THE DROVER'S WIFE THE LEGEND OF MOLLY JOHNSON
****
Director: Leah Purcell
Screenwriter: Leah Purcell
Principal cast:
Leah Purcell
Rob Collins
Sam Reid
Jessica De Gouw
Nicholas Hope
Harry Greenwood
Country: Australia
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 109 mins.
Australian release date: 5 May 2022.
Leah Purcell is a very talented woman. Ever since she first appeared on the small screen back in 1996 in an episode of G.P. and on stage with her one-woman show Box the Pony (which she co-wrote) the following year, she has exhibited her talents as an artist of the highest calibre. Subsequently, she has added to her suite of skills: she is also a screenwriter, a novelist, a director and a producer. Did I mention that she was talented? Now, her latest work, The Drover’s Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson has been brought to the big screen, having begun life as an award-winning play before becoming a best-selling novel. There’s even talk of it transmuting into an opera and a TV series. It is based on an 1892 short story by Australian poet/writer Henry Lawson but Purcell has fleshed it out considerably by drawing on her family’s Indigenous history. When the novel was published, she told The Guardian that “I wanted to find a new way of telling an old story, one that appreciates who we are as Australians, and one that is looking at our Indigenous Australian historical experience …”
It's 1893 and Molly Johnson, the titular drover’s wife (played by Purcell, a Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman from Queensland), is pregnant and fending for herself and her four young children in their rough-hewn hut because her husband has gone sheep herding. To add to her difficulties, she’s heavily pregnant but she’s a very capable woman, both physically and mentally strong. And she’s not afraid to wield a shotgun at anyone who threatens her family. First, she’s visited by Sergeant Nate Clintoff (Sam Reid), the newly appointed trooper to the nearby town of Everton, and his English wife Louisa (Jessica De Gouw). Later, an Aboriginal man on the run from the police, Yadaka (Rob Collins), interrupts her routine. When asked what he’s done, he answers simply, saying, “My crime, missus? Existing while being black.” His arrival stirs something long suppressed in Molly because he appears to know things about her background of which she herself is unaware. He also takes her eldest son Danny (Malachi Dower-Roberts) under his wing and starts to teach him about hunting and the ways of the bush. The pursuit of Yadaka inevitably brings trouble and strife into Molly’s life and it’s not just the police she has to fear.
Purcell has said that, “The Drover’s Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson film is based on my personal experience as a fair-skinned, Aboriginal woman who grew up in a small country town and now lives in the city. I’m a woman brought up by storytellers, within a culture where the tradition of storytelling is passed down and our histories are heard from the Black experience, not from white-washed history books.” In fact, the character of Yadaka is based in part on the journey of Purcell’s great-grandfather back to his Country in Queensland in the 1890s, having been forced to work in a travelling circus and then dumped, penniless, in Melbourne. Perhaps that goes some way to explaining just how compelling Purcell’s performance is; she’s dynamite, fiercely intense in her portrayal of a woman who will go to any length to protect her family. As the actress says, “At my film’s core is a mother who will do anything for her children and a young boy who will stand by his mother, no matter what. It’s about love, protection, identity and the survival of family with a soul of ancient proportions.”
The movie was filmed in the Snowy Mountains and cinematographer Mark Wareham has shown just what magnificent locations the ‘high country’ contains. Much of it was shot outdoors and there is some stunning time-lapse footage of the hills and valleys filmed by photographic artist Murray Fredricks. The interiors are equally dramatic, mostly dark, claustrophobic places in which the camera peers into the gloom, spying on the actions of the people therein. The score, by Salliana Seven Campbell, is eerie and spare and the composer played almost every note of it. “Ninety-five percent is all me, playing the banjo, the fiddle, the mandolin, the piano, the guitar, the bass - I played 14 instruments,” she says. Initially, her work evokes memories of a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western before it morphs into something more original, drawing on folk and Celtic musical traditions.
The Drover’s Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson is a brutal tale with a lot of love in its heart. It’s a bold retelling of a famous short story written primarily for a white audience. By opening up Lawson’s yarn, however, Leah Purcell has broadened its horizons and made it bigger and more holistic, incorporating modern ways of thinking about racism and bias in Australia. As she aptly describes her excellent film, it’s “a contemporary form of Dreaming.”
