Snowtown

"You don't have to worry mate, they're nobody. No one gives a shit".

Take a look at that poster. This image is synonymous with the film's central relationship, that between convicted serial killers John (Daniel Henshall) and Jamie (Lucas Pittaway). John looks over James' shoulder like a puppet master, and it's a dynamic that made some of these horrific events possible if we're to believe that the film flies that closely to the truth. For the uninitiated, Snowtown tells the story of one of Australia's most horrific crimes, the brutal murder of some eleven known individuals by an informal gang led by John Bunting in the South Australian town of Snowtown. The victims were infamously stored in barrels of acid hidden away in a disused bank vault, the full extent of these crimes remained unrevealed to the Australian public until the release of this very film. Director Justin Kurzel was given unprecedented access to police files on the Snowtown murders, and what he's done with this shocking true story is actually quite astonishing. Rather than pinning out the events in exhaustive detail like some Pay-TV telemovie, Kurzel has created a naturalistic recreation of the context of these crimes, a vividly real character study that somehow gives the illusion of a complete lack of artifice in constructing scripted scenes - making it feel almost like a documentary. Scarily so.

Snowtown is a socio-economic lowspot in South Australia, a welfare-supported area of incisive suburban boredom where Jamie Vlassakis has grown up with his brothers and single mother Elizabeth (Louise Harris). Snowtown shows us lazy glimpses of this life, Jamie's encounters with sexual abuse and the wider interaction of the town's community as they deal with their own issues outside of the view of the police (who barely figure in this forgotten corner of rundown housing). Into Jamie's life comes John, his mother's charismatic new boyfriend. After dealing with his bullying older brother and a sexually abusive former step father, Jamie is more than receptive to a strong new father figure in his life. John more than occupies this role, he eventually controls Jamie on some very subtle and insidious levels... he's a man with delusions of godhood, getting pleasure through controlling others. Jamie is a young man who doesn't know any better, he doesn't have any aggressive tendencies and after getting picked on for so long he's ready to comply with John's suggestion to 'grow some balls'. John begins remaking Jamie in his own image, and soon the boy is inducted into an inner circle under John's tutelage - an accessory to the murder of suspected pedophiles in a community that is both intolerant of police interference and has a perception that the system has failed them. It eventually becomes apparent that John's motives go beyond vigilantism and encompass more sinister undertones.


The journey from talk to action is a big part of Snowtown's muted narrative. John starts out using homophobia and hatred of pedophiles as an excuse for sadism but his real motivation is that he simply likes playing games with people. The scene where he and Jamie cut up a kangaroo to put it into a bucket to be thrown onto a man's porch chillingly foreshadows the barrel-work to come, and the tension that arises from what the audience knows is ahead renders certain scenes incredibly hard to watch (witness the scene where John asks Jamie to shoot his dog). When the murders start there's this concept of those who 'deserve' it (pedophiles, junkies) but somewhere along the line John doesn't even bother trying to justify it anymore, and none of the other characters even comment on this - outlining the darkness that fuels much of the film. Basically the film is saying (though there's nothing basic about this film) that John Bunting was a sociopath, and the absence of law and order in this godforsaken community gave him the freedom to escalate this deficiency into horrifying action, and Jamie's role initially seems to be to bear witness to this sociopathy, though the scene where he eventually joins in is fraught with conflicted emotions (another one of those hard to watch scenes).

Most (but not all) of the violence is implied, so anyone looking for a gorefest will be sorely disappointed. The film isn't about that, and Kurzel made the right decision not to revel in the violence so that the film wouldn't be about that. In a way the film is similar to Animal Kingdom and The Boys in its focus on the truths behind the criminal underclass, it's an Australian counterpart to the American film Winter's Bone in that it offers an unflinching view of our own white underclass shackeld by their poverty. But, having said that, in this film no concession is made at all to traditional crime film narratives... it's a naturalistic snapshot of the psychology and culture behind the killings. There is a certain assumption implicit in the film that the audience will know the essence of what happened with the Snowtown murders, so a lot of the details aren't really made clear and the film therefore remains primarily a mood piece. It's like an in-depth essay where you have to choose to talk about just one thing, and Kurzel chose to talk about why John and Jamie did what they did, rather than the how and what.

In light of this, certain details get glossed over or excised. Details regarding the social security fraud aspect are left out but it's not as if the film is saying this didn't happen, it just doesn't give up its time to discuss it. Also, Robert Wagner's role in the murders isn't really examined in any capacity... the character is present but little insight into his role is given to the audience. The problem is, the closer we get to the details behind these heinous crimes the less logic or sense there is to it. John Bunting had a hatred of homosexuality, and one of his first victims was Robert Wagner's boyfriend, yet John didn't want to kill Robert and Robert was happy to be his accomplice. It doesn't make any sense, yet these are the facts, and the film glosses over some of these things in favour of not confusing the audience or losing its way. Suffice to say, the full extent of these crimes are probably too much for one film to deal with sufficiently... I mean, and this is something else never mentioned in the film, in reality Wagner even ate some of their last victim!

One more thing before I finish, Daniel Henshall's performance in Snowtown is instrumental in the film's effectiveness. He's spot-on in capturing the uneasy confidence and smirking calmness of a real sociopath, he never overplays it but he's also never less than magnetic. It's a tour-de-force.

DIRECTOR: Justin Kurzel
WRITER/SOURCE: Justin Kurzel and Shaun Grant. Based on the real life Snowtown murders.
KEY ACTORS: Daniel Hensell, Lucas Pittaway, Louise Harris, Richard Green, Aaron Viergever, Bob Adriaens, Frank Cwiertniak

RELATED TEXTS
- Snowtown: The Bodies in Barrels Murders, a non-fiction true crime book by Jeremy Pudney.
- For more on realistic looks at Australian crime in film, see Animal Kingdom, Little Fish, The Boys and The Combination.
- As mentioned, the American film Winter's Bone looks at a similar white underclass and its endemic crime.

AWARDS
Cannes Film Festival - won FIPRESCI prize (special mention).