This and That: Down under redemption stories with ‘Broke’ and ‘Mad Bastards’

Feel like a night of though-provoking home-grown cinema? Here are two films where damaged men try not to repeat the mistakes of their past, in order to build a better future.

‘Mad Bastards’ Source: Steve Arnold/Transmission Films

How far can you fall and still be able to get back up? How long and hard is the road back to grace? Redemption tales have an irresistible fascination for us as viewers and as human beings. We all, ideally, want to be better people, but there’s a big difference between self-improvement and redemption. The former may involve something as trifling as upping your cardio or actually committing to not ignoring the Duolingo owl. The latter, however? Grappling with your own past misdeeds is a much more harrowing affair, as the protagonists of Broke and Mad Bastards can attest.

Broke

Heath Davis’ ‘Broke’ is now at SBS On Demand. Source: Bonsai Films

The 2016 debut feature from prolific Australian director Heath Davis (Book Week, Locusts), Broke features a stunning and nuanced performance from veteran actor Steve Le Marquand as Barry “BK” Kelly, a former NRL icon now fallen to booze, homelessness and gambling addiction. Having bottomed out, BK is extended a helping hand by long-time fan Cec (the great Max Cullen), who invites him into the home he shares with his daughter, recent mother Terri (Claire van der Boom). For his part, BK’s first instinct is to try to pawn the urn containing the ashes of Cec’s late wife and head straight for the pokies, but the glimmer of hope Cec and Terri represent drives him to take a long, hard look at himself and his fallen circumstances.

Steve Bastoni, Brendan Cowell, William Zappa and Justin Rosniak round out the relatively small ensemble, but this is undeniably Le Marquand’s film, the rough-hewn Aussie actor delivering a fearless turn as the self-loathing BK, who recognises his own weakness but is seemingly unable to correct course except under the most dire circumstances.

Shot on a tiny, crowd-funded budget and using largely improvised dialogue, Broke is a film with dirt under its fingernails. Combine that with a native eye for the world of rugby fandom and a sympathetic but clear understanding of human failing, and the result is an uncommonly humane movie about what happens after you hit rock bottom.

Broke is now streaming at SBS On Demand.

Mad Bastards

BK’s equivalent in Brendan Fletcher’s 2010 film Mad Bastards is the similarly initialled TJ (Dean Daley-Jones), an Indigenous man recently paroled from prison who heads north to his home town in Western Australia’s Kimberley region and the son he abandoned years ago, Bullet (Lucas Yeeda).

Now 13 years old, Bullet is beginning to follow in his old man’s footsteps, having racked up an arson charge, and slowly but inexorably being drawn into a life of lawlessness. Bullet’s grandfather, local cop Texas (Greg Tait) is trying to help him, as well as run a discussion group for Indigenous men wanting to deal with their own problems with booze and violence, but it could be TJ, whose own history is marked by alcohol and abuse, who will steer his son to a better path.

Mad Bastards contrasts stunning outback landscapes with a raw, observational approach to its characters and their situations, the result being a heady mix of the epic and intimate. Whereas Broke keeps its focus squarely on its main character, Mad Bastards embraces its community as a whole, attempting to map how patterns of abuse and deprivation repeat through generations. It’s not all grim up north, though – Mad Bastards has great affection for its characters and their bonds, and music from local legends the Pigram Brothers and Alex Lloyd leaven the proceedings with light and warmth.