beDevil (1993)
Rating: PG (low level coarse
language)
Runtime: 90 mins
Genre/Type: Art House
Country: Australia
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Sound Mix: Dolby
Original Format: 35 mm
Year: 1993
Production Company: Anthony
Buckley Productions Pty Limited
Distributor: Ronin Films
Writing Credits: Tracey Moffatt
Producer: Anthony Buckley, Carol
Hughes
Editor: Wayne Le Clos
Director of Photography: Geoff
Burton ACS
Production Designer: Stephen
Curtis
Art Director: Martin Brown
Soundtrack: Carl Vine
Sound Recordist: David Lee
Dimitri: Lex Marinos
Ruby Morphet: Tracey Moffatt
Spiro: Riccardo Natoli
Voula: Dina Panozzo
Maudie: Mawuyul Yanthalawuy
Older Ruby: Auriel Andrews
Rick: Jack Charles
Shelley: Diana Davidson
Young Rick aged 11: Ben Kennedy
RickÕs 1st sister age
4: Desarae Morgan
RickÕs 1st sister age
9: Daphne Byers
RickÕs 2nd sister age
5: Daphne Byers
RickÕs 2nd sister age
10: Lavina Phillips
Blonde boy age 9: Jordan Hammond
I had a lot of difficulty
finding specific release dates of the production, but through various reviews
on the film as well as write-ups about MoffattÕs work, IÕve gathered that beDevil was released in Australia in
1993, and has been screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival (1993)
official selection, Jump Cut Festival in Perth, Toronto Film Festival and at
the Sydney Film Festival. It has been nominated for Australian Record Industry
Association (ARIA) 1993 Awards' for Best Soundtrack Recording. Most recently,
it was screened at MoffattÕs latest exhibition held at Curtin University of
Technology in association with The UWA Perth International Arts Festival
(2004), and before that at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, 17th
December 2003 Ð 29th February 2004).
Prior to beDevil, Moffatt received high
acclamations for her short films Ð Nice Coloured Girls (1987) and Night Cries
Ð A Rural Tragedy (1989), as well as for her artwork and photography. The recognition
she gained won her a film grant to make beDevil. It was made with the
participation of The Australian Film Finance Corporation Pty Limited as part of
the 1992 AFFC film fund, receiving $2.5m in funding. It is a Southern Star
presentation of an Anthony Buckley Production. It is market by 21st
Century Pictures Pty Ltd and is distributed in Australia and New Zealand by
Ronin Films.
Online Presence
It does not seem that beDevil has an official website,
furthermore, there seemed to be very limited reviews online. MoffattÕs previous
works, Nice Coloured Girls and Night Cries received more critical reviews on the Internet than beDevil did. I found that particularly
unexpected since beDevil was MoffattÕs first full-length feature film and she has already
received a lot of publicity for her photography, artwork and previous short films.
This, however, can be attributed to the type of Australian film it is. Being an
Art Film released a decade ago, the web literature has probably gone down in
numbers from the time it was released. Although the web lacked critical uptakes
about beDevil,
there are a lot of sites that are dedicated to Moffatt as an artist. In those
web pages, beDevil receives some attention, but mainly, in terms of her filmic work
as a director, I found that her previous two shorts still dominate the criticÕs
interest.
Apart from the lack of web
literature, I have also discovered the presence of possible misinformation on
the film. In a particular site, it is said that beDevil won itself a RAKA award in 1994
for scriptwriting that was credited to Kate Challis. I did not manage to find
any other website that mentions about beDevil Õs awards and according to the
film credits, the scriptwriter was Moffatt herself, not Challis.
Bibliography of Publications
1.
Tom
OÕRegan, 1996, Australian National Cinema, Routledge: London and New York; pp. 326 Ð
330.
1.
Interview
with Tracey Moffatt, Radio National Screen broadcast 26, November 1992.
2.
Interview
by John Conomos and Raffaelle Caputo with Tracey Moffatt, Cinema Papers, No. 93, May 1993; pp 27 Ð
32.
3.
Interview
with Tracey Moffatt by Scott Murray, Cinema Papers, No. 79, May 1990; pp. 19
Ð 22.
Research Method
I first used the Internet to
gather reviews, critical uptakes of the film and information on the director.
