PARADISE ROAD

Australia, 1997, 115 minutes, Colour.
Glenn Close, Pauline Collins, Cate Blanchett, Frances Mc Dormand, Jennifer Ehle, Elizabeth Spriggs, Johanna Ter Stege, Wendy Hughes, Pamela Rabe.
Directed by Bruce Beresford.

Paradise Road, though written and directed by Bruce Beresford, is a movie of women's stories. The final credits refer to the screenplay being based on `reminiscences' of survivors of the Sumatra prisoner of war camps. These reminiscences are the women's truth, truth with intense feeling. We are familiar with the movie and mini-series versions of A Town Like Alice, or of British espionage stories from 40 to 50 years ago like Odette and Carve Her Name with Pride. Gaylene Preston's documentary war reminiscences of New Zealand women offered a significant contribution, War Stories (1995). But they are comparatively few. Paradise Road shows how we need more.

The movie is advertised, `From the director of Driving Miss Daisy'. We recall his sensitivity in directing The Getting of Wisdom, Puberty Blues, Crimes of the Heart, Fringe Dwellers, Rich in Love. But Beresford is also the director of such men's movies as Don's Party, Money Movers, Breaker Morant, The Club, Mister Johnson, Black Robe. But there is no doubting Beresford's rapport with the strong cast that has been assembled from both overseas and from home. The effect of the survivor's story is felt in his direction and in the contact that several of the cast had with the women they played.

Reports from the United States seem to indicate that American audiences (and authorities?) took umbrage at the film and the way that it presented the Japanese, dramatising their cruelty and portraying atrocities.

Paradise Road is a movie of mourning. But it is also a movie of inspiration. `Inspiration' is a word that seems to raise the hackles of some serious-minded critics who want their movies to conform to alleged standards of high art which often prefers a more studied and objective dramatising of suffering. And it seems a short leap from `inspiring' to `sentimental'. Paradise Road is a film of great feeling. It shows the range of responses of the human spirit, despairing to self-centred to self-sacrificing.

But for the movie-going public to be able to sit through a movie on such a serious and grimly graphic subject, the film-makers must be able to combine themes of evil with themes of suffering, with themes of self-sacrifice, and show possibilities of redemption while not undervaluing the horror of the evil. This is what Beresford has done, showing humiliation and brutality more explicitly than he might have been able to fifteen years earlier, while showing how women were able to draw on deep resources to survive and help others survive such an ordeal.

The cast works as an ensemble. While Glenn Close has top billing and is the conductor of the human orchestra that the women create in the camp (and the music, including `The New World Symphony' and `The Londonderry Air' are based on the notations from surviving manuscripts), other women are to the fore.

They do represent a range of types that one might expect and the danger is that they might be stereotypes, but the actors generally endow them with a forcefulness that makes them characters: Pauline Collins decent missionary, Cate Blanchett's country girl nurse, Pamela Rabe's disdainful outsider. Glenn Close is the good woman (light years from Madame de Meurtail or Cruella de Ville). But Frances McDormand's tough Germanic doctor (minus cigar and riding crop!) may be too much a skilful tour-de-force for the balance of the film. Johanna Ter Stege (Sweet Emma, Dear Bobe, Immortal Beloved) gives a robust performance as one of the Dutch nuns imprisoned in the camp (basing it on discussions with an 84 year old surviving nun in Holland).

Peter James's photography has a luminous beauty, vistas of mountains and mist, lush jungle, which make us wonder how this cruelty can be perpetrated in such surroundings. He and Beresford did the same with Black Robe and its beautifully rugged Canadian settings, telling a story of a harsh physical journey and a spiritual awakening of conscience and soul in isolation and even through torture. (One might also make these theme comparisons with his African duo, Mister Johnson and A Good Man in Africa, although they lack the obvious high-spirited heroism.)

