Lucky Miles

This film is a major leap forward from recent Aussie films, thankfully getting away from drug-raddled Western suburbs teenagers and quirky comedy clowns. The film-makers are willing to take on a big subject, a major global theme, that of displaced people and the extraordinary acts of quiet courage that so-called "boat people" are often required to perform simply to survive. It is very well directed, skillfully guiding an almost entirely unknown and inexperienced cast by not relying on too many long, challenging acting scenes but flick-passing from one story to the next in a way where the limited acting skills of the cast are best served. This is not a perfect film, it is too long at some points, and once in a while commits the cardinal sin of letting the audience get ahead of the film in knowing full well what will happen next. Another careful and unemotional edit, trimming eight to ten minutes of splashing in billabongs, tinkering with utes and trudging through scrub could only help. But these are minor quibbles in a film that achieves so much, that aims high and gets there. This and "Clubland" are without doubt the best two films so far in2007.

This is a (non-romantic) comedy, based on several true life stories. An Indonesian fishing boat-full of unauthorized male migrants from Iraq and Cambodia is put ashore by the villainous captain on the north-western coast of Western Australia. The migrants are told all they have to do is climb up from the beach to a road from where they can catch a bus to Perth. What the captain fails to tell them that Perth is 2000 km away and the nearest bus stop (of the "Lucky Miles" bus company) is in Broome, 300 km away. Discovering the fraud, the party breaks up. Boat people are no novelty in these parts and most of them are soon picked up by the authorities, but three of them, Arun, a Cambodian who is trying to get to his Australian father in Perth, Yousif an Iraqi engineer who has lost everything at home and Ramelan, a member of the fishing boat's crew get themselves lost in the desert.

They are, however, not alone. A border patrol operated by Army reservists is on their trail, but the pursuit would have to be described as leisurely. One of the reservists, an Aboriginal, is quite at home in the bush and his superior tracking skills means his colleagues don't have to put themselves out very much. It is pleasant to record that the Army guys are actually concerned about the fate of their quarry. The lost trio on the other hand have nothing in common except that they are lost together and much of the comedy arises from their incompatibilities. They have to co-operate to survive, but it's a close-run thing.

Outback South Australia stood in for the northwest of WA, but it is still a tough landscape. The film-makers very sensibly shot on location between June and August, but you can still sense the heat. I'd like to make this film compulsory viewing for those of our politicians and officials who equate boat people as criminals. In the year in which this film was set, 1990, asylum-seekers were not automatically locked up. The future of the people in this film was quite bright. Now, of course they would be removed from the mainland, and dumped in our rented Pacific hell-hole, Nauru until we can persuade some other country (New Zealand perhaps) to take them.

Immigration politics aside, the central characters are well realized and we become involved in their fate. Some well-known names in Australian acting pop up in small roles, but the main roles are taken by relative newcomers. Kenneth Moraleda as Arun and Rodney Afif as Yousif really shine. Afif gives us a man who is angry all the time, yet eventually we understand and even like him. Moraleda is not so showy but equally sympathetic.

There was some nice camera work and clever cutting though at times the story meandered a bit. Entertaining and thoughtful.

Left to find their way over the sand dunes for a bus to Perth these wanderers have little understanding of how far they really are from a town. Such is the setting for this film looking at what it means to flee your homeland for another. Apart from the political environment, this film gives a new perspective to an old story - that of asylum seekers, refugees, queue jumpers or the myriad of loaded terms used these days to express a simple idea...fleeing a country due to crises, finding a new home or reuniting with family (father). A comic tale 'inspired by true stories' filled with moments of laughter, frustration and tears of relief. A variety of atmospheres are painted against the backdrop of the vast Australian landscape showing its beauty in the colour of the reeds and grasses, red soil and iridescent blue ocean. Three contrasting stories are told in parallel in the western desert complete with goanna and abandoned miner's hut. Sweeping views of the Australian desert landscape on the edge of the sea are like actors themselves. These stories are ripe for the telling with characters drawn in three dimensions, believable, brought to life as real people rather than stereotypes echoing our fears. This film celebrates the look of the outback, and is told with humour, sensitivity and empathy for those caught up in ordinary circumstances outside our own world view and yet closer than we think.

Few films today dare to treat our border control issues with situational humor. Even fewer rely on a largely unknown cast, to carry a story that has very little to do with saving the western world or pointing any fingers. But almost none consider that coming to the western world could be worse than 'where ever it is they came from' for an asylum seeker. Lucky Miles is such a film. It takes the politics out of culture clashes and anchors conflict in the need for survival. It challenges stereotypes both international and indigenous without tippy-toeing or apologizing. Films like this one are long, long over due, and call the need for a shift in our attitudes to generating new Australian filmmakers. Lucky Miles is a leap forward in old fashioned cinema, and a beacon for commercial free stories.

Every so often we get to see a little film on TV not too long after its hardtop screening. And this one was worth the second look. It's another way of looking at the Australian outback, not for its awesome beauty but for the challenges it sets for people not used to such a landscape. Here we have such a challenge, the protagonists being asylum seekers who are victims of amoral people-smugglers. This is currently a political hot potato in Australia, as it has been for many years. But this film has a quirky edge to it, and the seriousness of the images is relieved hugely by the humour. It really is fun, and the way the Australians in uniform handle the reality is the fun that has come to be known as gallows humour. Imagine you're a cop or a soldier faced with a nasty situation. You grin, and relieve the tension by making light of things. Resourcefulness and mateship are supposed to be part of the Australian psyche, and this great little film has it in spades. Think "Bush Mechanics". Think "Flight of the Phoenix". And listen out for the voice on the radio. That's the beautiful Deborah Mailman, whom the casting agent would surely have loved to at least do a walk-on. See it on wide screen.