Snowtown (2011 film)

Category: Violent murder/psychological drama/biopic

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Oh fucking hell. What a movie. 

Snowtown is as depressing as it is disturbing as it is hard-hitting as it is well-crafted as it is based on true events. And to me, it's made all the more impactful by the fact that I lived and worked only a handful of miles from where all this was happening!

In case you're not familiar, the name Snowtown refers to the small rural town approximately 100km north of the capital of the state of South Australia where four men, led by John Bunting, stored the remains of some of their murder victims in a former bank vault in the town at the time the four were arrested and their murder spree was ended in late 1999. Thus, the name/word Snowtown is synonymous with the string of murders committed by the four, despite the fact that only one murder was committed there. 

However, this movie is not a documentary - for all intents and purposes, this movie is a retelling of the Snowtown murders, but with details changed. For staters, the suburb where the perpetrators lived is changed, as well as some other things.

The long and short of the movie is that the teenaged Jamie (played by Lucas Pittaway) lives in social housing in a working class northern suburb of Adelaide with his mother Elizabeth (Louise Harvey) and half-brother Troy. They eventually become involved with John (Daniel Henshall), charismatic and manipulative with a violent and misanthropic streak, who becomes a father-figure to Jamie. Little does Jamie know that John has a habit of murdering people whom he deems as despicable, with the movie playing out Jamie first getting sucked in to John's orbit of murder, body disposal and welfare deception, and then being a participant. 

John slowly starts breaking Jamie after as he enters a relationship (albeit an abusive one) with Elizabeth, forms a bond with Jamie and then slowly weans him on how to do heinous things. One night (after a children's birthday party, of all things) John shows Jamie the corpse of Jamie's drug-taking friend in the back shed, as well as the barrels of acid used to decompose another victim. But the film hits its hardest-hitting crescendo when Troy (who has been sexually assaulting Jamie) becomes the next victim. The lingering close-up shot of Jamie crying while standing in the door of the bathroom as he realises the bloody and incapacitated Troy is not going to survive the torture being dealt out to him is probably the most devastating in the movie.

Jamie is then used by John to collect the welfare benefits of the victims as a way of both enriching themselves, as well as to make the authorities believe the victims are still alive. This is exposited in a scene where John convinces Jamie that they're essentially doing a service, with the line "not even the neighbours know that they're gone!". However, Jamie resorts to taking drugs as a way of coping with his internal conflict of being complicit in heinous crimes, knowing that he can't escape John's sphere of influence, but also knowing that John hates drug-takers and fearing he'll be next.

The last scene of the movie Jamie leading an unwitting victim into a bank vault, the door slamming shut fading to a black screen describing the arrest of the four perpetrators.

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So with the plot out of the way, let me say it - Justin Kurzel is a hell of a film maker. His movies and their subjects may not be to your taste (he also directed Nitram, which will be its own review in good time), but you cannot deny his talent. Two thumbs up. Three thumbs up if I had three.

Numerous things in the movie stuck out for me:

The acting:

Two standout performances carry the film - Daniel Henshall's John, and Lucas Pittaway's Jamie. Pittaway is perfect in the role of someone who hasn't grown out of his shell and is manipulated in to doing the bidding of someone else. He lacks his own self-confidence partly because of what his brother and other people have done to him, but also because the environment of the low socio-economic area he is in is sufficient to live, but not to grow or thrive.

And throughout the whole film, I think I saw Daniel Henshall blink maybe three times. His ability to switch between affable laughter and menacing gaze is scary!

Louise Harris as Elizabeth also does a fantastic job - in fact, Harris was unemployed before she took this as her first acting gig, which helped her land more acting gigs.

The cinematography:

I simply loved the way a lot of the shots were placed and put together. One of the best examples that comes to mind is the scene where John teaches Jamie how to ride a motorcycle out in the open plains of outer-suburban Adelaide - the use of framing complements the mesmerising soundtrack. It really gives the impression of how Jamie feels impressed upon by John.

There is also a scene where John assaults Jamie in a car on a grey and gloomy day. The close-up shots of John assaulting Jamie in close quarters urging him to stop doing drugs, with the bleak and impoverished Adelaide street and grey and depressing skies plays its role as a backdrop. It's brilliant stuff!

In fact, pretty much every single shot is done at eye level which gives you the sense that you are in the house watching people being brutalised or manipulated or spoken about condescendingly - there are no rising shots overlooking the scenery or any birds-eye views until near the end where the story moves to rural South Australia. Alongside this, there are very few pans, and the colour scheme is quite dull, particularly on the rainy days, matching the depressing feel of the whole scenario.

The location/setting:

Both the setting of the movie and the murders is the northern suburbs of Adelaide, noted for being a lower socio-economic area entrenched in intergenerational welfare dependence and whose landscape is marked by suburbs full of social housing. As someone who grew up and worked not too far from where all this happened, so I can tell you that Kurzel has captured the aura of depression and despair of this area brilliantly. So much so that I felt instantly transported back to some memories of my childhood.

However, and I know Kurzel cannot help this, but given that the movie takes place in the late 1990s, the fairly recent-model bus in the background of the scene where Jamie and John confront a serial flasher outside of a school would be what I call an anachronism. That, and the fact that some streets in the general area have had improvement works done to them since the late 1990s.

And if you're familiar with the series Bogan Hunters, you may also recognise some areas from the episode that featured Adelaide.

The church scene.

There is a scene fairly early on in the movie where Elizabeth attends a church service. The scene itself is relatively short, but having been an avid church-attender in a previous life, there is a certain characteristic that Kurzel has captured brilliantly (again). The type of church that Elizabeth attends is a small start-up that holds services in low-key environments such as school gyms or community halls and that appeal to people who don't want high-brow theology or ceremony. I used to be in this type of church, pastored by the same kind of pastor that is in this film, and I felt a cringe flashback watching this.

The rape scene.

There is a scene in the movie where James is raped by his half-brother, Troy (Anthony Groves). It's distressing viewing, and I can only congratulate all of those involved for portraying such a horrible act in a professional manner.

To add a touch of nostalgia, there is television commentary of the cricket playing in the background which adds a hauntingly mundane soundtrack to such a despicable and life-changing thing.

The nude scene.

If I was to make one criticism of this movie, it would be the inclusion of the scene where John manipulates an overweight woman into undressing for him while he sits on the couch and watches. I get that you would include this scene for the purpose of showing how far John's manipulation can go, but given that we already saw for ourselves with John's manipulation of Jamie and the others, I felt this was unnecessary and actually clashed with the rest of the film. The film is moody and depressing and scary, but then all of a sudden, here are these two people in a well-lit and well-furnished loungeroom doing something absolutely non-violent!

To me, Kurzel has already made this movie impactful without the need for nudity.

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Aspects of the film aside, I did also want to address the fact that Kurzel attracted controversy by making this film, be it because of the subject matter or that the perpetrators of these crimes are still alive or that this movie has been described as "torture porn". I'll agree in that this movie is not for the faint-hearted. It's hard-hitting. You'll probably need to watch a kids cartoon afterwards to balance things out. But personally, I didn't feel like Kurzel made this film just to be a sicko who likes shocking people - he made it to honestly tell a sad story about real events that happened to real people and how it was allowed to happen. In fact, only one death takes place on screen.

To which I'll ask the question - when are we allowed to make movies after a dramatic event? Two years? Five years? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Just for comparison, the 2012 movie Zero Dark Thirty was about the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden that took place in...2011. Too soon?

STAR RATING: 4.75/5