Article - Melbourne Age, Friday 20th of June, 2008
Monic Hendrickx adds a presence to Unfinished Sky, says Philippa Hawker.
THE Australian film Unfinished Sky has a simple premise. John, a solitary man living in isolation on a Queensland rural property that has seen better days, comes across a stranger, a woman who stumbles onto his land, distressed, bruised, exhausted.
He takes her into the house, helps her recover, and chooses to keep her presence a secret. There are unexplained reasons behind her arrival and his decision to conceal it. And the situation is complicated by their inability to communicate: the woman, Tahmeena, speaks barely a word of English.
Unfinished Sky, says William McInnes, who plays John, is "a film with a brain". It wasn't hard, he says, to take the role. It is also, as it happens, a film with a previous life: it is based on a Dutch movie called The Polish Bride, released in 1998, which made a star of its female lead, Dutch actress Monic Hendrickx.
There are many differences between the two films, in tone and narrative: Unfinished Sky's director, Peter Duncan (Children of the Revolution, Passion) who adapted the script, prefers not to describe it as a remake. But Hendrickx once again takes the lead role. In the Dutch film, she played a Polish woman; in Unfinished Sky, she is an Afghan refugee.
The idea of casting the same actress sounds, at first, like an awkward, even prescriptive link. It wasn't part of the package to begin with, but Duncan says "once the story had been settled" it was suggested by the Dutch and Australian producers that he might like to meet Hendrickx, a well-known actress in Europe. It might help with funding.
"No pressure," he was told, but he went to the meeting in what calls an "appropriately cynical" frame of mind, only to be immediately impressed by her presence � "this dark, Amazonian figure" who walked into the restaurant � but also by the insights that she brought to the notion of a new film. His cynicism evaporated. And, he adds, Hendrickx had just as many doubts: her initial response had been to ask why on earth she would take a role that she had already played.
In fact, says McInnes, Hendrickx made it clear to him that she was struck by the contrast rather than the similarity between the two projects. It was, she told him, a different part and a different film.
Duncan was aware that before the shoot members of his Gold Coast-based crew had reservations about the prospect of a Dutch actress playing an Afghan woman in an Australian film. "They can be very jaded," he says, "but on the very first day of the shoot, they saw what she brought to the role, and they realised, OK, this is serious, this can be good."
The title of the film is a reference to an object, a giant jigsaw puzzle that John is working on, a photograph of a vast expanse of blue sky with wisps of clouds. And the film itself is a puzzle of fragments: there are mysteries about both characters that the audience figures out gradually.
We have fleeting glimpses of Tahmeena's memories and experiences of violence. And, bit by bit, we discover things about John's past, the reasons for his seclusion and his reluctance to engage with the world. These fragments don't tell us the whole story. There are shifts in perspective, small revelations or discoveries that change the direction of the film and our understanding of where it is going.
At the same time, there are things the audience simply doesn't need to know. The political context has been pared away, Duncan says � people don't need to have it spelled out in unnecessary or over-determining dialogue. Early in the film, John gets out a map and asks Tahmeena to show him the country she comes from. When she points to Afghanistan, viewers can already begin to form their own sense of what she has gone through.
And when Tahmeena speaks � Hendrickx learnt to say her lines in the Dari language � there are no subtitles. Audiences should not have too much information, Duncan says: they are in John's position, trying to get to know a character without the assistance of a common language.
McInnes is very positive about the challenges and rewards of "taking a story from overseas and putting it into your own culture".
He's also upbeat about one particular aspect of his performance: a scene in which he boots a footy high over the roof of his house. When his mother saw the film in Brisbane last year, she told him, he says, that he might not be a better actor than Geoffrey Rush, but he's definitely a better kick.
THE Australian film Unfinished Sky has a simple premise. John, a solitary man living in isolation on a Queensland rural property that has seen better days, comes across a stranger, a woman who stumbles onto his land, distressed, bruised, exhausted.
He takes her into the house, helps her recover, and chooses to keep her presence a secret. There are unexplained reasons behind her arrival and his decision to conceal it. And the situation is complicated by their inability to communicate: the woman, Tahmeena, speaks barely a word of English.
Unfinished Sky, says William McInnes, who plays John, is "a film with a brain". It wasn't hard, he says, to take the role. It is also, as it happens, a film with a previous life: it is based on a Dutch movie called The Polish Bride, released in 1998, which made a star of its female lead, Dutch actress Monic Hendrickx.
There are many differences between the two films, in tone and narrative: Unfinished Sky's director, Peter Duncan (Children of the Revolution, Passion) who adapted the script, prefers not to describe it as a remake. But Hendrickx once again takes the lead role. In the Dutch film, she played a Polish woman; in Unfinished Sky, she is an Afghan refugee.
The idea of casting the same actress sounds, at first, like an awkward, even prescriptive link. It wasn't part of the package to begin with, but Duncan says "once the story had been settled" it was suggested by the Dutch and Australian producers that he might like to meet Hendrickx, a well-known actress in Europe. It might help with funding.
"No pressure," he was told, but he went to the meeting in what calls an "appropriately cynical" frame of mind, only to be immediately impressed by her presence � "this dark, Amazonian figure" who walked into the restaurant � but also by the insights that she brought to the notion of a new film. His cynicism evaporated. And, he adds, Hendrickx had just as many doubts: her initial response had been to ask why on earth she would take a role that she had already played.
In fact, says McInnes, Hendrickx made it clear to him that she was struck by the contrast rather than the similarity between the two projects. It was, she told him, a different part and a different film.
Duncan was aware that before the shoot members of his Gold Coast-based crew had reservations about the prospect of a Dutch actress playing an Afghan woman in an Australian film. "They can be very jaded," he says, "but on the very first day of the shoot, they saw what she brought to the role, and they realised, OK, this is serious, this can be good."
The title of the film is a reference to an object, a giant jigsaw puzzle that John is working on, a photograph of a vast expanse of blue sky with wisps of clouds. And the film itself is a puzzle of fragments: there are mysteries about both characters that the audience figures out gradually.
We have fleeting glimpses of Tahmeena's memories and experiences of violence. And, bit by bit, we discover things about John's past, the reasons for his seclusion and his reluctance to engage with the world. These fragments don't tell us the whole story. There are shifts in perspective, small revelations or discoveries that change the direction of the film and our understanding of where it is going.
At the same time, there are things the audience simply doesn't need to know. The political context has been pared away, Duncan says � people don't need to have it spelled out in unnecessary or over-determining dialogue. Early in the film, John gets out a map and asks Tahmeena to show him the country she comes from. When she points to Afghanistan, viewers can already begin to form their own sense of what she has gone through.
And when Tahmeena speaks � Hendrickx learnt to say her lines in the Dari language � there are no subtitles. Audiences should not have too much information, Duncan says: they are in John's position, trying to get to know a character without the assistance of a common language.
McInnes is very positive about the challenges and rewards of "taking a story from overseas and putting it into your own culture".
He's also upbeat about one particular aspect of his performance: a scene in which he boots a footy high over the roof of his house. When his mother saw the film in Brisbane last year, she told him, he says, that he might not be a better actor than Geoffrey Rush, but he's definitely a better kick.
posted by WilliamWatch at 8:18 PM
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