The difference between the journeys in Black Robe and Paradise Road is that, in the former, Fr Laforgue is self-sacrificing for others and his instrument is the Christian Gospel while, in the latter, the women's instrument for saving themselves is music, is singing. The spirituality of music is presented as able to lift the human spirit out of misery, able to unite women of differing sensibilities and overcome friction. It is also shown as transcending ideologies as the Japanese captors succumb to beauty. The unexpected sequence where Clyde Kusatsu, the sadistic guard, `Snake', takes Glenn Close out into the jungle at gunpoint and then quietly sings a traditional Japanese song is surprising and surprisingly moving.

Beresford is a director who employs his skills in making accessible films with unobtrusive style. He is at his best with a strong narrative and placing characters in a challenging environment. He is not a director of flashy technique or of spectacular flair. Paradise Road is one of his satisfying dramas, intelligent and moving, that communicates with its audience rather than drawing attention to itself.

1.The impact of the film, 50 years after the events? Importance for a '90s audience? Visualising and remembering the past? The impact of World War II and its memories? Re-creating the war and learning from it?

2.The importance of seeing and listening to women's stories? War films and their focus on men and their action? The film based on the reminiscences of women? The books, the music and the score?

3.The impact of the film with women's sensibilities about the experience of war? The tradition of A Town Like Alice? In contrast with other war films? The film's treatment of women's issues in the prison camps, more explicit in language, violence of punishment, sexuality, interactions? Bruce Beresford's skill in writing this screenplay from the women's perspective?

4.The Panavision photography? The opening in Singapore and the hotel? Singapore and the invasion, the action, the locations for each event? The sea, the village, the jungle, the camps? The luminous beauty of the jungle surroundings?

5.The treatment of the women in the camps - especially the punishment, the torture, the executions - explicit but acceptable in this context?

6.Audience knowledge of the war history of Asia, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the consequences within the ensuing months, the invasion of Singapore and the shock of the British? The British withdrawal? The prisoners, the bombing and strafing of prisoners in the water? The police, the guards? The background of prisons, Japanese authorities and cruelty and torture, the exercise of power? The women together, the invitation to the women to be sex workers? The explanations given in the film? The passing of the years? The Commandant of the prison and a voice of reason, responsibility? The staff and the officers with their cruelty? The interpreter and his being on the side of the women? The Snake and his symbolising the guards? As a person, exaggerated, caricature? The significance of the male guards and officers and their having power and discipline over the women? Regimenting them, torturing them, controlling food etc?

7.The significance of the music in such a setting? The discipline for the women to help them work together, give them a purpose? The gatherings? The auditions, the practice, listening? The effect on the women themselves? On the Japanese? Music transcending the experience? The important sequence of the Snake taking Adrienne into the jungle and her fears, his sitting her down and his singing to her?

8.The background of Adrienne's musical knowledge and training? Margaret's skill in remembering the scores? The idea of the human orchestra? Auditioning the women, the willingness and unwillingness? Drawing out the skills? Enabling women to survive? Ennobling their spirit, giving spiritual strength? The beauty of the music and its effect even on enemies?

9.The war experience of three years? The opening and the British and their wives in Singapore, the background of the colony, Malaya and the plantations? The women and their experience transplanted from Britain? The Australians, the nurses? The suddenness of the attack, their ability and inability to cope? The jungle and the tropical atmosphere? Starvation, maltreatment, illness? The experience of being confined? The good women and their spirit? The spoilt women and their having to cope? Selfish women? Women spying on each other? The black market? The clash between British and Dutch? Questions of food, cleanliness, ugly conditions? The building of friendships and memories? The choices made for women to live in comfort and to be comfort women? The heroism of ordinary women?

10.The Singapore sequences and their brevity but creating an atmosphere: the range of people, the conversations, the atmosphere of the dinner, the music, dancing, the range of characters, military people, planters, officials, men and women? The violence of the sudden action?

11.The boat sequences and the limits of numbers of people in the boats, the hardships, people trying to escape, the bombings and strafing, the women diving into the water, floating? Coming to land and surviving? The irony of urinating in the water to keep warm? On shore? The three stragglers meeting the rest of the group? Getting the lift - and finding it was the Japanese police? Passing through the village, the villagers watching? The camp - and the possibilities for black market activity?

