It's a far cry from Ramsay Street: Animal Kingdom, a film about a crime family in Melbourne in the 1980s led by a fearsome mother, was inspired by the actual lawlessness and renegade police in the city at that time, as director and writer David Michôd tells TARA BRADY
AS A TEENAGER David Michôd was less than thrilled about the prospect of a move from Sydney to Melbourne. Back in the 1980s everybody, including the young undergraduate, knew that Melbourne was nothing but “trouble”. Michôd quickly got up to speed by reading the not inconsiderable body of true-life crime writing associated with the Victorian capital. A grim fascination was born, one that has never quite deserted him.
“What was most notable about the law-and-order situation in Melbourne – almost up to the present day – was the antagonism between cops and robbers,” says Michôd. “In Sydney and in Queensland the cops were often working with the criminals. We were actually taught that in high school: that Sydney police were the most corrupt police force in the western world. This was all coming out during these massive corruption trials when I was growing up. Crime was, in every sense, a job for the police. But in Melbourne both the police and the criminals were different.”
Melbourne, it transpires, was unlike Ramsay Street. A frontier hot spot since the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s, by the time classic Neighboursplotlines were pondering possible romantic quandaries between sunny suburbanites, local women and children had disappeared without trace, shooting sprees were commonplace and armed robbery was, for many, a legitimate calling. The police were not long responding in kind.
“The statistics from that period record that the police were shooting people dead at a rate that was astronomically higher than anywhere else in Australia. There were a number of instances in which criminals and suspected criminals were shot dead in highly suspicious circumstances. It became common practice to plant weapons on people after they had been shot. The armed-robbery squad had a real renegade quality. They used to wear matching neckties that had crossed revolvers on them. They were an armed and dangerous gang. At the same time it was recognised that these guys were dealing with hardened criminals who were also armed and dangerous. They were the sharp, pointy arm of the law.”
Michôd has spent almost 10 years condensing this incendiary backdrop into Animal Kingdom, the winner of the World Cinema Prize at last year's Sundance and one of Quentin Tarantino's personal picks for 2010. Today, sitting in Soho on the eve of the film's London Film Festival premiere, the former film critic turned film-maker can't quite believe his luck.
“There were so many drafts over so many years. I kept at it, but you never know. I was worried people would think it was shit anyway.”
He need not have concerned himself. A chilling crime drama loosely inspired by such historical unpleasantness as the Walsh Street Murders, the film could easily pass as the evil anti -Neighbours.Between unlovely kitchen sinks, grubby shootings and heroin deaths, Animal Kingdom presents a complex, involving portrait of a family in crisis.
Our hero, J (played by newcomer James Frecheville) is 17 years old when his smack-addicted mother overdoses, leaving the teen to the mercies of his extended clan. The living arrangements are complicated. Brassy, blond matriarch and grandma ersatz Smurf (Jacki Weaver) keeps house for four equally maladjusted adult sons. Life with the psychopathic Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), loutish Baz (Joel Edgerton), volatile Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) and withdrawn, damaged Darren (Luke Ford) is never easy, but an escalating battle with a corrupt armed-robbery squad is about make things a whole lot worse.
“The family are finished and they know it,” says the writer-director. “They’re armed robbers, and armed robbery doesn’t really exist in that way any more. I remember, as a kid, on the news there were three, four and five banks getting hit every week. Now it’s the domain of drugged-up kids and small-time crooks. That sense of their impending redundancy is what starts to unsettle them. You’ve got a family of young men who are dangerously unstable but who can function while they have careers and a family structure. As soon as that structure starts to disintegrate they become extremely explosive. Certainly that’s what happens with Ben Mendelsohn’s character.”
Mendelsohn’s Pope, a raging, paranoid, devious murderer, isn’t even the most fiendish presence on screen. That honour falls to Jacki Weaver with her terrifying, Oscar-nominated turn as Smurf.
“I didn’t base her on anyone in particular,” says Michôd. “There have been many Melbourne crime mothers who have been slipping in and out of the newspapers for years. They’re very often called matriarchs by the press. They’re not really matriarchs, because they don’t have any real control over what happens in their family. They have public, almost celebrity identities. You almost sense they love being called matriarchs. The ex-wife of a very notorious criminal identity in Melbourne nearly ended up on Dancing with the Stars. But more than anything Jackie’s character is based on observations from my own family and friends. There aren’t any similarities. But all families share certain insular traits and rules. For me, the psychology had to be authentic and rooted in what I knew.”
This is hardly the first time Melbourne's underclass has found its way on to our screens. Back in 2000 Eric Bana went global on the strength of his portrayal of self-styled outlaw and Melbourne resident Mark Read in Chopper. More recently the TV series Underbelly, an epic Aussie crime drama, was pulled from Melbourne's airwaves for fear of incitement.
"I deliberately set out with the idea that I was not going to make a film about celebrity figures," says Michôd. "Underbelly did exactly that. It was problematic, partly because it was turning real people into television characters, and also because it was doing it in a way that made crime look really cool. Everybody was walking along in a long lens shot to cool music like they were astronauts in Reservoir Dogs. I think I felt a little uncomfortable watching it. I didn't want to create rock'n'roll criminals."
Animal Kingdom'sgritty, gurgling stagecraft has, unsurprisingly, evaded any accusations of sensationalism, even on its home turf.
“Quite often Australian audiences need to be dragged kicking and screaming to an Australian film. After the incredible reception we got at Sundance I was half expecting to go home and be disappointed, and was so relieved when the film did really well. It was really positively reviewed, and despite the echoes of a kind of unpleasant folk history it was largely viewed and judged as a crime film, not a quasi-historical document. I was expecting to spend all my time talking about Melbourne crime.” He laughs. “But in this part of the world I still have some explaining to do.”
Mamma mia! Bad mums at the Oscars
We've always known cinema would be a much poorer place without Faye Dunaway in
Mommie Dearestor Angela Lansbury in
The Manchurian Candidate. But this weekend's Oscar ceremony would feature tumbleweeds where Jack Nicholson ought to be if not for lousy parenting. It's probably nobody's idea of progress, but 2011 is the year when you didn't have to be Sam Jackson to be a bad mother.
JACKIE WEAVERAS SMURF IN
ANIMAL KINGDOM
Weaver received a much-deserved Oscar nomination for her turn as the fearsome ruler of a psychotic Melbourne family. If your son beat hers at the egg-and-spoon race he'd be passing cutlery for a week.
BARBARA HERSHEYAS ERICA SAYERS IN
BLACK SWAN
Somewhere between a beautiful witch and a neurotic anticyclone, Hershey lumbers Natalie Portman, her dancing daughter with all her own disappointments. Who knew ballet moms could be so scary?
DONNA MURPHYAS MOTHER GOTHEL IN
TANGLED
The best character in a cracking film, Rapunzel's mum has perfected the art of withering, annihilating, parental sarcasm. "Oh I'm only joking, darling." Well, that's all right then. I won't need years of therapy after all.
MELISSA LEOAS ALICE WARD IN
THE FIGHTER
A being composed entirely of fags, hairspray and polyester, Alice Ward (below) scares the living snot out of Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg. And they punch people for a living. And one of them is Batman.
CLAIRE BLOOMAS QUEEN MARY IN
THE KING'S SPEECH
We don't see any Piper Laurie-style shrieking, but we do see the stuttering, traumatised aftermath. Mary coldly kisses her son's hand – as protocol demands – when he ascends to the throne. Offspring looks like he's ascended to the naughty step.
TARA BRADY
