Chris Knipp
05-20-2025, 01:08 PM
WARWICK THORNTON: THE NEW BOY (2023)
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/nby2.jpg
CATE BLANCHETT AND ASWAN REID IN THE NEW BOY
Warring magics
TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL1HVstmBTU&ab_channel=RoadshowFilms)
As we well know, residential schools in the Australian Outback, like those for native people in North America, had as a major purpose wiping out the cultural and racial identity of the indigenous inhabitants. There are plenty of movies and books about this. Warwick Thornton isn't telling that simple story but rather approaching cultural imperialism and racism from a gentler, subtler angle. This beautiful little film, starring the great Cate Blanchett as a nun called Sister Eileen and remarkable young newcomer Aswan Reid as the new boy, takes place in a magic realist world loosely based on the residential schools (and on the director's own experience) but otherworldly. Some critics however seem not to feel the magic.
The "new boy" is a student for the school brought in the evening. He's a small but sturdy aboriginal boy with glossy gold hair, clad in G-string only. They put him in a pair of the school uniform shorts right away, but he doesn't get sandals (made specially for him) for a while and dons a shirt only toward the end. He also comes so free of white culture he knows not a word of English (as well as we can tell), and he utters only one word through the whole film, "Amen." And he never gets a name. "Lets just call him 'the new boy' for now, says Sister Eileen .
That Warwick Thornton won the Cannes "Caméra d'Or" award for his 2009 debut film Samson and Delilah (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1473) seems suitable as we enter the even more beautiful and golden visual world of The New Boy. First of all what the film has going for it is its haunting, glowing imagery and magical mood. The New Boy goes its own way to weave its own spell.
The new boy has magical powers that seem to explode and evaporate when they smash into spiritual Christianity, so that a new wooden Christ in the chapel sweats, winks, and blinks, and the boy develops stigmata, but after a period of intense spirituality, once he is baptized, his powers vanish and he is ready to be turned into a slightly grotesque clone of a good boy, attending classes dutifully and with his beautiful but unruly aboriginal hair slicked back and his body covered by the school uniform.
And the uniform, mind you, looks nice. The senior boy who is sent out on his own departs with weeping all around. The boys bend willingly to their tasks, whether singing and chanting Christian texts or doing heavy work outside, appear content. Thornton has said (https://www.bigissue.com/culture/film/the-new-boy-director-warwick-thornton-cate-blanchett/) of being thrust into a Spanish school a thousand kilometers away from home that "boarding school was good for me" because he "needed stability and structure" and "the building of your inner respect." He explains his own shock at the crujcified Christ as an aboriginal boy "made its way into the film."
The new boy kind of takes over, and that's why this is a very fanciful version of a residential school. Several critics have accused the film of moving at too slow a pace and of going in a wobbly, uncertain direction "in the second half." It looks like many just don't get what Thornton is doing. This feels like an old fashioned film and some classic models hover over it, including Nicolas Roeg's great Walkabout. Rather than preaching or telling a sociological and political story, this is more in the realm of pure cinema, and a metaphorical exploration of both personal and collective experience. Maybe it will gain more positive recognition in time, when people recognise the unique spell the film weaves.
Thornton has said this is "a really funny movie and it's a war movie" as well as "very open-hearted in an unexpected way." In an interview he granted it "brings with it the weight of a certain pocket of Australian history" that "as a filmmaker, you always reference. . .in some way," but the film "is by no means a history lesson or a lecture." We seem to love those and some think one was needed here. It was not.
In fact in a sense you can say the new boy is on his own kind of walkabout, in the wilderness of white Western religious culture. It's a feeble version of that: There are only two nuns, two men, and a mere handful of boys, who move around not saying much, doing what they're told, saying the prayers and singing the hymns when directed by Sister Eileen. This takes place toward the end of World War II, which makes the place feel even more remote. There's an air of peace about its small wooden buildings and desolate land. But not too desolate, because one activity is harvesting the olives, and the boys are recruited to work machinery to draw out the olive oil. The new boy takes a taste of an olive and makes a face, spitting it out.
For this kind of place, the school is remarkably liberal, especially toward the new boy, who is said in summaries to be "bullied" but is actually allowed to wander around freely, which the riveting Aswan Reid does with utter self possession, unafraid, unimpressed, but not disrespectful.
