LIMBO
****
Director: Ivan Sen
Screenplay: Ivan Sen
Principal cast:
Simon Baker
Rob Collins
Natasha Wanganeen
Nicholas Hope
Mark Coe
Joshua Warrior
Country: Australia
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 108 mins.
Australian release date: 18 May 2023.
Ivan Sen’s glorious black and white feature, Limbo, is set in a wind-blown outback settlement in the middle of nowhere, an eerily atmospheric location that resembles the surface of the moon (it was filmed around Coober Pedy in South Australia). Limbo is the name of the town where heavily inked detective Travis Hurley (Simon Baker) turns up to determine whether or not to reopen the unsolved murder case of an indigenous girl there 20 years earlier, but it could describe Hurley’s state of mind, too. He’s a jaded, ex-drug squad cop who’s using heroin to soothe his unsettled nerves and, you guess, he’s seen the worst of human behaviour from both police and crims – you get the feeling he’s ready to walk away from everything. The fact his car radio is permanently tuned to a Christian evangelical station is testament to that, despite the fact that the sermons don’t seem to be providing him with any salvation.
As Hurley re-examines the circumstances surrounding the disappearance, he encounters members of the girl’s family, none of whom are very forthcoming because they don’t expect anything positive will transpire. They’ve been let down before. There’s Charlie, the missing girl’s brother (Rob Collins), an opal miner who lives alone, his companionship supplied by the bottle, who declares straight out, “I don’t talk to cops, especially white ones,” and his estranged other sister Emma (Natasha Wanganeen), a lonely woman who’s raising Charlie’s kid Zac (Mark Coe) as well as her own. Then there are the townsfolk, some of whom were treated as suspects 20 years ago, especially the Indigenous ones, and Joseph (a grizzled Nicholas Hope), the brother of a white man accused of being complicit in the crime but never charged.
Sen has been in this territory before with his films Mystery Road and Goldstone wherein another detective, Jay Swan, played by Aaron Pedersen, arrives in a town to solve a crime. In Limbo, though, the writer/director has pared both the action and the mise-en-scène down to their bare essentials. Whereas the earlier two movies were in colour and populated by colourful characters, Limbo is in widescreen monochrome and its inhabitants are defeated and beaten down by life. They don’t expect much and say very little - they’re literally in limbo. Sen says his latest work “is a continuation of the themes I explored in my previous films. [They] dealt with primarily an Indigenous perspective of the justice system through the eyes of an Indigenous police officer. Limbo explores the deeper impact of a crime on an Indigenous family through the eyes of a white policeman. The source of these ideas has largely come from my own personal experience, from family members and friends who have been victims of crime. I have witnessed their struggle not only for justice, but also for fairness and recognition by the Australian justice system.” And it’s true - as the plot unfolds, the screenplay subtly canvasses all the ways Indigenous people are stereotyped in Australia. It also raises issues like their high rate of incarceration, the shocking suicide numbers, their dispossession and the day-to-day racism they deal with and, particularly in this case, how differently the police treat crimes against First Nations citizens. There’s little doubt in Hurley’s mind that, had a white girl gone missing in Limbo, the disappearance would have been quickly solved.
As with almost all his films, Sen not only produces, directs and writes the material, but he also shoots and edits it. Oh, and he composes the score as well, although in this piece there’s virtually no music until the final credits roll. He gets the most out of his actors, too, and he cast this movie superbly. Baker is almost unrecognisable, bearded, shaven-headed, wrinkled and scarred, and he’s never been better. Like everyone else in Limbo, he says little, with long pauses in between. Collins, Hope and Wanganeen are all in excellent form, too, and match Baker in the spare dialogue stakes. Sen’s script would probably only run to a dozen or so pages but don’t let that fool you. There’s a lot going on in Limbo.
Screenplay: Ivan Sen
Principal cast:
Simon Baker
Rob Collins
Natasha Wanganeen
Nicholas Hope
Mark Coe
Joshua Warrior
Country: Australia
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 108 mins.
Australian release date: 18 May 2023.
Ivan Sen’s glorious black and white feature, Limbo, is set in a wind-blown outback settlement in the middle of nowhere, an eerily atmospheric location that resembles the surface of the moon (it was filmed around Coober Pedy in South Australia). Limbo is the name of the town where heavily inked detective Travis Hurley (Simon Baker) turns up to determine whether or not to reopen the unsolved murder case of an indigenous girl there 20 years earlier, but it could describe Hurley’s state of mind, too. He’s a jaded, ex-drug squad cop who’s using heroin to soothe his unsettled nerves and, you guess, he’s seen the worst of human behaviour from both police and crims – you get the feeling he’s ready to walk away from everything. The fact his car radio is permanently tuned to a Christian evangelical station is testament to that, despite the fact that the sermons don’t seem to be providing him with any salvation.
As Hurley re-examines the circumstances surrounding the disappearance, he encounters members of the girl’s family, none of whom are very forthcoming because they don’t expect anything positive will transpire. They’ve been let down before. There’s Charlie, the missing girl’s brother (Rob Collins), an opal miner who lives alone, his companionship supplied by the bottle, who declares straight out, “I don’t talk to cops, especially white ones,” and his estranged other sister Emma (Natasha Wanganeen), a lonely woman who’s raising Charlie’s kid Zac (Mark Coe) as well as her own. Then there are the townsfolk, some of whom were treated as suspects 20 years ago, especially the Indigenous ones, and Joseph (a grizzled Nicholas Hope), the brother of a white man accused of being complicit in the crime but never charged.
Sen has been in this territory before with his films Mystery Road and Goldstone wherein another detective, Jay Swan, played by Aaron Pedersen, arrives in a town to solve a crime. In Limbo, though, the writer/director has pared both the action and the mise-en-scène down to their bare essentials. Whereas the earlier two movies were in colour and populated by colourful characters, Limbo is in widescreen monochrome and its inhabitants are defeated and beaten down by life. They don’t expect much and say very little - they’re literally in limbo. Sen says his latest work “is a continuation of the themes I explored in my previous films. [They] dealt with primarily an Indigenous perspective of the justice system through the eyes of an Indigenous police officer. Limbo explores the deeper impact of a crime on an Indigenous family through the eyes of a white policeman. The source of these ideas has largely come from my own personal experience, from family members and friends who have been victims of crime. I have witnessed their struggle not only for justice, but also for fairness and recognition by the Australian justice system.” And it’s true - as the plot unfolds, the screenplay subtly canvasses all the ways Indigenous people are stereotyped in Australia. It also raises issues like their high rate of incarceration, the shocking suicide numbers, their dispossession and the day-to-day racism they deal with and, particularly in this case, how differently the police treat crimes against First Nations citizens. There’s little doubt in Hurley’s mind that, had a white girl gone missing in Limbo, the disappearance would have been quickly solved.
As with almost all his films, Sen not only produces, directs and writes the material, but he also shoots and edits it. Oh, and he composes the score as well, although in this piece there’s virtually no music until the final credits roll. He gets the most out of his actors, too, and he cast this movie superbly. Baker is almost unrecognisable, bearded, shaven-headed, wrinkled and scarred, and he’s never been better. Like everyone else in Limbo, he says little, with long pauses in between. Collins, Hope and Wanganeen are all in excellent form, too, and match Baker in the spare dialogue stakes. Sen’s script would probably only run to a dozen or so pages but don’t let that fool you. There’s a lot going on in Limbo.