Screenwriter: Leah Purcell
Principal cast:
Leah Purcell
Rob Collins
Sam Reid
Jessica De Gouw
Nicholas Hope
Harry Greenwood
Country: Australia
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 109 mins.
Australian release date: 5 May 2022.
Leah Purcell is a very talented woman. Ever since she first appeared on the small screen back in 1996 in an episode of G.P. and on stage with her one-woman show Box the Pony (which she co-wrote) the following year, she has exhibited her talents as an artist of the highest calibre. Subsequently, she has added to her suite of skills: she is also a screenwriter, a novelist, a director and a producer. Did I mention that she was talented? Now, her latest work, The Drover’s Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson has been brought to the big screen, having begun life as an award-winning play before becoming a best-selling novel. There’s even talk of it transmuting into an opera and a TV series. It is based on an 1892 short story by Australian poet/writer Henry Lawson but Purcell has fleshed it out considerably by drawing on her family’s Indigenous history. When the novel was published, she told The Guardian that “I wanted to find a new way of telling an old story, one that appreciates who we are as Australians, and one that is looking at our Indigenous Australian historical experience …”
It's 1893 and Molly Johnson, the titular drover’s wife (played by Purcell, a Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman from Queensland), is pregnant and fending for herself and her four young children in their rough-hewn hut because her husband has gone sheep herding. To add to her difficulties, she’s heavily pregnant but she’s a very capable woman, both physically and mentally strong. And she’s not afraid to wield a shotgun at anyone who threatens her family. First, she’s visited by Sergeant Nate Clintoff (Sam Reid), the newly appointed trooper to the nearby town of Everton, and his English wife Louisa (Jessica De Gouw). Later, an Aboriginal man on the run from the police, Yadaka (Rob Collins), interrupts her routine. When asked what he’s done, he answers simply, saying, “My crime, missus? Existing while being black.” His arrival stirs something long suppressed in Molly because he appears to know things about her background of which she herself is unaware. He also takes her eldest son Danny (Malachi Dower-Roberts) under his wing and starts to teach him about hunting and the ways of the bush. The pursuit of Yadaka inevitably brings trouble and strife into Molly’s life and it’s not just the police she has to fear.
Purcell has said that, “The Drover’s Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson film is based on my personal experience as a fair-skinned, Aboriginal woman who grew up in a small country town and now lives in the city. I’m a woman brought up by storytellers, within a culture where the tradition of storytelling is passed down and our histories are heard from the Black experience, not from white-washed history books.” In fact, the character of Yadaka is based in part on the journey of Purcell’s great-grandfather back to his Country in Queensland in the 1890s, having been forced to work in a travelling circus and then dumped, penniless, in Melbourne. Perhaps that goes some way to explaining just how compelling Purcell’s performance is; she’s dynamite, fiercely intense in her portrayal of a woman who will go to any length to protect her family. As the actress says, “At my film’s core is a mother who will do anything for her children and a young boy who will stand by his mother, no matter what. It’s about love, protection, identity and the survival of family with a soul of ancient proportions.”
The movie was filmed in the Snowy Mountains and cinematographer Mark Wareham has shown just what magnificent locations the ‘high country’ contains. Much of it was shot outdoors and there is some stunning time-lapse footage of the hills and valleys filmed by photographic artist Murray Fredricks. The interiors are equally dramatic, mostly dark, claustrophobic places in which the camera peers into the gloom, spying on the actions of the people therein. The score, by Salliana Seven Campbell, is eerie and spare and the composer played almost every note of it. “Ninety-five percent is all me, playing the banjo, the fiddle, the mandolin, the piano, the guitar, the bass - I played 14 instruments,” she says. Initially, her work evokes memories of a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western before it morphs into something more original, drawing on folk and Celtic musical traditions.
The Drover’s Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson is a brutal tale with a lot of love in its heart. It’s a bold retelling of a famous short story written primarily for a white audience. By opening up Lawson’s yarn, however, Leah Purcell has broadened its horizons and made it bigger and more holistic, incorporating modern ways of thinking about racism and bias in Australia. As she aptly describes her excellent film, it’s “a contemporary form of Dreaming.”