Bran Nue Dae

A goofy, free-wheeling bauble from down under, Bran Nue Dae has all the toothy charm and forgivable flaws of a particularly energized community theater production. Taking its aesthetic cues from music videos and its anything-goes spirit from Bollywood spectacles, Rachel Perkins’ musical—adapted from a hit Australian stage show by Aboriginal band Jimmy Chi and Kuckles—follows the tried-and-true story of a boy who leaves home, loosens up, learns a few things, and returns to confess his love to the girl back home.

In this case, the boy in question is Willie (Rocky McKenzie), a teenager of Aboriginal descent living with his devoutly religious mother in the small town of Broome. It’s summer 1965, and Willie feels torn between his mother’s desire for him to join the priesthood and his own burgeoning desires for aspiring singer Rosie (Jessica Mauboy). The issue appears resolved when Willie and Rosie quarrel over her singing in a local dive bar, and Willie returns to his religious boarding school outside of Perth. Haunted by memories of Rosie and chafing under the pressures of the school’s headmaster, Father Benedictus (Geoffrey Rush), Willie flees the school and vows to return to Broome and tell Rosie how he feels. Along the way, he meets wily old drunk Tadpole (Ernie Dingo) who claims to be Willie’s uncle and vows to help Willie convince his mother to let him drop plans of the priesthood. Tadpole tricks European hippies Annie and Slippery (Missy Higgins and Tom Budge) into giving them a ride to their destination, while Benedictus hits the road in search of Willie.

Bran Nue Dae remains aware of racial politics throughout. Benedictus’s favoritism toward Willie springs from insidious comparisons between the young man and other, less “civilized” boys like himself, eventually prompting Willie and the other students to sing that “there’s nothing I would rather be/ Than to be an Aborigine.” In a more comic fashion, Tadpole plays upon Annie and Slippery’s white guilt and penchant for exoticization to get their help, regaling them with semi-fabricated cultural tidbits that satisfy their desire for “authentic” local flavor. Larger dynamics of prejudice and power, though, remain largely missing from Bran Nue Dae’s purview. The film’s most prominent evocation of the Aboriginal’s shameful treatment in Australia comes in a dream sequence, where the spirits of past generations—bare-chested and faces streaked with white paint—join Willie and Tadpole in a somber remembrance of historic suffering and survival. Yet even this moment functions more as a source of personal uplift for Willie than a reckoning with Australia’s dark past.

Then again, Bran Nue Dae is far from the first movie musical to throw down a complicated cultural back-drop, only to smooth its edges with tuneful razz-ma-tazz. And that’s just what the film does, to largely charming effect. Perkins skips energetically between Willie, Tadpole, Annie, and Slippery’s banter and Benedictus’ sight-gag filled pursuit of Willie, making digressions along the way for broad—sometimes too broad—comic interludes involving a lusty gas station attendant or a charming scene of Annie and Slippery swimming dreamily under a waterfall. Her musical sequences remain safely ensconced in the Rob Marshall school of twirling cameras and rapid editing. Still, there’s real verve to Perkins’ montages, as seen in her cross-cutting between a team of singing, stomping Aboriginal soccer players with which Willie temporarily hitches a ride and the misadventures of Tadpole, Annie, and Slippery as they continue along their bumpy journey to Broome. The cast’s sweet-tempered, quick-witted performances go a long way in selling these scenes too, each member confidently walking the line between good-natured farce and shrill caricature.

And in the end, the film’s outlook remains as bright and inviting as the shots of beautiful, sun-soaked Australian countryside liberally sprinkled throughout. I’ll refrain from revealing any of the last-minute revelations that pop up like daisies in Bran Nue Dae’s hectic final moments, though it’s no insult to say that the pleasure comes less from any single twist than from the sheer accumulation of coincidences that pile up by the closing credits. The message, however, is crystal clear: conflict—be it racial, familial, or generational—is no match for the forces of fate, human nature, and the universal appeal of Geoffrey Rush soft-shoeing in full priest regalia.

                                            Matt Connolly