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CANNES, FRANCE: The opening scenes of Warwick Thornton’s mystical drama The New Boy focus heavily on the acoustics of outback Australia: a horse’s hoof on the sunburnt red gravel, a lizard traversing a rock surface, the rustle of a nearby bush.
As the sun beats down on a remote Catholic orphanage in the 1940s Australia, Sister Eileen (played by Academy Award-winning actress Cate Blanchett) opens its doors to take a late night delivery of a nine-year-old Indigenous boy, dumped by the secular state. Christening him “New Boy”, he must fit in with the other boys at the modest shelter and thus learn the ways of the white man’s world until he is of age to be sent off to a sheep station like the rest of them. New Boy’s introduction to strawberry jam is an amusing one. George, a farmhand at the orphanage played by Wayne Blair, calls the young boy like one would a kangaroo, gesturing for him to try the sweet spread.
“He’s not a joey,” barks junior nun Sister Mum (played wonderfully by Deborah Mailman).
While the movie is slow, it’s beautifully shot and best experienced on the big screen. One standout scene includes New Boy watching on as one of the other boys is brutally caned. New Boy reaches down to the ground and, while he cannot speak English, holds out his hand to help the hurting boy. The single shot—a Brown hand reaching down to help a white one—is the most powerful of the film, showing that a child-like innocence knows no divide between the Indigenous population and its colonisers. Despite cultural differences, we are all humans who need the help of one another.
“The way Warwick has decided to shoot [the film], you really get the relationship with the landscape,” says Blanchett in Cannes.
“I think there’s something inherently Australian about understanding how you need to embrace the brutality of that landscape in order to exist with it.”
Blanchett is incredible as the slightly off-beat, maternal and dutiful figure—a far cry from the sophisticated sartorial treasures she’s been serving this Cannes season (Hello, that Louis Vuitton moment). As the 116-minute film rolls on, Blanchett’s character really opens up when Sister Eileen discovers New Boy’s healing powers. Is he a miracle worker? Is he the second coming of Christ? Stay with it until this point—it’s when our Cate is her most dynamic.
The New Boy will release into Australian cinemas on July 6.
