I can only imagine the horror of losing a child. Not experiencing the death of a child, which must certainly be catastrophic but does, if nothing else, allow for a tiny bit of closure. But losing them, not knowing where they are, terrified that they are in danger but always clinging to the hope that somehow they are perfectly fine… that must be a very specific, very confusing sort of nightmare.
It’s that uncertainty which blooms all over Kim Farrant’s Strangerland, a film which contains elements of mystery but mostly just agonizes along with its protagonists, Catherine and Matthew, played by Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes. They have two children, Lily (Maddison Brown) and Tommy (Nicholas Hamilton), who were already a real handful until they disappeared into the night and were consumed by a cataclysmic dust storm. Lily waves all the red flags associated with pre-teen promiscuity, and Tommy goes out walking almost every night, not emerging until the morn, heaven knows where exactly he goes the whole time.
When Lily and Tommy vanish, Catherine and Matthew are stricken with guilt and uncertainty. It seems very likely that Lily would just run away, probably into the arms of a man (even a much, much older man), but Tommy? Did he go with his sister or vanish all on his own, lost in the Australian outback, dying of dehydration and wondering if his parents will ever come find him?
Detective David Rae (Hugo Weaving) is on the case, but it becomes clear early on that in Strangerland, the mystery isn’t nearly as important as the suffering. Which proves frustrating, because the mystery is pretty danged mysterious and director Kim Farrant sometimes struggles between the decision to sideline it completely or balance it against the all-consuming psychological turmoil. Audience members who allow their curiosity to take over are bound to be frustrated by Strangerland’s conclusions, because again, the mystery is a tertiary concern.
Instead: watch Nicole Kidman suffer. She suffers well, the talented actress that she is, and falls into ugly-sexy coping mechanisms that the film considers a disquieting parallel to her daughter’s sexual awakening. It’s tempting to say that Strangerland has some unpleasant attitudes towards its women, but it appears to be trying to ask difficult questions instead of answer the old immature and sexist ones. The story isn’t quite rich and detailed enough to prevent audiences from wondering if perhaps, just perhaps, we should entirely disapprove, which may be the point.
But there are a lot of “maybes” to be found in Strangerland. Maybe the point is the parents’ suffering, but maybe that’s just a kind way to say that the mystery never entirely engages. Maybe the film is just being honest about the flaws of its characters, but maybe suggesting that the flaws of all the female characters are sexual and/or jealous in nature is a little too judgmental and reductive. Maybe it’s brilliant that the film ends in a question mark, or maybe it’s just dissatisfying that a film which exerts so much effort making us wonder decides in the end that we shouldn’t have bothered, and that guilt reigns supreme over dramatic satisfaction.
Maybe Strangerland itself is the ultimate contradiction: a film that is technically proficient, but not very good.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
