Two approaches of lights, camera and action to create the same beautiful spectrum. The result a gorgeous capture of beauty the wild if displayed in its own glamour magazine sans the make-up. Breathtaking locations and scenery permeate through both these movies.
Two diverse trains of thought, the end destination I assume to be the same, but oh what a ride. These are one of those movies you wish would go on and on, on your DVD Player, so you could immerse yourself further into the movie.
The Hunter is an Australian movie directed by Daniel Nettheim – is the first movie that I watched. On purpose –it had a commercial casting of Sam Niell and Willem Dafoe (he is such an under-rated actor) yet he astounds me with his raw performance in every movie he acts in. No matter how minor his role may be. He is perfectly cast for his role in this movie as Martin David the sinewy mercenary, who behind his long relaxing baths and love for opera is a cold blooded killer. It sounds cliched but it isn’t it just is his character.
He is approached through his contact by a military bio tech company Red Leaf, they contract him to hunt down the elusive Tasmanian Tiger sightings of which have been reported to them. Their cause, is to hunt down, kill and secure organs for DNA of this animal which may be the last of it’s kind.
Here while others may twitch and linger on exterminating a species he does not, and takes on the contract. They suggest he work with another mercenary but he refuses, preferring to work on his own.
Jack Mindy (played by Sam Niell) Red Leaf’s local contact in Tasmania, accepts Martin’s alias (that of a Biological researcher from the University come to research the Tasmanian Tiger) and helps him rent a room in a rural home occupied by a single mother named Lucy Armstrong (played by Frances O'Connor) and her two young children Katie (Sass) played excellently by Morgana Davies and Jamie (Bike) played by Finn Woodlock. I loved Morgana Davies performance, even though she uses profanity in betwixt casual sentences, it still screams for our attention in the manner in which it is blended in yet shocks us and Martin.
The mother Lucy is constantly numbed or asleep on prescription anti-depressants, she is medicated as Jack explains in order to numb her from the pain of not knowing whether her husband missing in the outback for over a year is dead or alive. Martin is warned not to wake her. He finds the house in a state of disarray and again you get a brief glimpse of him methodical, obsessive for cleanliness, and a stickler for his regimented schedule. There are subtle moments of interaction between him and the children, the animosity between the locals and him a foreigner, and the closely guarded secrets of the rural lifestyle.
My favourite moments in the movie are of him in the wild, sweeping shots of the scenery. You see him a mercenary at home in the wild setting traps, killing small animals for bait all with calm calculated, efficiency, not breaking a sweat.
On one of his return trips to the cabin to re-stock his rations, he notices the mother as being constantly drugged. He decides to bathe her and instructs the children to rein her off the medication. The simplicity of the children and their maturity is displayed when they get into the tub in the middle of Martin’s bath, yet do not consider it differently from when they bathed with their own father (his reasons never waste hot water-it delves on the ecological aspect prevalent throughout the movie –the extinction of the last of a species, logging in the forest, the beauty of the outback). Their shade of innocence and natural being confounds us and it perplexes Martin. But not the children. They are not thrown off-kilter when they rush in to save the hot water bathing with him or when he bathes their mother.
I don’t want to repeat myself, the Tiger is elusive, and Martin determined in his task of discovering and killing it. There are a number of realistic failed attempts of Martin attempting to locate the territory the Tiger might occupy in the vast outback. His trips are consistent back and forth to re-stock and cover in grid-form the area he suspects the Tiger to be in. His interactions improve with the mother and the children.
Once the mother is weaned off the medication, she reverts to her old self, taking care of the children and the house guest. On a trip into the outback in search of the Tiger he discovers a dismembered skeleton, with several belongings and a drawing on the back of Red Leaf documentation. On approaching Lucy, who still considers him a biologist for the university he finds out that her husband worked for the university (I might be confused on that aspect) was approached by Red Leaf, and asked to kill the Tiger too, he refused and shortly thereafter went missing.
