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Issue No. 140 | 14 June 2002 |
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Abbott's Rule of Law
Interview: Party Girl Unions: Touch One, Touch All Industrial: Condition Critical International: Innocence Lost History: Strange Bedfellows Organising: Just Say No Review: Choosing Life Beneath The Clouds Poetry: Did We Make a Big Mistake
The Soapbox The Dressing Room The Locker Room Week in Review Bosswatch
 Luke and LearnDue CreditTom's FooleryMore LathamMore Tom
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Review Choosing Life Beneath The CloudsBy Tara de Boehmler
But for one of its characters (Lena, played by Dannielle Hall), the destination is very important. It must fulfill a lifelong dream to establish a relationship with her estranged father while leading her to a place offering more choices than the mission she has grown up in. She instinctively knows that whatever path she chooses to take her there will potentially be paved with difficulties and realises it will be her handling of these situations which will determine where she ultimately ends up.
At least this appears to be the thinking that shapes Lena's journey from her Northern NSW mission to the city of Sydney where her long lost father lives. What drives her to leave is as much a desire to know her father as it is an attempt to escape from a place where a distinct lack of available choices leaves few options other than crime and alcoholism. When her best friend becomes pregnant like so many girls around their age Lena decides to leave at once, while she still has the freedom. Along the way she meets Vaughn, a young Aboriginal man who is also heading to Sydney. Vaughn (played by Damian Pitt) has escaped from a detention centre to come and visit his dying mother. He is a young man who has had the hope knocked out of him and whose resultant coping mechanism is to hold in the pain while lashing out with violence when provoked. His dreams are undeveloped and with habitual knee-jerk reactions replacing well-considered choices, Lena holds little hope that Vaughn has what it takes to dig himself out of his hole. Despite her misgivings about Vaughn's personal situation, she confidently tells him that no matter how shitty anyone's life is, they always have a choice to live a better life. Lena was born to an Aboriginal mother and an Irish father, leaving her with skin pale enough for her to pass as white. So when she talks of choices, in Vaughn's eyes, it is clear that she was born with a few more than he was. But her words have an impact on him and bring him to examine his own actions and the consequences he might be attracting to himself. The exercise brings him a new perspective but it is no magic wand. Sen's Beneath Clouds is a subtle movie in which more is often said in the scenes containing the least words. In one such scene Vaughn is admiring some wild horses in the back of a truck. He is entranced as they stare back at him with their soulful eyes. Suddenly the vehicle begins to move. Vaughn reads on the side of the truck that they are being taken to a meat works. They have no say, no voice, no choice and no hope of a future. It is like he has been trying to tell Lena all along: when living in a white dominated world, at the mercy of white laws and the white version of history and reality, what choice does he really have? And what chance do either of them have to triumph on their own terms when racism is so ingrained on either side of the apparent black/white divide? Beneath the Clouds depicts a journey where two people endeavor to find out just that. Three out of five stars. (Go your own way)
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