Un cri dans la nuit

When I first saw "A Cry in the Dark", I had no idea what the plot was. But when I saw it, I was shocked at what it portrayed. When I saw it a second time in an Australian Cinema class, I realized a second point: communication issues. You see, when a dingo snatched Lindy Chamberlain's (Meryl Streep) baby, she and her husband Michael (Sam Neill) were grief-stricken but didn't show it. As Seventh Day Adventists, they believed that God willed this to happen, and so they couldn't mourn it. But when people all over Australia saw their lack of sadness, everyone started believing that Lindy did it herself.

The point is, the wrong message got communicated to the public, and it turned people against Lindy. Even though this was a pure accident, it still happened. It may be one of the biggest disasters resulting from the existence of mass media, regardless of any media outlet's political views.

As for the performances, Streep does a very good job with an Australian accent (no surprise there), and Sam Neill is equally great. You will probably get blown away just by what you see here. Definitely one of Fred Schepisi's best movies ever.

Some movies seem to be made before we are ready for them. As I watched this film, made in 1988, in 1999, I thought I was watching the O.J. Simpson debacle (although I have very different opinions about the innocence of the individuals in each situation).

The Australian news media, if this movie is to be believed, devoured the case of a possible infanticide and truth was left as an afterthought. It was scary to see the scenes of invasive, swarming media hordes, ridiculous accounts of half-truths and lies and debates over the supposed merits of the case by persons at all levels of society.

Equally appalling is the media's depiction as indifferent and uncomprehending of the technical information in the case. I do wish more was made of the issue of religious prejudice in the case (the accused are Seven-Day Adventists).

Today these circuses have become common but that makes the lesson only more important.

Streep is excellent as usual, and this is the best I've ever seen Sam Neill. The Aussie accents get a bit thick at times but not incomprehensible.

Common sense tells us that "seeing is believing." Experience tells us that, when motivation is strong enough, it's the other way around -- "believing is seeing." Under pressure from the press and from public opinion, criminalists see blood where there is no blood. Forensic pathologists who have never see a dingo claim an absence of dingo teeth marks. Investigators see an arterial blood spray where there is nothing but a sound-deadening compound.

The case took place at a time when another of those episodes of collective hysteria was sweeping the English-speaking world. Satanic worshippers lurked in the most unlikely place and preschools were filled with pedophiles. Smokers endangered our health by subjecting us to whiffs of the burning weed. We seem to need an expression for our collective hatred. There's even evidence from gerontological studies that angry people tend to outlive more pacific individuals -- an effect the authors attributed to "the necessary enemy." Maybe now, after the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, we'll have more palpable enemies than will o' the wisps.

The Chamberlains were caught up in that wave of collective hatred. The case must have been a dramatic one -- wild dog eats baby! One can imagine the headlines, the earnest discussions, the fixed conclusions based on presumptions. Lindy Chamberlain certainly did nothing to discourage the calumny heaped upon her. She wasn't very good at playing the victim, in contrast to, say, the Menendez brothers who slaughtered their parents, then wept on the stand while describing how abused they were, and wound up with a mistrial. And not nearly as good as Susan Smith, the woman in the unlikely town of Union, South Carolina, who drowned her two children and sobbed openly on TV while begging the mythical black kidnapper not to harm them.

Well, after all, occupying the role of victim is an acquired skill and some have acquired less of it than others. (Mersault, in Camus' "The Stranger.") Lindy Chamberlain, as expertly played here my Meryl Streep, a phenomenally talented technical actress, is not a likable person. She matter-of-factly whines on, complaining about things in a sing-song voice, punctuated by occasional outbursts of anger. She needed some coaching from the Menendez' on how to engage the jury's sympathy. And she LOOKS wrong too. She should be small and vulnerable, instead of lumpy. And she seems to have gone out of her way to look ill-groomed. Streep, properly glamorized, is a beautiful and intelligent-looking woman. As Lindy Chamberlain her eyebrows are plucked and then painted back in as mere smudges by the makeup department. Her black hair (which should have been blonde) was probably meant to be in a style called page boy (is that right?) but comes out looking more like a Nazi helmet. Streep must have put on weight for the role. Her arms and breasts are flabby and her neck seems the size of a telephone pole, reducing her lips to a tiny pink orifice in the middle of the vast featureless plane of her face. She's as unsympathetic as all get out and human nature being what it is, people are likely to get confused about the difference between being dislikable and being guilty of murder.

Sam Neill is far more sympathetic a character but, where Streep is arrogant, he's sensitive, muddled, and weak. He's completely discombobulated by the prosecution's series of questions: "Did she say she saw anything in the dingo's mouth? Did she say she didn't see anything in the dingo's mouth? Did she tell you she saw NOTHING in the dingo's mouth?" Confused, he answers that, yes, she told him she saw the dingo come out with the baby in her mouth.

Reminds me of an interrogation from "Catch-22", something like this. Superior officer to subordinate: "When did you say we were a bunch of fools?" Subordinate: "I never said you were fools." Superior: "Now you're telling me when you DIDN'T say it. I'm asking you when you DID say we were a bunch of fools." Subordinate: "I ALWAYS never say you were a bunch of fools."

It's a fast-paced movie. If there were any dissolves I missed them. The story comes to us in pointed scenes of the Chamberlains together, intercut with snippets of public reaction to the spectacle. But the movie, for all the tragedy inherent in the story, isn't gripping. It not only has no hero or heroine, there's no one who's particularly likable. Neill suffers in silence and Streep has almost done too good a job alienating us from her character and her anguish. But overall, whatever it lacks in emotional impact it more than makes up for in its instructive quality. And of course our sympathies are with the real-life Chamberlains who were put through an immeasurable ordeal. The press and the gossipy, half-hysterical public may be easy targets, but they're very real threats to our collective common sense.

Meryl Streep is such a genius. Well, at least as an actress. I know she's been made fun of for doing a lot of roles with accents, but she nails the accent every time. Her performance as Lindy Chamberlain was inspiring. Mrs. Chamberlain, as portrayed here, was not particularly likable, nor all that smart. But that just makes Streep's work all the more remarkable. I think she is worth all 10 or so of her Oscar nominations. About the film, well, there were a couple of interesting things. I don't know much about Australia, but the theme of religious bigotry among the general public played a big part in the story. I had largely missed this when I first saw the film some years ago, but it came through loud and clear yesterday. And it seems the Australian press is just as accomplished at misery-inducing pursuit and overkill as their American colleagues. A pretty good film. A bit different. Grade: B

The facts in the case of an Australian couple persecuted by a headline-hungry press should be familiar to viewers of the CBS news show 60 Minutes, which aired the story (not coincidentally) just before this film was released. Both versions recount the disappearance during a weekend camping trip of Lindy and Michael Chamberlain's infant daughter, and the subsequent three-ring media circus which led to wild (and totally fabricated) accusations of cult fanaticism and ritual sacrifices, and eventually to a murder conviction for the bereaved mother. But the big screen dramatization has more in mind than just a strong reprimand for misguided journalism ethics. The reporters covering the case are shown to be more ferocious than the wild dingo dog claimed by the Chamberlain's to have killed their child, but the screenplay wisely implicates public opinion as well, which condemned Lindy Chamberlain to prison for not having a telegenic personality (the same trait might also lose her sympathy with moviegoers, despite another challenging performance by Meryl Streep). Director Fred Schepisi presents the story as a straightforward, undemonstrative docudrama, letting the cold-blooded courtroom drama speak for itself, with a pair of excellent actors (Streep and Sam Neill) taking up the slack.