The two search engines I utilised were Google Australia (http://www.google.com.au) and Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.com). For my Google searches, I managed to
get generated results within Australian web pages as well as the ones that were
available on the World Wide Web. From the bibliographies of the reviews and
write-ups found on the Internet, I then referred to the publications the
authors cited from, enabling me to locate other sources of information about
the film and the director.
beDevil presents a trilogy of
fantastical ghost stories in a meta-narrative, each combining the stories
director Tracey Moffatt heard as a child told by her natural Aboriginal mother
and her fostered white mother. Carried out in a documentary verite style, the
three-way split narrative is united by the thematic presence of ghostly issues
that haunts Australians.
People from Bribie Island begin
to reminisce the ghost swamp that was haunted by the spirit of an American GI
who drove his truck into the quick sand after a party several decades ago.
Switching from past and present, Mr. Chuck presents the point-of-view
from two individuals and their experiences of the swampÕs haunting in search of
ÔtruthÕ to these tales.
Rick, an Australian Aboriginal,
recounts his childhood adventure at the swamp in a seemingly psychologically
volatile state. Laughing hysterically from an enclosed room, he admits that he
was the mischievous boy seen during the re-enactments. Resentful over the
ÔpoxyÕ cinema ÔOASISÕ that ÔtheyÕ
- the white people - built over his childhood ÔplaygroundÕ, he is shown,
as a child, to have broke into the candy store of the cinema, stolen candy, and
with a knife, viciously tears the seats apart and throwing them over as he (as
an adult) tells the story of how the ghost of the GI slobbered over his feet
while his feet were stuck between the wooden floorboards of the cinema when he
tripped and fell.
Shelley, a white Australian lady
living on the island, challenges RickÕs proclaimed encounters, indirectly offering
a sense of doubt in what he has to say. Rather than dealing with the details of
the haunting, she centres more on a judgement of young Rick and with that,
questions his character. She says as she recollects, ÔRick would break into my
shop and steal all my thingsÉ IÕd always catch himÕ. But she Ôcared for himÕ.
Instead of reprimanding him, she assures him that she would keep the incident
away from his uncle and offers him a drink.
CHOO CHOO CHOO CHOO
ÔChoo choo choo chooÉ you can hear it, but you
canÕt see itÕ. The invisible train that runs on the track past RubyÕs home as
she would yell ÔShe is back! She is Back!Õ. Story has it that a bedevilled
train operator killed a young blind girl on that track and her soul still lingers
down the railway line.
Years pass. Ruby and her family have moved out but
she and her netball teammates return for a big cook-up. They begin to recollect
their experience with the spirits of the train and the girl in an informal
interview, as least less formal than how it was conducted in Mr. Chuck.
Ruby and her family are not the only ones with the experience. It has become so
much of a legend that the whole town knows about it. Interviews with a Chinese
shopkeeper and a man named Mickey validate the legend with ÔtruthÕ.
LOVINÕ THE SPIN IÕM IN
In a small town in North Queensland, Torres Straits
Islander Imelda is stuck in the past still mourning over the death of her son,
Bebe and his lover Minnie. Many years back, Bebe and Minnie had fled their island
community to get married despite the opposition they faced. A tragedy occurs.
The forest is set ablaze. The couple dies leaving Imelda distraught by the
calamity. But their spirits still linger in the abandoned warehouse where
Imelda and another tenant lives. Everyday, Imelda lights a candle in memory of
them while their spirits dance away, little do they know that the only place
they called home would be demolished in time.
Dimitri and his family own the warehouse. Dimitri
has big plans to develop the warehouse into a casino. When the potential
developers arrive to negotiate a settlement, they are greeted by the dancing
spirits and retreat knowing that although the building has been physically
vacant, they cannot remove the history that really resides within.
Critical Review
Within this trilogy of haunting,
there is an underlying issue present, which Moffatt so bravely confronts.
According to OÕRegan (1996), beDevil Ôincorporates difference within a national spaceÕ
as ÔAboriginal and non-Aboriginal subjects negotiate the meaning and future of
this spaceÕ (pp. 326). Relating and identifying with events in the past, these
multicultural characters tell a story that epitomizes Australia and
Australianness within the meta-narrative. The fusion of Aboriginal, Islander,
Italian, Chinese and White subjects are highly reflective of AustraliaÕs
multiculturalism. beDevil existentialises the cultural and social divide and through this,
seeks to reconcile groups of diverse people in order to Ôhelp(s) foster a sense
of citizenship and social identityÕ (OÕRegan, 1996; pp. 19). Choo Choo Choo
Choo and LovinÕ the Spin IÕm In can be seen as uniting the
difference between race and class to foster a sense of identity. Choo Choo
shows different racial groups, classes and identities being united by a
singular truth Ð the story of the young girl who got killed by the ghost train.
