Beneath Clouds

This is a deceptively simple story of two young people, both on the run, meeting up on a rural New South Wales road. Both are aboriginal and both are, for family reasons, headed for Sydney. Nothing particularly dramatic happens but there is enough incident to keep the viewer watching, and perhaps see life as it is for alienated young blacks in contemporary Australia.

The director, Ivan Sen, has a strong visual sense, and he captures the land with breathtaking vistas (he also wrote much of the music). It is not the outback, it is the central west New South Wales of big commercial farming – cotton, sunflowers and corn, yet even the big farms are dwarfed by their surroundings. The young couple proceeds through this magnificent landscape beneath the clouds of the title preoccupied by their own problems, though the boy (Damien Pitt) is angrily aware that this is the land taken from his forbears. She (Danielle Hall) on the other hand rejects her Aboriginal background and focuses on her Irish father and the green misty land he came from.

The dialogue is pretty sparse and the delivery often a little wooden but the two leads express the emotions required more than adequately. Their relationship could not be further from a conventional teen romance, rather they are two emotionally stunted people who come to realise they can still care for someone else.

As for the rest, there are the inevitable black brothers in clapped out HQ Holdens, a just cruisin' but still hassled by the police, and plenty of hostile or merely patronising whites. One old white man (Arthur Dignam) does give them a lift but most whites give our couple a wide berth. I thought the story required a little more development; the film describes a situation rather than tells a story, but it does so with great simplicity and honesty. It's a cliché I know, but I await Ivan Sen's next work with great interest – he's a considerable talent.

I thoroughly enjoyed Beneath Clouds, and thought it was a fantastic film all round...especially since it is part of the rise of Aussie films dealing with Aborigines (both historical and contemporary). The main thing that struck me with the film, however, was the similarities it had with Tom Tykwer's work (specifically The Princess And The Warrior, and to a lesser extent Heaven). I thought the mood, depth of emotion and the manner in which the story was told was almost identical to Tykwer's work. I mainly am writing this to see if anyone else shared my thoughts on this. Considering that Tykwer is one of my favourite directors I guess this was the only aspect of the film that disappointed me (there's nothing wrong with either mimicking or coincidentally sharing stylistic aspects, it's just that I couldn't stop thinking 'this is a Tykwer film' when watching it).

This is a small film but the cinematography is beautiful. The performances of the two main actors is also wonderful and it quite deserves the awards it won. This film tells no big stories of the interaction between the white and aboriginal communities (although it shows the inherent racism of the mainly white police force). What this film does leave me with is a sense of two real, marginalised, teenagers trying to make sense of their place in the world and willing to undertake what journeys are necessary to find those places.

Ivan Sen was a guest of the Dendy art-house cinema group at the advance screening I attended. He spoke about the script writing process, casting and funding hurdles at length.

The previous 6 years of Ivan's career have been devoted to producing short films; all of which have thematically built towards the story in 'Beneath Clouds'.

Taking its title from the Pearl Jam song 'Black', the film shows two young people (Lena and Vaughn) who escape from restrictive situations to rendevous with a remote parent in a search for love and validation ... only it is not clear if that love will be returned.

Sen wrote the script from his own experiences growing up in Alice Springs with an Aboriginal mother and an absent European father (like Lena) and his full-blooded cousins constantly in and out of juvenile courts and detention centres (like Vaughn and Lena's brother). He said that at first writing a feature-length script was difficult given his past film efforts ran to a maximum of 30 minutes. However, the interim draft boasted 140 pages. During and between script-writing he listened to lots of music (not only Pearl Jam!) and wrote some musical phrases and themes that become the film sound-track in the hands of Alistair Spence. The final script was 90 pages, and, by neat coincidence, the running time of the film is exactly 90 minutes!

Vaughn was cast by approaching a young man on the streets of Moree. Damian Pitt was initially incredulous at being asked to play a lead role in a feature film, but was quick to come around. The approach of casting Lena, explained Sen, was more conventional. Although he tried to recruit a female lead in the same way as Damian was found, the process of driving by, pulling up slowly, rolling down the window and asking 'do you want to be in a movie?' was fraught with too many sleazy connotations to be taken seriously by the young women he approached! Through a friend, Sen viewed an audition tape featuring Danielle Hall, and though initially ambivalent, the director was awestruck after meeting her in her hometown of Wee Waa and immediately sensed her ability to identify with the character and project the lines of the script as if they were her own. Obviously, judges at the Berlin festival were equally moved. The remainder of the cast were largely amateur, recruited around Moree.

Funding for the film was conditional on it being a feature, to enable it to travel the worldwide festival circuit as a stand-alone picture. Chief funding bodies were the NSW Film Commission and the Pacific Film & TV Commission - the former association ensured all location filming was in NSW. Roads and scenery around Moree, Gunnedah, Blacktown and Sydney show a great dynamic range of terrain and geography. From the time of the green-light of funding to shooting took only 4 months; the shoot went for 6 weeks; and post-production/editing took 6 months; all at a cost of 2-and-a-half million Australian dollars (roughly one-and-a-quarter mill. US dollars). Not cheap by Oz standards but not expensive either in an international sense.

My impression of the film is of a modern classic, up there with Gallipolli, Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith. It was well-deserving of the attention of the Berlin jury, and Ivan the auteur and musician has a great future ahead of him. His next project will be a black comedy set in Mexico about people who visit a small town hoping to be abducted by aliens.

Mr Sen, best of luck, and please don't get all indulgent like Russell Crowe or Billy Bob Thornton by fronting a lame rock band! Keep it real.

The basic approach of "Beneath Clouds" is admirable. It's exactly the quiet, personal type of story I usually love. But here, it's too quiet. Breathing room finds itself drifting into meaningless space. There's a kind of politeness on display here, in the way the action is filmed, how the characters interact. They take too many turns in dialogue, allow for more room than would come naturally. It's awfully polite. The actors themselves are good enough - Dannielle Hall, especially. She provides a convincing lead performance, enough to ground the story in a more personal way. I was less impressed by Damian Pitt. Neither of them have gone on to pursue an acting career.

Ivan Sen wrote and directed this film, and all of its main strengths and weaknesses come down to him. He focuses on character, but in a way that pushes against the grain. He seems intent on making his characters talk and act in ways that are less than believable. He focuses on cinematography, but in a way that feels too clean and bright and artificial. His landscapes seem more like postcards. He writes a script designed to be a large-scale adventure/road trip, but provides hardly enough content to pad out an hour and twenty minute film. Even at that, it feels woefully overextended.

"Beneath Clouds" has a fair amount of potential. Indeed, the first twenty minutes promise a film of considerably more adventure and believability than is ultimately delivered. It's a good effort, but without much spark.