Caffeinated Clint
By Davin Sgargetta
I always worry when sitting down to films like the ”The Square”, that seem to plonk themselves on the tail end of a trend of dark, twisted narratives that try painstakingly hard to create cleverness and coincidence in story – made (in)famous by the Ritchies and Quentin’s of the cinematic world – only to end up in a muddled heap of contrived lunacy (an Australian film with a similar name springs to mind).
I say this because it’s also always refreshing when someone comes along and does it exceptionally well, with an air of freshness, and of course in the face of the usual financial limitations.
”The Square” centres around construction supervisor Raymond Yale (David Roberts). Unhappily married, we meet him in the midst of an illicit affair with the young and beautiful Carla Smith (Claire van der Boom). Herself unhappily married to a controlling, criminal husband (Smithy), she finds a sports bag full of cash in the ceiling of their modest home, no doubt the loot of his most recent misdemeanor, and presents Ray with a daring, but enticing opportunity: to steal the money, and then have the house burned to the ground, seemingly, with the cash inside it, before running off into the distance.
With the satisfaction of his own life dwindling, Ray eventually agrees and organises Billy (Joel Edgerton) to take care of the fire. On the fateful evening, however, Clara’s mother-in-law decides to visit the house to feed the dog, while the couple – and the entire town it seems – are at the local carols by candlelight. She is killed in the fire, unleashing a series of events that send a once elegant and fool-proof plan into a tumultuous sequence of events, with each close call, being followed even closer by another potentially ominous conclusion.
”The Square” succeeds on all fronts. It’s elegantly written, thoughtfully directed and convincingly performed. Most importantly, it’s plausible. As alluded to earlier, this isn’t the first film about bad breeding bad, about wrong choices leading to disastrous outcomes; but it’s one of the few that is done intelligently and credibly. It’s also one of the few that is done with a touch of originality.
It thankfully didn’t try to be stylised in its dialogue and it didn’t sensationalise the lifestyle it was portraying; there was a genuine sense of realism, which is rare in this genre. But for me, most importantly, it was honestly local. It didn’t try to make a statement about, or over-promote, what it was to be Australian, by filling the film with Aussie catchphrases and unnecessary product-placement. There were no cutaways to koalas or kangaroos, no Holden vs Ford jargon planted in the exposition, shots of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the distance, or cans of Fosters, VB or XXXX lying in the foreground.
This may seem like a petty thing to point out, but with many local films overdoing it on this front, ”The Square” proved that a fashionable tale can be told honestly from a truly Australian perspective. This is a triumphant introduction by director Nash Edgerton and his brother, screenwriter/actor Joel Edgerton, a couple of filmmakers to look out for in the near future.