LovinÕ the Spin IÕm In relays an ideology of racial and cultural
tolerance that is conferred within the narrative as a way for the characters to
affirm their identity. SpiroÕs, DimitriÕs son, and DimitriÕs identity as middle
class Italians are asserted through the experiences of Imelda and her
traditions.
In Mr. Chuck, however,
race is positioned as a social problem as Moffatt uses the Aboriginal children
as the subjects of abuse. Moffatt draws an evident distinction between race and
class. Young Rick is more than a childish mischief. In the OASIS cinema, the
way he handles the knife is reminiscent of a vicious hunter waiting to draw
blood on his prey. The manner in which he slices open the chairs seem very
brutal and not one bit like a childhood prank. Although at that time, Shelley
only saw it as harmless child play, the social conditioning of Rick being cared
for by a lower class Aboriginal extended family is hinted as bearing partial
cause for older Rick turning out the way he did Ð in a psychologically unstable
condition, extremely hysterical in a moment and then in the next, he suddenly
falls into a state of void while he was being interviewed from behind a glass
panel. Shelley, fully aware that Rick and his two sisters were physically
abused by their uncle, she does not tell on RickÕs anti-social behaviour, but
later, regretfully admits ÔYes, I knew what was going onÉ We could have helped
that child. We couldÕveÕ. Here, we can see that Moffatt, like several other
Indigenous film-makers, represent issues of colonialism through the Ôwhite
guiltÕ experienced by white colonisers. Shelley identifies herself against Rick
as someone who possessed more power in terms of her race, class and age, and
thus, felt that she could have done something to ÔhelpÕ Rick. It is too late
when Rick is shown to be a victim of colonial superiority rather than being
victimised by his own ÔkindÕ.
Within the three short stories in beDevil are a series of representations of Indigenous issues in Australia and these issues are seen to be brought about by colonialism, for an instance, it brings up the question of who does the land really belong to. The ghosts in each story can be read as a representation of previous conflicts that are unresolved. In LovinÕ the Spin IÕm In, OÕRegan describes the Islanders as becoming the Ôghosts of the (capitalist) machineÕ (pp. 330) as they are forced to leave their home. The colonising of native land is also seen in Mr. Chuck whereby a cinema is built on top of a swamp. The ghosts impart a statement of perseverance and belonging, and no matter how their colonisers try to kick them (the Indigenous people) out of their space/land their history will forever remain because they belong there.
What is interesting about beDevil is the role that the camera plays. Some reviews have classified it as a documentary because of the cameraÕs disposition. It plays the narrator as well as a character in the film and at times, takes on an observational cinematic approach whereby the camera and the film-maker, Moffatt, is set up as a tool to document and observe an event. When the cameraÕs existence is clearly visible, it plays a character that does not know all the information, for example, when the camera cranes away from Shelley in Mr. Chuck Ð she presses a picture at the window, but the camera continues to drift away, intentionally concealing what the picture is. In LovinÕ the Spin IÕm In, the camera does not see what the other characters see especially when Dimitri goes back into the empty warehouse and never comes back out. When the would-be developers enter to look for them, they come running out in fear and when they attempt to drive away, the wheels of the car are stuck to the ground, forcing them to spin in circles. Never at any point does the camera reveal why these events happen. Perhaps it is done deliberately like when ShelleyÕs age is muted, but this shows that the camera has its own personality. We also see the characters interacting with the camera like in Choo Choo when older Ruby rubs the lens of the camera and the Chinese shopkeeper enthusiastically invites the audience, by addressing the camera, to Ôcome and meet the camera peopleÕ.
Critical Uptake
beDevil has been widely labelled as
Ôthe first feature directed by and Australian Aboriginal womanÕ (Summerhayes,
2001; pp. 44) although Moffatt
herself refuses to let her films and herself be limited by those parameters.
The film has received both negative and positive reviews from various film critiques
and general film audiences.
In LaseurÕs paper (1996), she
states that the main criticisms of the film were that Ôthat the makers of these
films (beDevil
and Broken Highway) could not construct a story, and in effect had little or no
sense of dramaÕ. This sentiment was echoed by a user of the Internet Movie
Database (http://us.imdb.com)
as baring a Ôdisappointing resultÕ for the works of Moffatt. I strongly feel
that the principal setback faced by beDevil in terms of spectatorship is
that the ghost stories are not unifying enough since mainstream audiences do
not posses enough knowledge about Aboriginal and multicultural Australia to
actively or comfortably read the text. Moffatt, it seems, has gone over the top
with the theories about gender, race, culture and identity, as relevant to
Australian society and its cinema as it is, but the issue resides with the
audienceÕs lack of knowledge of such language. From the negative feedback of beDevil, Moffatt has actively
challenged the passive audience by offering an intellectualised drama.
