cataclysm to learn the value of sacrifice. Everything I learned about the ocean was at the end of a spear or hook and I became interested in marine conservation in the early 1990s and got very active. If the sea is ultimately where we come from, and it seems we did, "I never had a desire for a public life, never Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2013. [The bay] is beautiful one day, muscular and tough and visceral another day I didnt want the film to be set in a sweet, nostalgic fishing village, Connolly says. Blueback is in cinemas around Australia from 1 January, Irreverent review a Chicago criminal goes undercover down under, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. We get so much joy and connection, and from the ocean and from our environment. "If you're in this caper long enough, you realise that it's inevitable that you're going to repeat yourself, but not in a conventional way," Winton says. If there's something ahead that udiences open to an ecological ocean drama thats gentler, more grounded and certainly more Strayan than James Camerons. I am delighted by the magic that those performers were able to give., Young actors Ilsa Fogg and Pedrea Jackson on set. Abel Jackson's forebears were whalers, his father a pearl- diver whose life was ended by a shark. the kind of money most people toss aside for their drinks bill. And It made me very envious, actually, watching the film like, what an amazing place to have a childhood.. [As Jacques] Cousteau said: If you can make people fall in love with something, theyll care for it., I hope the film can inspire an activism about the health of our oceans.. But in some ways, only just. Connolly and Winton have just found a brilliantly pacy and involving way to make the years pass quickly. There was also state-of-the-art mechanized puppetry created by Creature Technology Company, who were behind King Kong: Alive on Broadway and the popular arena show version of How to Train Your Dragon. But both the filmmaker and author also wanted to keep the film optimistic to provoke thought and inspire change. have an age, a heartbeat, you're just in this squeezed-down narrow focus which In an early scene, after examining a piece of coral, she delivers sad news to fish on her boat: Your home is dying and I dont know how to help. It signposts the film as an environmentalist statement you could describe as a little on the nose, though it (like the Avatar movies) has good reason to be bold with its messaging, given our dramatically escalating climate crisis and a myriad reasons to be concerned about the state of our oceans. Its a real challenge of how you create the journey of an audience of a relationship between a young person and a marine creature. Blueback PG. Verified Purchase. Our friends across Te Tai-o-Rhua are good at teen dramas and coming-of-age yarns. Eric Bana: Yeah, similar experience. Connolly describes him as a wonderful man to work with. He felt indebted to the teachers and mentors who'd helped him to succeed, who didn't get the same accolades themselves. Mia Wasikowska: I did manage to crossover with the girls in Western Australia by maybe only two days when I was at the end of my filming period. Eric Bana: I sort of knew Robert was developing it, because we have an office together. Blueback was originally conceived as an animated film due to the "state of CGI technology" in the late 1990s, and the risks of having "a big, wild fish" in the water with children. The more we're aware and connected to our natural world, the more likely we are to want to partake in its protection. Tim Winton was born in 1960 in Western Australia where he still lives. Perhaps it's that simplicity which makes Blueback so powerful for readers young and old. Its also a story about family at the end of the day, and its hard to imagine theres anyone wholl watch the film that wont find at least one element they cant relate to on some level, which can sometimes be a difficult balance to strike when it comes to independent productions that also wear their localization as such a proud badge of honor like Blueback does, which is a testament to how the film turned out. The boy befriends the fish, a blue grouper while diving for abalone, his family's trade. each of my first three books, and that was for years and years of my life, for I don't know whether books like Blueback make a difference, And it was so emotional. "One area is the environment, in giving up certain liberties to deliver "I was brought up in the suburbs, but it seems in retrospect as if I spent I was so proud of it when I saw it. Cloudstreet the Miles Franklin-winning novel about two families sharing a house in Perth between the 40s and 60s was also a "pleasure" to write. Thanks for signing up to the InReview newsletter. The run of successes in Winton's career is the stuff of only the most fanciful of imaginations. And we all got together, and we didnt really sort of to intentionally talk much about Abby because you dont want to set limitations on their sort of sense of freedom. winner of the 1981 The Australian/Vogel Award. But it's just a whole other way of seeing the ocean, and it made it less scary, I guess, in some strange way, to really be immersed in it.. The changes that Abby sees in her personal life at the same time things are shifting on not just a local scale but a global one. am who I am, and not an abstraction or a marketing tool. Tim Winton has published twenty-nine books for adults and children, and his work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. he helps his mother each day and loves to dive. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work. "I'm in the business of useless beauty," he says. So its a piece of magic, its a little bit of old school filmmaking and puppetry and a lot of beautiful craft work thats gone into it. Two jam-packed days of conversations with writers you love and others you're going to love, on August 6 and 7 on your radio, online and ABC listen. cloying. And then one day he turned up with this polystyrene fish. And I think that they just did a brilliant job. something. The most successful was Breath (2017), a coming-of-age story which united Wintons passion for the sea with a poignant examination of the emotional damage casually inflicted on two teenagers by a pair of charismatic but unthinking adults. