I’m going to admit this straight out of the gate: I don’t think I understood Strangerland. Well, I got the basics of the story – they’re clear enough. After moving from a bigger city to a tiny outback town, Catherine (Nicole Kidman) and Matthew (Joseph Fiennes) mislay their two children Lily (Maddison Brown) and Tom (Nicholas Hamilton) just as a massive dust storm engulfs the town. That’s easy enough to follow, as is the investigation lead by salty town cop Detective Rae (Hugo Weaving).
What’s confusing is what on earth the movie, from Australian TV veteran but first-time feature director Kim Farrant, is actually trying to say. There is something powerful in here about female sexuality. Lily is attractive and amorous, having relationships with several local boys, and there are plenty of indications that her mother was the same way growing up. Her father seems to hate this in both of them, especially his daughter. Then we’re into the lies couples tell each other and the secrets we try to keep from the world and ourselves.
These are some powerful themes, underscored by gorgeous shots of the desert as both majestic and dangerous. But they are surrounded by a whole lot of melodrama. Kidman and Fiennes get to act and act and act, but Fiennes character is so poorly drawn it’s never clear what his motivations really are, other than a manic hatred of women trying to express themselves. There’s a whole subplot between Catherine and Rae that seems to go nowhere, and there are numerous red herrings that litter the way. For a landscape so bare, the story sure is cluttered.
Too long and filled with a keening performance by Kidman, which loses its effectiveness the more of it we see, the movie is stuffed to the gills with stray thoughts and philosophical asides. The problem is, for all of the striving at depth, it ultimately doesn’t make much sense. It’s like trying to use the stars to navigate out of the desert. All the flecks of light are there, but without a compass to point north, the audience is left wandering aimlessly, hoping to be found.
