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#179 - Snowtown
Justin Kurzel, 2011
Based on the true story of three serial killers who operated in the town of Snowtown, South Australia during the 1990s.
As far as Australian true crime biopics go, this is a completely different beast to Chopper. While that film was a darkly comical piece of embellishment carried by an incredibly charismatic lead character, Snowtown is a grim portrait of the titular small town where the murderous leads are not offered much in the way of a sympathetic portrayal. The only one who gets such a treatment is Jamie (Lucas Pittaway), a teenage boy who is a frequent victim of sexual abuse and is convinced by John (Daniel Henshall) to start taking vengeance against his abusers. Before too long, John forces Jamie into being an accomplice to a series of sickening torture-based murders. Throughout it all, Jamie is just as horrified by what he's witnessing as the audience is, but he is manipulated into co-operating with the incredibly volatile and intimidating John.
The problem with a film that purports to be as much of a realistic and frank depiction of an actual murderer's crimes and the environment in which they occurred is that it's hard to tell just what kind of reaction to have to it. Snowtown doesn't often showcase the main trio's actual crimes, with the most disturbingly graphic and prolonged example happening about halfway through. Instead, much of the running time consists of depicting the small-town boredom that informs the lower-class characters' lives. Unfortunately, the thing about trying to accurately convey that kind of boredom is that you run the risk of boring the audience - when they're not being disturbed by the actual acts of physical violence, of course. As a result, most of the film's two-hour running time tends to be hindered by a lack of narrative momentum - this isn't helped by the film occasionally being hard to follow thanks to the erratic nature of the film's focus.
On the acting front, Henshall dominates every frame he's in as John, who can switch between charming affability while he's around most of the town's residents and manipulative menace once he's alone with Jamie. Though he definitely commits to the role, it ultimately suffers from the same lack of tension that permeates the rest of the film. Pittaway is alright as Jamie, though he generally comes across as a blank space when he's not actually involved in John's crimes. Given how much of the cast is made up of amateurs, there aren't a lot of strong performances on display anyway. It gets some points for the pallid cinematography and the atonal, drum-heavy background score, but neither of those can adequately compensate for Snowtown's most fundamental flaws. It's a raw and uncompromising dramatisation featuring some genuinely unsettling subject matter, but that doesn't automatically make it a good film.
Justin Kurzel, 2011
Based on the true story of three serial killers who operated in the town of Snowtown, South Australia during the 1990s.
As far as Australian true crime biopics go, this is a completely different beast to Chopper. While that film was a darkly comical piece of embellishment carried by an incredibly charismatic lead character, Snowtown is a grim portrait of the titular small town where the murderous leads are not offered much in the way of a sympathetic portrayal. The only one who gets such a treatment is Jamie (Lucas Pittaway), a teenage boy who is a frequent victim of sexual abuse and is convinced by John (Daniel Henshall) to start taking vengeance against his abusers. Before too long, John forces Jamie into being an accomplice to a series of sickening torture-based murders. Throughout it all, Jamie is just as horrified by what he's witnessing as the audience is, but he is manipulated into co-operating with the incredibly volatile and intimidating John.
The problem with a film that purports to be as much of a realistic and frank depiction of an actual murderer's crimes and the environment in which they occurred is that it's hard to tell just what kind of reaction to have to it. Snowtown doesn't often showcase the main trio's actual crimes, with the most disturbingly graphic and prolonged example happening about halfway through. Instead, much of the running time consists of depicting the small-town boredom that informs the lower-class characters' lives. Unfortunately, the thing about trying to accurately convey that kind of boredom is that you run the risk of boring the audience - when they're not being disturbed by the actual acts of physical violence, of course. As a result, most of the film's two-hour running time tends to be hindered by a lack of narrative momentum - this isn't helped by the film occasionally being hard to follow thanks to the erratic nature of the film's focus.
On the acting front, Henshall dominates every frame he's in as John, who can switch between charming affability while he's around most of the town's residents and manipulative menace once he's alone with Jamie. Though he definitely commits to the role, it ultimately suffers from the same lack of tension that permeates the rest of the film. Pittaway is alright as Jamie, though he generally comes across as a blank space when he's not actually involved in John's crimes. Given how much of the cast is made up of amateurs, there aren't a lot of strong performances on display anyway. It gets some points for the pallid cinematography and the atonal, drum-heavy background score, but neither of those can adequately compensate for Snowtown's most fundamental flaws. It's a raw and uncompromising dramatisation featuring some genuinely unsettling subject matter, but that doesn't automatically make it a good film.