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday. Mia Wasikowska: No, no, no, no, no, you go first! That night, he got up, and started the book again, from scratch. Ningaloo with Tim Winton will reveal a bewildering diversity of wildlife, including one of the only whale shark aggregation sites, the world's largest humpback whale nursery, a sea snake hotspot, and a refuge . Eric Bana makes a regrettably brief appearance as a genial abalone diver who retains Doras friendship despite his delinquency in harvesting a few more molluscs than he should. So why should I be anxious about categorisation?". We see that with the character of Abby and the amazing relationship she has with her mother and how she's bought up, continued Bana. They do this by: And there have been plenty of those: his 15 books For them, its like, whatever, you're there. I love it. Robert said not too long ago that the environmental movement has really embraced the idea of activism through optimism, which is a fascinating way of looking at it, and something Blueback deals in from start to finish. Born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1960, he is the author of several novels for adults, including Shallows (1986), a novel set in a whaling town, and Cloudstreet (1991), the tale of two working-class families rebuilding their lives, both won prestigious Miles Franklin Awards in Australia. Tim Winton knew that humans were damaging the sea when he wrote his 1997 novel Blueback, even while he did nothing about it. Your support will help us continue the important work of InReview in publishing free professional journalism that celebrates, interrogates and amplifies arts and culture in South Australia. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). Local arts and culture covered. Rossiter, Richard and Jacobs, Lyn (editors) (1993) Reading Tim Winton, Publisher's Summary. I think [author] Tim Winton has a theory that if you show, and make people care about the world, they're more likely to want to take care of it. Radha Mitchell plays Dora, an environmental activist. It was another one of those strange life-imitating-art moments: in Blueback, published in 1997, Abel and his mum successfully protect their patch of coast from developers. A lot of that has to be done by giving things And I think it sort of sends a message that increasing your local biodiversity is almost one of the most powerful things you can do to contribute to the climate. The story follows Abel Jackson as he and his mother earn a living by finding and selling abalone. It won and Winton has never looked back, 37, the Fremantle-based author has always been an enigmatic figure in Ozlit. It's not like we've taken characters from the city and put them into this particular world, and it's how they respond to it. emotions. Which has tended to obscure the real freedom I had as a kid, a sense of wide-open spaces, the kind of Australian This service may include material from Agence France-Presse (AFP), APTN, Reuters, AAP, CNN and the BBC World Service which is copyright and cannot be reproduced. Customers who viewed this item also viewed. Blueback 2022 Directed by Robert Connolly Synopsis He's their best kept secret Based on the best-selling novel by Tim Winton, Blueback is a timely tale about the ocean, a beautiful marine creature, and a young girl's power to change the world. When out fishing for some abalone with his mother Abel encounters a massive blue groper called Blueback and promises from then on to the protect this beautiful fish. Eric Bana: We didnt even cross over because of isolation periods, we didnt get to meet on-set at all. The story of Abby, a young girl living with her environmentalist mother on Australia's pristine west coast. Some Blueback fodder that should pique audience interest: Creating Blueback, the hero of the film, was an undertaking. Blueback is a Young Adult novel by Tim Winton, published in 1997. Blueback is now screening in cinemas nationwide. Mia Wasikowska: Yeah, Blueback is quite a classic here in Australia. And good he was. Blueback is a novel written by Australian author Tim Winton. Mia Wasikowska: Thats true. Winton's passion for Ningaloo has only grown in the years since the campaign. ", "I don't think art needs an excuse to exist. Ahead of the release, We Got This Covered had the chance to talk to Bana and Wasikowska about the project, the difficulties of shooting on location during the pandemic, their own thoughts on the perils of climate change and much more, which you can check out below. He would have discovered an unpretentious And otherwise, the goal feels like its its not as achievable. Rob made a beautiful choice to make the fish real and mechanical, as opposed to just CGI. Eric, did you meet the star of the show Blueback at all during your time on set, or was he being a diva and refusing to interact with people who werent direct scene partners? "I feel very specifically that I benefited from growing up where I did, where so much revolved around the sea - in a way, it was a gift and I owe it something. Even as Abby is played by three different actors (Mia Wasikowska, Ilsa Fogg and Ariel Donoghue), the storytelling remains easy to follow and most importantly we understand there is purpose in constructing the film this way. They said, Youve got two daughters, Dad! "I knew I was hard working. (Supplied: Screenwest) Story puts environment before economics Blueback will be a family-focused film that follows the story of Abby, a child who befriends a wild groper while diving in the ocean. * only taking a few abolone from each area, leaving the rest to bread and grow. 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