Jack sees the increasing level of comfort that Lucy and the children have on Martin’s return. He becomes increasingly jealous of the new relationships being built and calls on the Red Leaf Company. He informs them that Martin is faltering in his task, not knowing the company’s real intentions for Martin’s presence in this region.
Martin realises at one point that if he does not kill the Tasmanian Tiger there will be another sent in his place.
The reasons leading up to this epiphany and the ensuing events are both destructive and constructive in the manner in which they play out the rest of the movie.
The movie is an ode to the sad need on mankind’s part to place ourselves above all else – be it ecology, nature, the environment or the other species we share this earth with.
Which brings me to the other movie that I watched, I believe the movie Letters from a Big Man runs within the same elaborate setting but with a huge continental shift off another ecological system, and yet another elusive species sighting.
I hesitated on picking up the movie after looking at the DVD cover, assumed wrongly that it was another squeamish, gore infested movie.
But it is nothing like the cover presents it, as the saying goes or my badly adapted version of the saying goes “Do not judge a movie by its DVD cover”
The movie is directed by Christopher Munch and is called Letters from the Big Man.
http://www.lettersfromthebigman.com/
Excerpt from the website a synopsis on the movie
“Following a painful breakup, Sarah Smith (Lily Rabe) embarks on a post-fire stream survey for the Forest Service in southern Oregon. A journey down a wild and scenic river leads her to a remote wilderness surrounded by scorched landscapes. Here she first senses being followed by a presence that will not reveal itself. Visitation from the “big man” (Isaac C. Singleton JR.) continues, more overtly, at the remote cabin to which Sarah repairs to write up her fieldwork. A budding romance with a wilderness advocate Sean (Jason Butler Harner) she met on her trip leads to surprising revelations about the government and Sasquatch, and conflicting agendas, that force Sarah to take bold steps to protect the privacy of her big friend, as well as her own”
Again I believe Lily Rabe was perfect for the role, I believe she successfully camouflages herself both physically and mentally into the canopy of the character whose profile has been created with depth yet sketched smart enough to minimise and confine unnecessary emotion. Within the solitude of the forest, Sarah’s reactions to diverse range of events have to be conveyed a number of diverse reactions. There are so many moments within the movie which could have been made cliche, so many moments where Sarah is alone researching the depth of a stream, sitting by a fire, sitting on a deserted cabin patio, or a deserted cabin room facing a dark window and every time you feel something is going to reach in and grab her. That is where the movie succeeds it twists away from norm.
The Sasquatch depicted by Isaac C. Singleton is majestic and calm in its solitude, you can see where he strains to maintain a inquisitive distance with Sarah. Sarah in turn has various reactions to his invisible presence – distraction, surprise, anger, fear (though the scene in which she checks through a fellow travellers backpack for arms and confesses that she herself carries a gun, shows that she is comfortable with being alone in the forest and feels safe and secure within its confines. In the periphery there are several minor events that occur, all drifting like silent life in a stream, stories that are but undergrowth to the ecology that is the movie itself. Her conversations with the logger Barney make for some wonderfully intelligent conversations Jim Cody Williams. You realise that even though logging is his livelihood, he believes that the trees could be preserved if alternate to wood products were encouraged.
There is a romantic interlude between Sean and Sarah, Sean’s own past, Sarah seems to be wrestling with her own personal demons in relation to her break-up there is a back story in which Sean proposes an ulterior motive for the Forest Services research (again it has to do with harvesting the unique qualities inherent to the Sasquatch).
Through it all, and some amazing photography we are led on a slow winding journey, where both movies provide us with intelligent story lines, interspersed with a subtle underlying thought I believe, that even though nature succumbs to humanity’s vice often it is still worth fighting for. Sometimes we just have to give up the monetary invitation that drives us in the wrong direction and see what nature can offer us as a whole and let other species well - LIVE FREE AND JUST BE.