He may be confident and apart from the others because he has secret powers, being able to conjure small balls of light with his fingers and to heal sick animals and humans,powers he practices for himself. In turn he isn't mocked by the other boys, even when he drags away his blanket and sleeps not on but under his assigned bed, on the bare floor.
Sister Eileen is now the sole person in charge, but she fakes the signature and even the voice of the former head of the monastery, Father Peter, who has recently died, to work her own will. She is supportred by two aboriginal adults, George (Wayne Blair) and Sister Mum (Deborah Mailman). This charade too, like the spit-out olive, must have some symbolic meaning. Sister Eileen has been called "alcoholic" by some critics, but she often handles wine in a sacred, ritual way, so the two are confused. In this remote outpost, things seem ripe for a vanishing of culture. Or for playing with ambiguities.
Warwick Thornton tells his own story here in his own way,but he may seem curiously out of touch given current mindsets. People are more aware than ever of how residential schools brutalized their pupils, eradicated their cultural identiies, and hidden them in unmarked graves. IMDb has a list of twenty films about this topic. In depicting the real horrors of a residential school, the recent documentary Sugarcane (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5440) received raves. RaMell Ross' even more admired Nickel Boys, (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5513) with its distorting POV style and radical rearranging of Colson Whitehead's novel, is closer to Thornton's crabwise approach, except that Thornton is working on his own, not scrambling a borrowed source, and he's not lecturing us.
The New Boy shows the eradication of native culture and native magic as another kind of magic, but bad magic, using its songs, idols, and holy water to enchant and disarm innocents. All that isn't "embedded" in Thornton’s story, as Brian Tellerico puts it in his review; (https://www.rogerebert.com/festivals/tiff-2023-woman-of-the-hour-daddio-the-new-boy) it is his story.
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' score contributes to the spell of this impeccable and original film.
The New Boy, 116 mins., debuted at Cannes Un Certain Regard,, May 19, 2023, also showing at Sydney (as the Opening Film) and Woodstock and showed at New Zealand, Toronto, BFI London, Mumbai, Thessaloniki, Miami, Luxembourg, Haifa and Taiwan, and was nomninated for numerous awards. It opened theatrically in the UK and Ireland Mar. 15, 2024. It opens in the US May 23, 2025. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-new-boy/) rating: 62%.
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20reid.jpg
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/nby2.jpg
CATE BLANCHETT AND ASWAN REID IN THE NEW BOY
Warring magics
TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL1HVstmBTU&ab_channel=RoadshowFilms)
As we well know, residential schools in the Australian Outback, like those for native people in North America, had as a major purpose wiping out the cultural and racial identity of the indigenous inhabitants. There are plenty of movies and books about this. Warwick Thornton isn't telling that simple story but rather approaching cultural imperialism and racism from a gentler, subtler angle. This beautiful little film, starring the great Cate Blanchett as a nun called Sister Eileen and remarkable young newcomer Aswan Reid as the new boy, takes place in a magic realist world loosely based on the residential schools (and on the director's own experience) but otherworldly. Some critics however seem not to feel the magic.
The "new boy" is a student for the school brought in the evening. He's a small but sturdy aboriginal boy with glossy gold hair, clad in G-string only. They put him in a pair of the school uniform shorts right away, but he doesn't get sandals (made specially for him) for a while and dons a shirt only toward the end. He also comes so free of white culture he knows not a word of English (as well as we can tell), and he utters only one word through the whole film, "Amen." And he never gets a name. "Lets just call him 'the new boy' for now, says Sister Eileen .
That Warwick Thornton won the Cannes "Caméra d'Or" award for his 2009 debut film Samson and Delilah (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1473) seems suitable as we enter the even more beautiful and golden visual world of The New Boy. First of all what the film has going for it is its haunting, glowing imagery and magical mood. The New Boy goes its own way to weave its own spell.
The new boy has magical powers that seem to explode and evaporate when they smash into spiritual Christianity, so that a new wooden Christ in the chapel sweats, winks, and blinks, and the boy develops stigmata, but after a period of intense spirituality, once he is baptized, his powers vanish and he is ready to be turned into a slightly grotesque clone of a good boy, attending classes dutifully and with his beautiful but unruly aboriginal hair slicked back and his body covered by the school uniform.
