The Rooster: Dark, brooding film explores masculinity, male friendship
This whole film – the directorial debut of Mark Leonard Winter – is a slow burn, with themes of loss, loneliness, regret and shame. The first half poses lots of questions. The second half answers most of them.
Australian drama The Rooster is the directorial debut of Mark Leonard Winter, an award-winning stage actor who has crossed into films, including Jocelyn Moorhouse’s The Dressmaker (2015), and television shows such as Pine Gap (2018).
It is a dark, brooding film, austerely shot by cinematographer Craig Barden, that explores masculinity, male friendship and themes such as loss, loneliness, regret and shame.
It also has moments of laugh-out-loud humour thanks to the slow-burn relationship between the two leads, Phoenix Raei as Dan Jackson, a cop in semi-rural Victoria, and Hugo Weaving as an unnamed hermit.
Indeed, this whole film, written by the director, is slow burn. The first half poses lots of questions. The second half answers most of them. We gradually discover the connections between seemingly unconnected events.
The setting is the Hepburn district of Victoria, home to the director and his fellow actor wife, Geraldine Hakewill, who is a producer on the film.
The first question is posed in a recurring dream Dan has. He’s sitting in a patrol car, blue siren light flickering. Above him a man hangs by the neck from a tree. A naked, pregnant woman (Isabelle Dupre) approaches him, holding a rooster.
A second question centres on the death of Dan’s childhood friend, Steve (Rhys Mitchell), who is found in a shallow grave. Dan sees him in hallucinatory moments. “There was no better man alive,” he says.
Yet when we see Steve, before his death, he is standing naked outside a high school. Who was Steve, how did he die and why was Dan so close to him?
A third question arises when Dan, on forced leave while his friend’s death is investigated, goes camping and meets the rifle-toting hermit, who lives in a self-built shack.
Their relationship starts off badly. “You filthy pig,” the hermit shouts on learning Dan is a cop. “You can f..k right off.” The hermit says he has a daughter who stays with him from time to time.
Soon after Dan asks the hermit if he can read him a poem. “Show me a poem of your arse,” is the reply. The hermit then pulls a crucifix from the wall of his shack and urinates on it.
“Are you all right?” Dan asks the hermit. He is not and nor is Dan, who has suicidal thoughts. “I can’t see myself in the future,” Dan says. Why is the hermit no longer with his wife and daughter? Why is Dan so troubled?
And so, two men, each dealing with traumas – inflicted and self-inflicted – become friends. They play ping-pong, in one case naked, drink a lot and slowly open up to each other about how their lives went so off track.
As an aside, there is a fair bit of nudity in this movie, all tastefully shot. When it’s wash day at the shack, the hermit and the cop sit unclothed on the front veranda. The hermit looks skywards. “Probably should have waited for a sunny day.”
Weaving, who was also in The Dressmaker, lets it all hang out as a man who hides from and rails against the world yet embraces life and clings to hope.
A quiet scene where he remembers his days at a Catholic boarding school near Ballarat is a reminder of what a fine actor Weaving is. On February 10 he won an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts award for this performance.
The hermit is a volcano of emotion, sometimes still, sometimes lava hot, and Raei, an Iranian-born actor whose films credits include Australia Day (2017), is impressive as the friend-from-nowhere who bears the full force of the eruptions.
As for the titular rooster, ostensibly it’s a savage one in Dan’s home chook pen, brilliantly played by an avian actor named Bert. He’s a bird that bites the hand that feeds him, as is the hermit, and perhaps also his unexpected shack mate.
This film is an intelligent, thoughtful debut from an actor turned director, who will be at Q&A screenings in Melbourne, Geelong, Sydney and Brisbane from February 22 to 26.
Towards the end we learn the poem Dan wanted to read was CP Cavafy’s The God Abandons Antony, which asks a question he, the hermit and ultimately all of us face: how to accept the inevitable with courage rather than fear.
The Rooster (MA15+)
101 minutes
In cinemas from February 22
★★★½
A big shot of revolution
When it comes to biographical dramas filmmakers seem to be shifting from cradle-to-grave histories towards documenting a certain period they feel encapsulates the subject’s life.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, favourite to win best film at the Oscars on March 10, is a good example, as is Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, from 2012. Michael Mann’s Ferrari, in cinemas now, narrows the lens further, distilling one summer in Enzo Ferrari’s life. When I asked Mann about this, he said whole-of-life biopics were “for the History Channel”.
American director Reinaldo Marcus Green follows the same tune in Bob Marley: One Love, which centres on two years in the life of Jamaican reggae pioneer Bob Marley (1945-1981). “Reggae music feeds a revolution no gun can stop,’’ Marley (British actor Kingsley Ben-Adir) tells his bandmates and supporters.
It’s 1976 and Jamaica is on the brink of civil war. Marley is days away from fronting a peace concert, Smile Jamaica, when armed men test his theory. They storm his home in Kingston, shoot his wife Rita (Briton Lashana Lynch), who is parked in the driveway, enter the house and gun down Marley. It’s a gripping scene.
The moment a young man levels his pistol at Marley, a living legend in his home country, is notable. The look on his face says he doesn’t want to pull the trigger. Yet he does. Marley and Rita survive. He does the concert. Then he and Rita and their four children leave the country. The rest of the film explores Marley’s two years in London, making records and touring Europe.
What it does not explore is Marley’s infidelities. This film was made with the approval of Marley’s widow and other family members, all credited as producers. It does not dwell on the fact he had 12 children. It’s an interesting take on the titular One Love, one of Marley’s songs, and on his Rastafarian belief that there is no “You and I” because we are all one.
The closest it comes, in one of the best scenes, is when Marley and Rita have a face-slapping (his) argument. “I need more than a house and a car, more than money,’’ she tells him.
Lynch, as Rita, is the emotional centre of this story. Ben-Adir, as Marley, is a fine example of what acting is all about. Not only is he not Jamaican but, as has he noted in interviews, he signed up for the film unable to sing or dance. He spent hours watching tapes of Marley’s performances and the result is convincing. On screen, he is Bob Marley, in look and language. The music – and most of the hit songs featured – is a digital blend of the actor singing and Marley’s recordings.
Marley’s earlier life is included in brief, well-placed flashbacks: the white father who abandoned him, his courtship of Rita and, in another standout scene, he and his band-to-be, the Wailers, singing Simmer Down to win over a gun-toting Jamaican music producer. His refusal to deal with the rare skin cancer that killed him, at 36, is also covered.
The director’s previous film is the Oscar-nominated King Richard (2022), about Richard Williams and his tennis star daughters Venus and Serena. His new film is an interesting if undemanding glimpse into parts of the life of Bob Marley. If you want to dig deeper, watch Kevin Macdonald’s 2012 documentary Marley.
Bob Marley: One Love (M)
107 minutes
In cinemas