THE JAMMED
Australia, 2006.
Directed by Dee Mc Lachlan.
Interfaith award, Brisbane, 2007.
SHORT REVIEW
Inspired by actual events and taken from court transcripts, The Jammed traces the story of three women brought to Australia under false pretexts for sexual exploitation.
The Jammed is a singularly courageous piece of cinema. Even though many people would not want to see the extremely violent world this film portrays, this does not allow us to ignore the sex trade in women and children occurring in our nation. It reveals not only the horror of modern human trafficking and slavery but also peels back the complex moral layers involved for everyone, including governments.
This uncompromising and confronting film illuminates a dark, tragic side of Australian society.
LONG REVIEW
In 2006/2007 Dee Mc Lachlan’s The Jammed won two awards. At the Brisbane International Film Festival it won the SIGNIS Interfaith Award and the next year was named the Film of the Year by the Australian Catholic Film Office.
Inspired by actual events and taken from court transcripts, The Jammed traces the story of three women brought to Australia under false pretexts for sexual exploitation. Into this dark world enters an unlikely heroine, Ashley Hudson (Veronica Sywak). She is an insurance salesperson who hates her job. Unwillingly Ashley does a favour for a friend by collecting someone from the international airport. There she meets Sunee (Amanda Ma), a middle aged lady who has come from China to search for her daughter, Rubi (Sun Park).
Sunee has little English, and does not know where to begin to start looking for her child. Ashley resentfully is drawn into the search for Rubi, who she discovers has become a victim of a sex trafficking network organised by a Melbourne gang. Ashley discovers that Sunee is working as a prostitute, one of many, along with fellow victims Vanya (Saskia Burmesiter) and Crystal (Emma Lung).
This world overtakes both Ashley, Sunee and Rubi. They find that this evil world is playing with big money and bigger legal stakes. It trades off the women wanting to be free on one hand, but, on the other, not wanting to be apprehended by the Immigration Department and deported.
The Jammed is a singularly courageous piece of cinema. Even though many people would not want to see the extremely violent world this film portrays, this does not allow us to ignore the sex trade in women and children occurring in our nation. It reveals not only the horror of modern human trafficking and slavery but also peels back the complex moral layers involved for everyone, including governments.
This uncompromising and confronting film illuminates a dark, tragic side of Australian society (one replicated in many countries across the world), and thus makes a significant contribution to increasing people’s awareness of an under-recognised but important issue of human rights.
It exposes questions about the real value we place on human life, and challenges our sense of social justice towards the marginalised and exploited.
It would be hard to think of a social issue upon which the whole church is presently speaking with such clarity. Pope Benedict XVI’s statement on human trafficking for sex on 28th October 2005, his message to mark World Day of Migrants and Refugees, and the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerants have strenuously calls for all Catholics, Christians and people of good will to do everything they can to counter the causes and the evil results of human trafficking. In Australia, Catholic Religious Australia has been at the vanguard of lobbying, education and working with victims in regard to the international trafficking of women and children.
With a very small budget, a strong cast and powerful narrative, this is a film that viewers will think about for days afterwards. The Jammed confronts us with how our faith impels us to act justly.
CRITERIA FOR FILM REVIEWING
I have always adapted the OCIC’s six points for film juries as a good guide for my work as a Catholic film reviewer.
1. Is the film is of a high artistic quality?
2. Does it dramatise positive human values?
3. How can the values dramatised in the film be seen in the light of the message of the Gospel?
4. Does the film challenge its audience to respond to a faith that does justice?
5. Can it be used with groups to understand issues through story and symbols?
6. In what way does this film reflect its culture, helping its audience to respect the language and the images of that culture?
7. Will the film have a universal impact or is it confined to its national or local context?
I accept in my reviewing that for many western and secualrised Christians the cinema is now the modern market place where, often, minds, hearts and values are won and lost. The best films are simple and direct communications telling the most human of tales, often with a profound message. Whether we like it or not, the cinema is the place where an increasing number of people encounter a world of otherness, ethical systems, personal and social mythologies which transcend the everyday. Within the cinema we can contemplate our place in a larger frame of reference where physical laws count for less and a relationship with a metaphysical and, often, a meta-ethical world, is taken seriously. Either in the short or long term this leads us to a new consciousness of our surroundings, ideologies and moral imperatives.
Sadly, some Christians believe that unless a movie is about Jesus the Prophets or Saints, if it does not speaks of religious matters, or explicitly wear its spirituality on its sleeve, then it is can not be counted in the cinematic Christian canon. Some believers go as far as to say, “Only sex and violence sells at the cinema” or “There is nothing good at the movies anymore”. These uninformed and unfortunate comments do little for Christian inculturation, betraying the fact that the person making them is unable to read anything into or draw something out of a film, that might be consonant with the Christian message even though it may never mention the name of Jesus, the Bible or the Church.
Reading a film in the light of Christian faith starts with a disposition to want to do so. It is having the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the heart to receive what is good and enjoyable in the media culture of our age.
St Paul tell us that the greatest of the virtues are faith, hope and love, the Theological Virtues, the hallmarks by which the world should be able to judge a Christian. St Thomas Aquinas added to these virtues justice, fidelity, self-esteem, and prudence. These four have been termed the Cardinal Virtues. And added to this list are applications of them - mercy and hospitality, the so-called Christian values. St Thomas and many other theologians argue that wherever these virtues and values are present then named or not, Christ is present. Therefore we do not have to be against everything.
I also do not believe we have is not to be immediately frightened of the darker world the cinema often explores. Though we all like it to be otherwise, we hold to faith in a world which is broken and sinful. Helpfully the Christian tradition has summed up some of the worst excesses of destructive behaviour as the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, greed, envy, anger, lust, gluttony and sloth. For Christians the problem is not that a film explores the Seven Deadly Sins, or the countless other names we can give to our worst behaviour. The question we ask is whether they are made to look glamorous and seen to be normal. Films that tell us that dark behaviour is glamorous or normal must be challenged.
One of the more unfortunate things that has happened in recent times is that many Christians have been seduced into believing that we should no longer judge one another. I assume that when we say “don’t judge”, what we are trying to say is “don’t condemn.” But there is world of difference between these two ideas.
Good film reviewing from a Catholic point of view cultivates the gift of discernment where we can work out the wheat from the chaff, exercising compassionate judgment and critical consumption. Then I think there is less likelihood of the filmgoer being seduced by attitudes, responses and appetites that are not life-giving and life-sustaining.
BIOGRAPHY
Rev Dr Richard Leonard SJ directs the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting. He is a visiting professor of communications at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome and Jesuit Theological College, Melbourne. He is the author of: The Mystical Gaze of the Cinema: the Films of Peter Weir (Melbourne University Press); Movies That Matter: Reading Film Through the Lens of Faith (Loyola Press, Chicago) and Preaching to the Converted (Paulist Press). He has also written a personal reflection on suffering and God based on his family experiences, Where the Hell is God?