And the uniform, mind you, looks nice. The senior boy who is sent out on his own departs with weeping all around. The boys bend willingly to their tasks, whether singing and chanting Christian texts or doing heavy work outside, appear content. Thornton has said (https://www.bigissue.com/culture/film/the-new-boy-director-warwick-thornton-cate-blanchett/) of being thrust into a Spanish school a thousand kilometers away from home that "boarding school was good for me" because he "needed stability and structure" and "the building of your inner respect." He explains his own shock at the crujcified Christ as an aboriginal boy "made its way into the film."
The new boy kind of takes over, and that's why this is a very fanciful version of a residential school. Several critics have accused the film of moving at too slow a pace and of going in a wobbly, uncertain direction "in the second half." It looks like many just don't get what Thornton is doing. This feels like an old fashioned film and some classic models hover over it, including Nicolas Roeg's great Walkabout. Rather than preaching or telling a sociological and political story, this is more in the realm of pure cinema, and a metaphorical exploration of both personal and collective experience. Maybe it will gain more positive recognition in time, when people recognise the unique spell the film weaves.
Thornton has said this is "a really funny movie and it's a war movie" as well as "very open-hearted in an unexpected way." In an interview he granted it "brings with it the weight of a certain pocket of Australian history" that "as a filmmaker, you always reference. . .in some way," but the film "is by no means a history lesson or a lecture." We seem to love those and some think one was needed here. It was not.
In fact in a sense you can say the new boy is on his own kind of walkabout, in the wilderness of white Western religious culture. It's a feeble version of that: There are only two nuns, two men, and a mere handful of boys, who move around not saying much, doing what they're told, saying the prayers and singing the hymns when directed by Sister Eileen. This takes place toward the end of World War II, which makes the place feel even more remote. There's an air of peace about its small wooden buildings and desolate land. But not too desolate, because one activity is harvesting the olives, and the boys are recruited to work machinery to draw out the olive oil. The new boy takes a taste of an olive and makes a face, spitting it out.
For this kind of place, the school is remarkably liberal, especially toward the new boy, who is said in summaries to be "bullied" but is actually allowed to wander around freely, which the riveting Aswan Reid does with utter self possession, unafraid, unimpressed, but not disrespectful.
He may be confident and apart from the others because he has secret powers, being able to conjure small balls of light with his fingers and to heal sick animals and humans,powers he practices for himself. In turn he isn't mocked by the other boys, even when he drags away his blanket and sleeps not on but under his assigned bed, on the bare floor.
Sister Eileen is now the sole person in charge, but she fakes the signature and even the voice of the former head of the monastery, Father Peter, who has recently died, to work her own will. She is supportred by two aboriginal adults, George (Wayne Blair) and Sister Mum (Deborah Mailman). This charade too, like the spit-out olive, must have some symbolic meaning. Sister Eileen has been called "alcoholic" by some critics, but she often handles wine in a sacred, ritual way, so the two are confused. In this remote outpost, things seem ripe for a vanishing of culture. Or for playing with ambiguities.
Warwick Thornton tells his own story here in his own way,but he may seem curiously out of touch given current mindsets. People are more aware than ever of how residential schools brutalized their pupils, eradicated their cultural identiies, and hidden them in unmarked graves. IMDb has a list of twenty films about this topic. In depicting the real horrors of a residential school, the recent documentary Sugarcane (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5440) received raves. RaMell Ross' even more admired Nickel Boys, (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5513) with its distorting POV style and radical rearranging of Colson Whitehead's novel, is closer to Thornton's crabwise approach, except that Thornton is working on his own, not scrambling a borrowed source, and he's not lecturing us.
The New Boy shows the eradication of native culture and native magic as another kind of magic, but bad magic, using its songs, idols, and holy water to enchant and disarm innocents. All that isn't "embedded" in Thornton’s story, as Brian Tellerico puts it in his review; (https://www.rogerebert.com/festivals/tiff-2023-woman-of-the-hour-daddio-the-new-boy) it is his story.
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' score contributes to the spell of this impeccable and original film.
The New Boy, 116 mins., debuted at Cannes Un Certain Regard,, May 19, 2023, also showing at Sydney (as the Opening Film) and Woodstock and showed at New Zealand, Toronto, BFI London, Mumbai, Thessaloniki, Miami, Luxembourg, Haifa and Taiwan, and was nomninated for numerous awards. It opened theatrically in the UK and Ireland Mar. 15, 2024. It opens in the US May 23, 2025. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-new-boy/) rating: 62%.
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20reid.jpg