Beneath Clouds

There are very few movies that I will want to watch more than once, but Beneath Clouds is definitely one of them.

The majority of movies I have seen over the past years were very much focused on plot development and I think most viewers will expect a movie to be heavy on the storyline.

What I expect from a movie is something totally different, though. None of my favourite movies have a a memorable or particularly well developed storyline. However, they all have something in common. All of them have a very powerful and gripping atmosphere, and it is this atmosphere that comes to my mind whenever I think back of these movies. Not a particular scene, a particular quote or a masterly twist in the storyline, not the visual effects or the sophisticated sound.

This movie would be just as enjoyable watching it from a low quality videotape on a black and white telly with low sound quality.

Beneath Clouds instantly became a favourite with me, from the very first moments I started watching it. I love this movie, simply because it gives you an experience, a combination of vision, sound, thought and emotion that cannot be described with words and that is exactly what I expect from a movie.

If you think what I am saying here is b.ll.cks and doesn't make sense - well, it's up to you. But if you know what I am blathering about you will understand and LOVE this movie. Wochit.

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.

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.

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.

Lena is blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Most see her as white at first glance. She has an Aboriginal mother and an Irish father. When her mother gets her brother arrested, she decides to leave. She fails to get back on the bus at a stop. She starts walking and is joined by Vaughn. He escaped from low security prison work detail to go home to see his sick mother. The two struggle over views as they sometimes hitch rides.

There is a quiet sincerity personified by Lena. It is slow at times with its quietness. However, there is also a magnetism about the two leads. The young actors possess a dignity and power within them. It's an intriguing theatrical debut for filmmaker Ivan Sen.