the film been a success, this could have been a star is born moment for Strange ala those experienced by Cate Blanchett, Frances O’Connor, and Rose Byrne around the same time. As it stands, it’s an excellent performance.
So too are the performances of Sewell and Donovan, two gifted imports whose best work, for my money, has been Antipodean-adjacent: Sewell excelled as the haunted hero in Alex Proyas’ locally-shot Dark City and as the aristocratic ne’re do well in the Heath Ledger-starring A Knight’s Tale, while Donovan, best known for his abrasive work in Hal Hartley films Trust and Amateur, delivered his most affecting work in Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady. At the time of In a Savage Land’s release, both were somewhat exciting young 90s actors on the cusp of becoming 21st century jobbing actors—Donovan has accrued a sizeable 116 acting credits, a long way from Eric Roberts but ahead even of fellow Hartley regular and scene-stealing gig guzzler Parker Posey—and one can imagine a version of this film with Australian male leads: Richard Roxburgh and David Wenham spring to mind as Mick and Phillip equivalents. But Sewell and Donovan’s foreignness adds to their casting. The stodgy American, rakish Briton, and Australian ingénue are not only foreigners in the Trobriands, but amongst each other, never completely gelling.
Sturdy support is provided by a lineup of Australian staples: non-former-PM John Howard (The Club), Marshall Napier (I Love You Too), Andrew S. Gilbert (The Jammed, Ned Kelly) and Max Cullen (Hoodwink, Starstruck, The Return of Captain Invincible). DP Danny Ruhlmann, who later shot The Nugget (plus The Night We Called It a Day), captures the raw beauty of the Papa New Guinean locations, and gives the film a period tinge without either muting or over-burnishing the compositions.
In a Savage Land strikes me as a rare Australian film that hubristically reaches for greatness in its production scale and its narrative and thematic sweep. It doesn’t quite get there, but it’s precisely the type of film Down Under Flix was created to spotlight, and I’ll take it over ostensibly more successful films of altogether more modest ambition.
Ben