Richard Flanagan, “The Sound of One Hand Clapping” (1998)
If there’s any value to this film at all, it is as an object lesson in how not to make a film based on stereotypes and a narrative that’s been told many times over in other Australian movies. “The Sound …” is ostensibly an exploration of how an immigrant family in 1950s Australia is crushed by poverty, isolation and a generally indifferent society, and how the consequences of family break-up affect the individuals involved. Slovenian immigrant Melita abandons her husband and young daughter Sonja (the delightfully sweet Arabella Wain, three years old at the time of filming), and effectively disappears from their lives. The father tries to bring up Sonja himself but the pressures of living in Hobart, Tasmania, far from family and support, lead him into despair, alcoholism and violence towards Sonja. The girl runs away at the first opportunity she gets. Nearly 20 years later, alone and pregnant, Sonja (Kerry Fox) returns from her dead-end job and no-hoper life in Sydney to find her father to tell him she is going to have an abortion, and perhaps be reconciled with him as well.
The little family’s dreary history unfurls through flashbacks and we eventually discover what becomes of Sonja’s mother but this leaves a great deal unresolved and viewers are left with more questions than answers. What does Sonja really do in the time between leaving her father and becoming pregnant, and who is the father of her child? Does she try to look for her mother and if not, why not? At one point in the film the father (Kristof Kaczmarek) acquires a girlfriend but why does he dump her simply on the advice of his daughter? Does the father truly resolve to give up drinking and attend Alcoholics Anonymous? Why all of a sudden does he offer Sonja furniture for the baby? Why does Sonja decide to keep the baby and stay in Hobart? Does the baby realise there’s a huge responsibility on its tiny shoulders to preserve the family unit and stop Sonja and her dad from drifting apart again?
For a film about love and the need to belong, to know where one has come from and to be able to connect with others in order to survive among strangers in a remote and harsh environment, the narrative is a mess of various stereotypes about the social and cultural barriers immigrants must navigate around and the culture shock they experience in a society whose depth and variety are as non-existent as unicorns and dragons. The characters of Sonja and her father are flatter than pancakes and the usually capable Fox seems completely at a loss as to how to portray the adult Sonja. As an 8-year-old schoolgirl Sonja (Rose Flanagan) is a passive and apathetic observer lacking in energy and spirit. It’s a wonder her later adolescent self manages to summon up the determination to run away without first going through a stage of surreptitiously sharing and smoking cigarettes with other naughty girls in the school toilet cubicles, getting expelled from school for failing grades and then running around with the local teenage motorcycle gang – and falling pregnant to the gang leader. (At that point we might have had a really interesting story.) Scenes tend to be simplistic and unoriginal, and I’m sure we all have seen similar scenes of dad hitting daughter / daughter screaming at dad / dad crashing out in drink / dad later sobbing for the bad things he did to his wife that made her run away in the first place, in other films done with more originality and emotional depth. The film’s resolution after a no-climax climax is hackneyed and unconvincing beyond belief.
The only thing the film has going for it is the moody and slightly sinister Tasmanian landscapes but even then the film does not interact much with its settings and for all I know the movie could have been set in parts of mainland Australia, New Zealand or other areas with mountains and small towns with no change in dialogue. Apart from the settings, the film really has no redeeming features. It seems that at every moment when something interesting might happen, the film turns away from it and retreats into blandness.