THE NEW BOY – Review by Nadine Whitney
Any film by indigenous Australian director Warwick Thornton is vital to understanding aboriginal culture in Australia whether it be a relatively contemporary piece such as Samson & Delilah or a historical “meat pie” Western like Sweet Country. Thornton’s ability to create an authentic lens that deals with the devastating effects of colonialism is grounded in his lived experience and perspective. In his WWII set drama The New Boy, Thornton unearthed one of his earlier scripts and re-wrote it to feature Cate Blanchett as a nun operating an outback orphanage. We witness a clash of cultures where the dominant white Australian belief system erodes the specificity of aboriginal culture. The central tension in the film is faith and spirituality where even those who believe they are acting in the best interests of indigenous people participate in an arrogant paternalism which denies the power of one of the oldest cultures on earth.
The New Boy (played by Aswan Reid, a cherubic nine-year-old) is captured by local police after a violent scrap and unceremoniously dumped on Sister Eileen’s (Cate Blanchett) doorstep in the middle of the night. The police officer says, “Here’s another darkie for you,” and threatens violence on the child. Sister Eileen, well in her cups, chases the man out of the orphanage prepared to physically fight him if need be. New Boy watches with curiosity and confusion – the language being spoken around him doesn’t mean anything to him. All he knows is that he has been removed from Country and is now in a new place.
The orphanage was once run by Dom Peter who has since died, leaving Sister Eileen in charge where she resists allowing the church to send a new priest by pretending he is still alive. She is mourning him, although Thornton doesn’t give us full specifics for the kind of relationship they had. Sister Eileen cares about giving her orphans the best chance they can get in a world where at the age of thirteen they are sent off to be essentially slave labour on farms during the wartime labour shortage.
The tension between the idea of being a good Christian and recognising that indigenous people have their own spirituality is the core of the film. New Boy holds within him a mystical spark that can heal. He quietly refuses to dress as the other orphans do and Sister Eileen and Sister Mum (Deborah Mailman, devastating as a woman who has lost her daughters probably to the government) indulge him. He is an oddly, and ironically, Christ-like figure who heals, refuses violence and bullying, and shares his meals. The Christian faith is absolutely alien to him. Where Sister Eileen and the others see snakes as a symbol of evil he sees them as a life force that is precious and to be protected. When he sees a figure of Christ on the cross being raised in the church all he can think of is how the icon is suffering and literally takes on that suffering himself to relieve the wooden man of his burden.
Thornton doesn’t directly point to a specific evil in the orphanage. Sister Eileen for all her bizarre behaviour and copious alcohol consumption is not a villain. Nor is the only adult male there – George (Wayne Blair) who has assimilated as much as he can to avoid conscription. To an Australian viewer who knows about the Stolen Generations and the discarding of children who have been born through socially unacceptable means, the character of the small community is a quiet indictment of how indigenous children were treated. They are not mistreated at the orphanage, but they are expected through baptism (performed by Sister Eileen) to renounce their aboriginality and to conform to white culture.
Thornton who wrote, directed, and acted as cinematographer on the film provides a mesmerising treatise on the loss of indigenous culture. Suffused with visuals which highlight a kind of magic realism (or perhaps more a magic that existed and has been forgotten) and complemented by a haunting score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, The New Boy has a certain intangible quality that suits its fable-like structure. By the time it reaches its devastating end, the audience will have experienced a rich and majestic film that proves that Thornton engages profoundly with indigenous issues and the long stain of colonialism. The New Boy is a strange and hypnotic enchantment.
