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.

With the concept of what Australian is being challenged and revised in contemporary Australian society, this film hits home hard. A challenge for a connection with the great geography of the Australian landscape and an identity crisis. It reinforces the Aboriginal context of Australian history and the effects of what modern Aboriginality deals with. Fabulous movie! Emotive, raw and definitely Australian! 'Beneath Clouds' also captures the spirit of Australian youth and the mateship that had underpinned almost every friendship of every Australian. The Australian spirituality of inextricable connection to the land is also emphasised through the scenery filmed. A personal journey is also presented: beautiful, intimate and detailed. Though the characters share dissimilarity, it is the force that brings them together and reinforces the Australian notion of mateship, identity and spirituality.

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.

I have little to add to the excellent reviews above. Tarkovsky? Tykwer? No wonder I loved it. I shall go away and have a good think about those connections.

My contribution is a bit of information about Australian aboriginals that may help non-Australians appreciate this exquisite movie.

1. It is normal for Australian aboriginals to take a while to speak to each other (or anyone) if they are strangers. When thinking about this I compared the film to Eric Rohmer and to Iranian films about young people. Iranians and Rohmer characters chatter endlessly about trivia but the powerful effect of the movie creeps up on you in the same way.

2. It is easy to miss the moment in which Vaughan discovers that Lena is Aboriginal. This is an important turning point in the film. To avoid spoiling I'll only give you a tip. An older person is involved and there is no discussion. If you watch for it you will see it.

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.