Although I enjoyed Rod Hardy’s December Boys, which was
adapted for the screen by Marc Rosenberg from a novel by Michael
Noonan, it reminded me of the bright, multi-colored houses that
many Australians favor. For a foreigner, there’s just too much
going on for it to be quite satisfying artistically. But if you
could strip away the many inessential, subsidiary dramas, you might
find a rather touching paean to Aussie-style mate-ship.
Four boys from St. Greg’s orphanage — Maps (Daniel Radcliffe),
Spit (James Fraser), Spark (Christian Byers) and Misty (Lee Cormie)
— form a tight bond because their birthdays are all in December.
When someone makes a benefaction to the orphanage, the four are
sent together in their birthday month for a Christmas holiday by
the sea. St. Greg’s is situated somewhere in the desert outback,
far from the ocean, and the boys are excited to be going to the
seaside. There, they are put up at the ramshackle home of eccentric
but lovable Bandy (Jack Thompson), an ex-chief petty officer in the
Navy, and his wife, whom he calls — and defers to as — The
Skipper (Kris McQuade). While there, they are befriended by two
neighbors, Fearless (Sullivan Stapleton), a glamorous trick
motorcyclist in the circus, and his beautiful French wife, Teresa
(Victoria Hill). Soon they learn that this childless couple is
thinking about adopting one of them, and their competition to be
the chosen one threatens to destroy their friendship.
If Mr. Hardy and his writers had left it at that, I think this
would have been a better movie. The gorgeous South Australian
seaside backdrop — it was shot on location at Kangaroo Island —
would have been able to do more of the work. Instead it and the
main story tend to get crowded out by all of the other things that
are making demands on our attention. For example:
* The boys discover that the Skipper is dying of cancer, and for
a while they believe her actually to be dead. Their job is to try
to cheer her up.
* Maps’s coming-of-age makes up a big subsidiary chunk of the
film, especially when he has his first sexual experience with Lucy
(Teresa Palmer), a beautiful girl from the village — who then
leaves town to live with her father a continent away.
* Fearless and Teresa’s back-story is gone into in order to
explain (sort of) why they can’t have children — and to spark off
a misunderstanding that produces an angry flare-up by Maps.
* Spark tries to catch the giant fish called Henry that one of
the villagers, Shellback (Ralph Cotterill), has been trying to
catch for years, and so incurs the old man’s resentment.
* Maps thinks he might have a vocation to the priesthood and
wonders if it is possible not to answer the call.
* Teresa tells of how the wild horse that they see running over
the dunes and along the beach is said to catch fish which it feeds
to the village cats. Though she has never seen this done, she
believes it happens. “I believe in lots of things I can’t see,” she
says.
As that last example suggests, there are symbolic dimensions to
many of these extras, as we might call them, and in addition there
are visions of Our Lady and of cartwheeling nuns to liven things up
still further. I find this soap opera-like plethora of drama and
undirected emotional energy flaring off in all directions rather
fatiguing, though at any given moment the film is absorbing and, at
times, even moving.
There’s another problem, however. The re-affirmation in the end
that a bloke’s solidarity with his mates is the most important
thing in life seems to me to strike a false note in the context —
though of course I’m not Australian. This is really a variation on
a familiar Hollywood theme of recent years, the quest for
alternatives to family life — especially among young coevals who
like the idea of freedom from adult expectations. Important as
friendship undoubtedly is, it just isn’t a substitute for family
and never can be.
There’s a strong period feel to December Boys that for
people of a certain age will add to its evocative quality. It can
be dated by Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain?”
released in 1970, which plays a role in Maps and Lucy’s courtship.
But the rest of the picture has the look (and the innocence) of the
early 1960s. Perhaps the Australian '60s took longer to turn into
the '70s than the American ones did. I also give the film-makers
credit for their respectful attitude towards the church. Father
Scully (Frank Gallacher) and the sisters of St. Greg’s who hover
about on the periphery are not very important characters, but we
should probably be grateful for that. At least they’re not
pedophiles and child-abusers. And the subject of Maps’s vocation is
treated seriously.
