Movie: The New Boy

At the end of watching this film, I wasn’t particularly thrilled about it. It seemed very ponderous, with imagery and metaphor laid on thick. But I’ve found myself thinking about it more than I thought I would afterwards.

Cate Blanchett plays a nun, Sister Eileen, in an outback (very outback) mission station during WW2, where she and two indigenous co-workers, another nun (played well by Deborah Mailman) and a brooding overseer/worker played by Wayne Blair, collude in covering up the death of the resident priest. We don’t learn how he died, only that Sister Eileen (who has her own demons with alcohol), is still talking to him, and that she doesn’t want another priest appointed in his stead. A ‘new boy’ is delivered by the police to the mission, who is completely tribal, does not speak English and knows nothing of western ways. He is also invested with a form of magic, and is particularly drawn to a large wooden crucifix that is erected in their small church in the middle of the desert. Sister Eileen comes to believe that the New Boy is sent by God, and baptizes him….and I think that you know the rest.

There are aspects of magic realism, alongside a commentary of colonialism and religion, and its incomprehension of the wealth of indigenous spirituality. A bit heavy-handed though.

My rating: 3.5 stars