Although beDevil did not hit the mainstream
market too well, MoffattÕs cult following received much praise for her work in
her first feature, and I think because it was indeed the first feature film
from an Aboriginal woman, the film is popular in its own league and has become
a stepping stone for other Australian Indigenous film-makers. Most critics were
fascinated by how Moffatt challenged racial and cultural stereotypes and
Indigenous issues, while others were awed by the production value of the film
especially the set design and theatrical components. I also found that it
received much acknowledgement from the international art market rather than the
Australian.
About Director Tracey Moffatt
beDevil is Tracey MoffattÕs first
feature film. Prior to this, Moffatt directed two other short films Ð Nice
Coloured Girls
(1987) and Night Cries Ð A Rural Tragedy (1989). Both shorts present notions of race,
class, gender, colonialism and identity, and may seem almost autobiographical from
MoffattÕs experiences from a part Australian Aboriginal, part Scottish descent,
and as a child fostered into a white working class family with her Aboriginal
mother visiting her from time to time. In Night Cries, that depiction is clear and may
seem Ôas a recollected version of events from her own lifeÕ (Siciliano,
2004). In beDevil, Moffatt draws influence from
both her natural and fostered mothers to tell a series of three ghost stories,
which in it, explores various racial, class and gendered perspectives into the
tales she was told as a child, actively depicting AustraliaÕs subversive
national identity by critiquing history (reminiscent of Nice Coloured Girls) and the nationÕs unified
past.
Tracey MoffattÕs background in
short film and photography pervades in beDevil, as although being a feature
length film, the narrative is broken down into three short stories, attributing
that to her grounding in short film making. Another aspect that is
characteristic of MoffattÕs film-making style is the set designs and the very
theatrical display of acting from her cast members. In both beDevil and Night Cries, the ÔstagingÕ of the scenes
seem almost like one extracted from a play. In an interview by John Conomos and
Raffaelle Caputo, she mentions that for beDevil, she chose her cast based on
their looks rather than their acting capabilities. As a film-maker and an
artist, her disposition is to stylisation rather than realism.
Although widely classified as an Indigenous film-maker, MoffattÕs films come from a very western point-of-view especially since from a very young age, she was fostered into a white family. Being a graduate from predominantly white educational institutions that disseminates western theory such as the Queensland College of Arts and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS), it can be seen that MoffattÕs theoretical bases as explored in her films are hypothesised through western theory by research more than from her own cultural experiences as she discusses Indigenous issues with Indigenous and multicultural sympathies, like in beDevil, reflecting a western mode of representation of marginalised cultures in Australia.
Looking at MoffattÕs directorial progression from Nice Coloured Girls and Night Cries, beDevil is more difficult to read because it does not have a typical narrative progression as compared to her previous works. Having said that, all three films do not follow a temporal order. This can be seen as being MoffattÕs auteurship. However, beDevil is more disjunctive in the sense that it questions narrative ÔtruthÕ assumptions by which it challenges the spectatorship process while her other two shorts have less of a narrative goal and at surface level, posses a more focused drive towards the issues being discussed, which makes them more easily identifiable. For example, Nice Coloured Girls presents the notion of the historical voice versus the contemporary marginalised voice as the main conflict. This is supported by the use of repeated symbolic representations like the painting on the wall. The ghosts in beDevil are the only repeated symbols that unite the three sperate narrative spaces as one and this unity is merely thematic. beDevil differs from her previous works because it attempts to address too many issues positioned in diverse spaces. The narrative disjuncture, thus, makes it difficult to identify what the main issue is and problematizes reading the text as a whole than as per three different entities.
Tracey MoffattÕs credentials include acting as she played cameo in beDevil as younger Ruby and in Night Cries as the daughter. Her acting role in her films contributes to criticisms that her works are autobiographical. In Night Cries, she plays the Aboriginal daughter to a fostered white mother, and in beDevil, her role as a mother pays tribute to her natural Aboriginal mother as the story of the ghost train was told by her and has since passed away during the production of the film.
After beDevil, Moffatt directed Heaven (1997), which was commissioned by Dia Centre for
the Arts, New York, and three 10-minute experimental videos in collaboration
with Gary Hillberg - Lip (1999), Artist (2000) and Love (2003). Two documentaries were made about Moffatt Ð Was That
Really Me?
