LONE WOLF

Australia, 2021, 103 minutes, Colour.

Hugo Weaving, Diana Glenn, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Josh McConville, Stephen Curry, Marlon Williams, Chris Bunton, Lawrence Mooney, Tyler Coppin.

Directed by Jonathan Ogilvie.

Lone Wolf is an unusual Australian production, directed by Jonathan Ogilvie (The Tender Hook). Ogilvie has adapted Joseph Conrad’s story, The Secret Agent, which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1936 with the title, Sabotage. It was also filmed in 1996, with an 1890s setting, starring Bob Hoskins and Robin Williams.

Conrad’s novel has now been brought into the present, and the situation and location is an international meeting to be held in Melbourne. The basic outline of the novel is present, Conrad the manager of the shop (Josh McConville), pornographic books and tapes, the clientele, but his being involved with an anarchist group who meet at the shop and play cards, is contacted by anarchists to carry a bomb and to cause an upset but without any injuries. The anarchists know that he is also a police informer. He lives at his shop, Winnie his companion (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), and her younger brother with a disability, Stevie (Chris Bunton).

However, Ogilvie draws on the conventions of Found Footage film, surveillance cameras in the streets, the shop, cameras within the shop, plus footage from Stevie who likes to film, especially in the house but also on an excursion to the beach.

The key idea is that a parliamentarian and his police assistant (Hugo Weaving and Stephen Curry), approached by an officer who has a crisis of her own and presents them with an edited version of all the found footage, building up the story of Conrad, the contacts, his commission – and it seemed to go wrong and the discovery of his mutilated injured body.

However, there are further complications with Conrad – and, especially, with the Minister and his assistant, ambitions, cover-ups…

1. Adapted from Joseph Conrad’s novel? Hitchcock’s 1936 version, Sabotage? Christopher Hampton’s 1996 version, Secret Agent, set in the 1890s?
2. The background of anarchists, meetings, disruption of society? Ordinary citizens? Double agents?
3. 21^st-century politics, international meetings, finance, protests, sabotage?
4. The Melbourne sitting, the vistas of the city, the shop and the streets, the interiors of the shop, the ministers office? The musical score?
5. The visual style, the variation on Found Footage? Surveillance material, the placing of the cameras, government surveillance, police surveillance? Spying and privacy?
6. The compilation of the video material, the editing, the narrative, the anarchy scenario, the report? Stevie and his camera, his footage, the beach, at home?
7. Conrad, the shop, the books and videos, pornography? The range of customers? The group, their meeting at the house, playing cards, the range of characters, the priest? Winnie, her relationship with Conrad, her looking after Stevie, disability? His camera? Conrad and his visit to Sydney? The meetings, the contact from the anarchists, knowing that he was a double agent, wanting him to carry the bomb, the pressures, an explosion without fatalities? The drama in the house, with Winnie, with Stevie? The plan, the reporting of the explosion, the grim skeleton, presumed dead?
8. The anarchists, the characters, their aims, the international meeting, lies, victims? Conrad as the Lone Wolf?
9. His survival, the plan to leave, Winnie and Stevie? And his death?
10. Contemporary protests, politics and anarchy?