The premise is nothing if not provocative: a black comedy based in the aftermath of the Cronulla riots. There are plenty of surprises in writer/director Abe Forsythe’s provocative new film Down Under, but the biggest one is that it works.
That is not to say it is “good” or “bad”. Down Under is the sort of experience audiences are likely to rave about or hate with the fire of a thousand burning suns.
It is difficult to argue that the film (which opens nationally in cinemas this week) doesn’t make a point about the the futility of racially motivated violence. Or that it doesn’t ridicule the beer and ciggie-infused mob at the heart of a dark day in Australian history.
“The one reaction that I hate – and that I don’t want – is for people to go ‘Ah yeah, I guess I didn’t really like that,’ ” Forsythe says. “I want it either to really speak to people or for people to get angry that you would even attempt to make a film like this. We [the cast and crew] really believe in it, and believe in what it says. If someone hates it I just kind of go, well, I am never going to be the kind of person that agrees with you, and I didn’t make it for you.”
Down Under begins with footage of the riots set to the jolly tune of We Wish You a Merry Christmas. The provocateur says this kind of suffocating irony “makes audiences go, ‘Oh shit, I’m going to have to be prepared to be maybe a bit challenged by this movie, and face some things I wasn’t expecting.’ ”
It is a night-on-the-town comedy, as black as they come. One of the characters, the foulmouthed Gav (Josh McConville), is the kind of guy you can imagine appearing in that introductory news footage, patrolling the streets with a stubbie in hand.
On the opposite side of the spectrum is Evan (Chris Bunton), a kind-hearted kid with Down’s syndrome who delivers the cut-through line: “It’s a beach, it belongs to everybody.” Surrounded by aggressive idiots, Evan is the odd one out. And thus a magnet for a smattering of puerile insults likely to offend viewers.
Forsythe defends this element of the script: “You see how those characters talk to each other. If he’s going to be in that car, and surrounded by those people, a character like that is actually going to cop that kind of abuse. It is meant to make you feel uncomfortable.
“Evan just cuts to the core of everybody. He’s not filled with ignorance. He’s not filled with hate. He just witnesses everything. He sees it exactly how I wish we all saw it, and I feel like we should be seeing it.”
Forsythe says the actor and his parents were “amazing” and “read the script and really understood it, and the context of it”.
The logistics of the shoot meant three scenes had to be filmed back-to-back with Bunton’s character copping it. The director was concerned about the effect this would have on him (Down Under was Bunton’s first film) so he cast himself, rather than a stranger, as one of the people assailing him.
“As I’m doing it, I’m looking at him. I’m watching him totally reacting to what I’m doing, as an actor would react. He is listening to what I’m doing. He’s responding based on the emotion and the energy that I am giving him, and he’s then giving it back.
“This just totally proved my own ignorance about disability, by getting to meet Chris and getting to work with him and getting to know his family really well. He was just as competent as the most experienced actor on our set.”
And on the film’s absence of female characters – with the exception of a clangorous, kebab-loving pregnant bogan played by Harriet Dyer: “It’s a very particular male story. When you look at footage of the riots on the day, there are women there, but the ratio much more fits into the male side of things.
“This is a masculinity problem. It’s a testosterone problem. So much of it is related to men’s inability to connect with each other, and to kind of just fucking know how to exist in this world without having to take it out on other people.”
Down Under is the 35-year-old writer/director’s second feature. His first, 2003’s Ned, is an expendable, light-hearted send-up of the legacy of Ned Kelly. The two films are worlds apart.
“As a white Australian male, I guess I reached a point in my career where if I’m going to be giving six years of my life into getting a film up, and it maybe not happening, and certainly not getting paid any money to do any of this, then I shouldn’t fuck around on something that is disposable.
“I’ve made something disposable in the past, and I’ve been on the receiving end of a little bit of shit. Bad reviews, you know. I was kicked in the face for something where I went, well, yeah, it’s nothing, and I’m not really even that happy with it. But at least this time, I knew that if I got kicked in the face, I’d be happy with what I’ve made.”
