The Drover’s Wife:
The Legend of Molly Johnson
Leah Purcell’s period drama from Australia confronts racial and social issues that remain all too timely.
The late 1970s was a time when Australian cinema came to the fore internationally and one of the outstanding titles was 1978’s The Chant of Jimmie Goldsmith. It had the biggest budget of any Australian film made up to that time and it was the first occasion on which Australia had a feature in competition at Cannes. Set in 1900, the movie tackled head on the racialism of that period and focused on the ill-fated titular character, a man born of a white father and an Aboriginal mother, who under society’s pressures turns violent and pays the price for it as a murderer. Leah Purcell’s first feature film as director has much in common with this earlier work, but there are significant differences too.
The period setting is not dissimilar since The Drover’s Wife was a contemporary tale when Henry Lawson’s short story on which the film is based appeared back in 1892. The Australian landscape is a strong feature of both films and Molly Johnson, the central character here, suffers a similar fate to that of Jimmie Goldsmith. However, one outstanding feature of Leah Purcell’s film is that, in accordance with the title, it has a woman as its central figure and a strong, heroic one at that. Even more strikingly, The Drover’s Wife is told from an insider’s perspective. That was not the case with The Chant of Jimmie Goldsmith which was based on a novel by Thomas Keneally who adapted it with the film’s director Fred Schepisi. While both of them would continue to stand by a film that confronted aspects of Australia's colonial history that had been played down, they would come to recognise that it might well be valid to question how appropriate it was for two white men to tell a tale centred on the experience of a man who was half Aborigine.
Leah Purcell, best known as an actress, has in recent years become understandably obsessed with the legendary character of Molly Johnson. Molly is a woman with a largely absent and unreliable husband who is bringing up four children and looking after the homestead and thus emerges as a strong and independent figure. Long familiar with the original tale, Purcell would use her writing talents to freely adapt it into a piece which she elaborated for the stage (that in 2016) and would follow up with a retelling of it in book form (2019). Consequently, this film version is her third treatment of the subject and, as in the original stage production, she herself takes the role of Molly Johnson. Her screen portrayal is a truly powerful one that holds the film together and the role is one that clearly speaks to her because, just like Molly, she herself is the child of a white man and an Aboriginal mother. The theme of the injustice meted out to Aborigines is further developed in her screenplay through the emphasis that she gives to the character of Yadaka, an Aborigine on the run from the police whose attempts to help Molly make him an immensely sympathetic character (the actor concerned, Rob Collins, matches the standard set by Purcell).
Although Purcell is breaking fresh ground as a director here (her previous work in this sphere has been either for television or limited to shorter films), the first part of The Drover’s Wife is an impressive and assured achievement as she sets up the various characters and captures the tone of the times. What proves less satisfactory is the way in which Purcell’s screenplay crams in what comes to seem too much for a film lasting 109 minutes. Clearly made for a 21st century audience, the storyline brings in many side issues too: Molly’s husband turns out to have been abusive to her and their children; Yadaka’s family history touches on his family being victims in a mass shooting; the local police sergeant (Sam Reid) has a wife (Jessica De Gouw) who writes articles protesting about wife-beating; a clergyman and his sister respond to the revelation that Molly has Aborigine blood by planning to separate her from her four young children, the oldest of whom is 12-year-old Danny played by the excellent Malachi Dower-Roberts.
The first third of The Drover’s Wife takes its time without ever feeling slack but thereafter there is a sense of packing things in hurriedly - or even clumsily when it comes to flashback insertions. The plot requires characters to turn up suddenly at crucial moments as witness the arrival of the violent companions of Molly's husband or the earlier unfortunate timing when a trooper, Leslie (Benedict Hardie, an actor to watch), calls on Molly and recognises the fugitive Yadaka. In addition, intercutting in the closing section feels ill-judged confirming how much less good the film’s later scenes are. But, despite the faults, the film is worth your attention and couldn't be more heartfelt. In passing we have heard the song ‘My True Love’s Hair’ and the end credits reveal the identity of the lead singer: on top of everything else, the talented Leah Purcell can sing too.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Leah Purcell, Rob Collins, Sam Reid, Jessica de Gouw, Malachi Dower-Roberts, Benedict Hardie, Anthony Cogin, Harry Greenwood, Nicholas Hope, Bruce Spence, Maggie Dence.
Dir Leah Purcell, Pro Bain Stewart, David Jowsey, Angela Littlejohn, Greer Simpkin and Leah Purcell, Screenplay Leah Purcell, Ph Mark Wareham, Pro Des Sam Hobbs, Ed Dany Cooper, Music Salliana Seven Campbell, Costumes Tess Schofield.
Bunya Productions/Oombarra Productions/Screen Australia-Modern Films.
109 mins. Australia. 2021. UK Rel: 13 May 2022. Cert. 15.