CORROBOREE

Australia, 2007, 95 minutes, Colour.
Conor O’ Hanlon, Rebecca Frith, Natasha Herbert, Susan Lyons, Jane Macarthur, Margaret Mills.
Directed by Ben Hackworth.

An experimental film which does not rely on narrative but rather impressions, performance and sketches of characters and situations.

A young man, Conor O’ Hanlon (and billed as himself) travels to a country town with instructions from a dying director to entrust himself to a group of women at a holiday house. After he settles in, the role plays begin (again with instructions from the director). The young man is to represent him in re-enactments of events in his life. They include an encounter with his mother, a sexual encounter with a young woman, a conversation with an older woman, his treatment by a doctor. The women play these roles.

The cumulative effect of these impressions is some understanding of the director. It is also a showcase for the actresses who, as themselves, talk and interact, sometimes seriously, sometimes with humour. They also enter into their assigned roles with some relish.

Conor seems rather unaware of what this all means but gradually enters into the spirit of the role plays, eventually splattered with blood and naked.

In the meantime, we see glimpses of the dying director himself, being chanted over by the women, himself watching the proceedings unobtrusively. There is also a nurse looking after him as well as a young man who is a cook.

The director explained that ‘corroborree’ was a word coined by the white settlers to refer to the aboriginal rituals of dance and mime that represented all facets of their lives.

Puzzling while it is going on (and a little more exposition would not have gone astray) but the film ultimately achieves its effect of drawing us into this theatrical and ritual process.

1.An Australia experimental film? The intended audience? Interest? Demands?

2.The visual style, digital, the countryside, the house, the surroundings and the woods?

3.The opening, the bus station, the bus trip, the driver, the passengers? Conor, his trip, the tape and the messages, advised to do what the women do, his being unprepared for the theatrical event?

4.The device of Conor being himself, having to become an actor, the re-enactment of the director’s life? Having to be spontaneous, following the script? His changing during the performance, his being affected, the alter-ego of the director? Building up to his death? Finally the blood, naked?

5.The meaning of corroboree, an English word ascribed to the Aborigines, for ritual and dancing, theatrical celebration?

6.The director, sometimes seen, often not, his voice? The nurse, the young cook? The watching of the prayer and chants over him? His death, coffin? The purpose of the play, reliving his life, some kind of purgatory and purgation, preparation for death?

7.The house, in the countryside, a kind of retreat? The actresses, the group in themselves, together? The meals, talk, acting, the blend of the serious and the comic?

8.Conor’s arrival, settling in, the preparations?

9.The re-enactments: Joe as a boy, his mother, the difficult birth, trying to protect him, letting him go, her ambiguous feelings towards her son?

10.The sexual encounter, the young girl, Joe being accosted, the effect on him, the effect on Conor?

11.The woman outside, the talk, work, Conor’s response? The main aspects of the director’s life? The place of the other women?

12.The walk in the woods, the young cook and his presence, the military outside, the outside world?

13.The hospital set-up, Joe as ill, the actress and her being the doctor? Conor lying down, the hypnotic effect? His going under? The reaction of the women?

14.The reality of death, the nurse leaving?

15.Conor being painted white, being in a trance, the doctors’ treatment, the violence, the blood, naked?

16.The need for more exposition for the narrative? The film as narrative? As psychodrama? As art? As installation art and style?