12.The details of the camp, the visual impact? Conditions, assemblies, brutality, the women's reactions? Provoking their guards? Having to learn that they were under the discipline and control of the Japanese?

13.The ensemble of women, the strength of the cast, their delineating real and different characters? The range of characters represented? Expected characters - breaking through expectations?

14.Glenn Close as Adrienne, her position in Singapore, her background of life and education? Her leadership qualities? Her skill in confronting the Japanese? A polite defiance? Her musical training, violin-playing? The friendship with Margaret? The idea of the human orchestra? Preparing the scores? The plans with the women, the discussions? The auditions and Adrienne persuading the women to agree? Her diplomatic skills? The practice? The performances and their success? The impact on the women, on the Japanese? The dramatic impact of Snake taking her into the jungle and singing to her? Margaret's death and her grief, praying the psalm as she died? Her survival?

15.Pauline Collins as Margaret, middle-aged woman, the background of the China mission? Single but not prudish? Her support of the other women, her role in the camp? Remembering the notes and writing the score? Her assisting Adrienne? Practices? Performance? Her helping the young nurse from Australia during her torture? Her illness, the pathos of her death, her friendship with Adrienne, the praying of `The Lord is my shepherd'? The poem - and the reference to Paradise Road?

16.The nurse from the New South Wales farm, her being in Singapore, age, experience, life in the country, her family background, her skills as a nurse? Her contribution to the camp? The singing? Her defiance, the brutality of the torture sequence? Her survival and the aftermath of the war?

17.The German doctor, her style and manner? Germanic? The Jewish background? The women suspicious of her as enemy, as a spy? Doctor of philosophy but the women believing that she was a medical doctor? Exercising skills, moral support? Her advice? The cynical touches? The support and the latter part of the war? Her words of advice and support for the Australian nurse to further her career?

18.The young English woman separated from her husband? Wanting news about him? Her position in the camp, contribution to life in the camp, singing? Her memories of her life in England and the damp conditions compared with the jungle? The story of her courtship and marriage? Her class background? In transit and seeing her husband? Prisoner? Her despair, her collapsing and dying?

19.The spoilt English woman, her size and dominance? Her personal eccentricities and selfishness? Her domination of her mousy daughter? Her having to walk with the others, sharing the experiences? The malaria? Her racist attitudes? Her discovering that the Chinese woman had given her life for her to get the medicine? Her changing her attitude, her joining in the singing? The daughter learning more about her mother in the camp? The daughter becoming more assertive? The pathos of the mother's death?

20.The supporting cast and their portrayal and sketching of women and their attitudes: Wendy Hughes and her sardonic style, wary about the singing, finally being persuaded to join in? Defiant? Pamela Rabe as the critical woman, keeping her distance, not having any friends, not wanting to join in, clashing with the Dutch women in the shower? Cynical? Penne Hackforth- Jones as the drinker?

21.The Chinese woman, her place in the camp, her skills with the black market, helping the elderly English woman, her being caught, the brutality of her being burnt to death?

22.The Australian nurses and their spirit, style, surviving in the camp?

23.The comfort women, the clear choices presented, the possibility of living in comfort, the American woman and her wanting to go, Adrienne persuading her not to? The regretful departure of the women? The banquet provided to tempt the women into this way of life? The interpreter and his not wanting the women to go? The departure from the initial camp and their passing the women and their looking unhappy even in their comfort?

24.The Dutch women, the clashes, the shower sequence and the issue of the soap? The gradual making of peace? The Dutch nuns and their missionary background? The sister who joined the choir, her ingenuity with the truck, her humorous and ironic remarks about God and her vocation?

25.The transfer from the camps as the war went against the Japanese? The final camp, the number of deaths amongst the women? Yet their spirit surviving as they moved from camp to camp?

26.The end of the war, the Japanese, the opening of the gates, the women walking free? Their future?

27.The dramatising of values in World War II situations - and their impact for audiences over half a century later?