(dir: Edwin Hill, 1997) and Up in the Sky (dir: Jane Cole, 1999), both present very
interesting accounts into the works of Moffatt and the issues surrounding her
and her experiences with post-natal depression and motherhood.
About Production Designer
Stephen Curtis
With a background in theatre,
Stephen Curtis was also the production designer in Night Cries, which has been described by TCI as being a Ôstylistic
forerunner to beDevilÕ (pp. 27). Curtis has also been the Production Designer for Twelfth
Night (dir:
Neil Armfield, 1987) and Breathing Under Water (dir: Susan Murphy Dermody,
1993), and Looking for Alibrandi (dir: Kate Woods, 2000).
beDevil lies around the fringes of
Australian cinema and this is attributed to it being an Art film by an Australian
Indigenous film-maker. Although widely marketed as a drama, fundamentally it
does not fall into that genre of film. While there are a lot of crises
happening in each stage of the narrative, the conflict is not dramatised, thus
producing Ôlittle or no sense of dramaÕ. As mentioned before, the type of drama
Moffatt presents is an intellectualised one and with this, beDevil does not
position itself very well in mainstream Australian cinema especially when it is
labelled as ÔdramaÕ on the spine of the video cover.
ÔArt cinema questions realistic
motivationsÕ (Gillard, 2003). beDevil is a heavily stylised piece in terms of its
intentional stunted acting style that is non-realist because of its symbolic
meaning, its surrealistic set design as well as its disjunctive narrative
structure that bears several Ònarrative ÔgapsÕ than classical (narrative)
formsÓ (Garry, 2003). beDevil fits very well into the Australian art film genre, as opposed to
a set or cross genre with the social problem film type although their
characteristics seem to overlap in several degrees, according to OÕReganÕs
(1996) expression of the Australian art film type:
"Australian
cinema: a cinema created for the representation of modernist cultural themes
(existentialism, the absurd, alienation, 'boundary situations') and modern
political issues (class, gender, race) providing the doubling of aesthetics and
politics" (pp. 62).
While beDevil serves as a vehicle for
Australian to view themselves in relation to ÔothernessÕ and for creating a
binding effect across diversities and differences at hand within the nationÕs
social structure, its artistic visual style experiments with the traditional
representations of Australianness, providing alternative ways for Australians
to read cultural and political issues in film.
Although it may seem to have
been poorly received on contemporary critical and market horizons, beDevil possesses more cultural value
than commercial, as according to OÕRegan, received the support it needed from
state and institutional sponsorships. Ô(Productions) whose commercial prospects
were limited, possessed significant cultural capitalÕ (OÕRegan, 1996; pp.14).
With the financial aide of the Australian Film Finance Corporation (AFFC), the value of
Australian films, like beDevil, supersedes
that of commerce and has shaped the way film-making is practiced in Australia.
It has paved the way for Tracey Moffatt to become the first Aboriginal woman to
make a feature film and that name itself has put Australian cinema on a
cultural pedestal.
Australia, being a host to
national and international film festivals, Australian cinema is not just
Òresponsible for a Ôresurgence in national feelingÕÓ (OÕRegan, 1996; pp. 19),
it is also responsible for discursively moulding the terrain for Australian
film-makers to find their own film voice through institutional support, thus
producing various types of films that reflect the history, the current and the
future of the nation for the nation and the rest of the world. Hence, it can be
seen that not all Australian films are commercially valuable or at least profit
bears lesser importance, but what is significant is the recognition of diverse
and personalised films that are culturally relevant and reflective of the
underpinnings of Australian social and political landscape which defines
Australian cinema Ð exemplary of beDevil and the works of Tracey Moffatt.
Garry Gillard, 2003, ÔChapter
11: Art FilmÕ, unpublished.
Tom OÕRegan, 1996, Australian
National Cinema,
Routledge: London, New York; pp. 19, 14, 62, 326, 330.
Artist, dir Tracey Moffatt & Gary
Hillberg, 2000
beDevil, dir Tracey Moffatt, 1993
Breathing Under Water, dir Susan Murphy Dermody, 1993
Heaven, dir Tracey Moffatt, 1997
Lip, dir Tracey Moffatt
& Gary Hillberg, 1999
Looking for Alibrandi, dir Kate Woods, 2000
Love, dir Tracey Moffatt & Gary
Hillberg, 2003
Nice Coloured Girls, dir
Tracey Moffatt, 1987
Night Cries Ð A Rural Tragedy, dir Tracey Moffatt, 1989
Twelfth Night, dir Neil Armfield, 1987
Up In The Sky, dir Jane Cole, 1999
Was That Really Me? , dir Edwin Hill, 1997