Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows four men on a fishing trip beside a mountain river where they proudly display their catch before sitting around a campfire to eat the fish. As they clean up they make idle talk and Billy (Simon Stone), the youngest, indicates that he will be returning home the next morning, hinting at some discomfort. Later, Stewart (Gabriel Byrne) goes to the river where he bends over a body floating face down. He turns the body over and strokes the woman’s hair. In the morning the men climb a rugged cliff above the river where the body has begun to decay.

Educational value points

• In this clip a seemingly innocent fishing trip is revealed to have a disturbing undercurrent – that the four men have known about a woman’s body in the river and yet continued with their fishing expedition. The beauty of the remote location, the slow pace of the action, the sparse dialogue and haunting music belie the moment when Stewart (Gabriel Byrne) approaches and strokes the body and the confronting nature of the men’s actions becomes apparent.

• The opening shot frames the four men together, pointing to their unity of purpose and responsibility. In showing all four men together in a stylised pose within the frame, much like a still photograph, they are literally and metaphorically tied together at that moment in place and time. This reinforces their earlier shared decision to forestall the reporting of the body to the police and accounts for the shared consequences of that decision.

• The use of natural light in this clip imbues the sequence with a genuine sense of the environment. The director, Ray Lawrence, has a track record of using light that is drawn from the actual location, found here in the environs of the river – in order to engender his films, albeit subliminally, with a greater immediacy, authenticity and naturalism. In this clip it has the effect of drawing the viewer more closely into the drama and horror of the men’s predicament.

• The editing dissolve from Billy posing with his fish into a long shot of the landscape at dusk has temporal and symbolic significance. This editing device has two functions. Firstly it allows for the rapid yet logical passing of time. Secondly it symbolically demonstrates the insignificance of the men, their fishing trip and their successful haul of fish against the sheer physical and spiritual scale of the landscape around them.

• The music on the soundtrack, particularly in the scene in which Stewart returns to the dead woman, contributes to the sense that his relationship to this event is a complex and haunting one. The keening female voice heard in this night scene together with Stewart’s gentle stroking of the woman’s hair as he cautiously bends over her, reveal his sorrow, helplessness and regret and indicate his tangled emotions and the uncertainty he feels in relation to his actions.

• The series of dissolves from Billy standing on the cliff looking into the valley to the insects crawling on the dead woman, then back to Billy, has the effect of revealing his thoughts. Beginning and ending on Billy, a chain of images fade from one into another, indicating his mind’s-eye view and connecting him across physical space to the dead woman. This device depicts his awareness of his actions and his knowledge that the body is slowly decaying.

This clip starts approximately 48 minutes into the feature.

The four men are admiring their catch of fish, which is laid out on the ground.
Rocco Could have scooped him up with one hand.
Stewart Sure you could.
Carl Which one’s dinner?
Billy Not mine. Mine’s coming home with me.
Stewart Alright. Hold it up. I’ll get a photograph.
Billy Oh, hang on.
Billy, holding one of the fish, poses for Stewart’s camera.
Carl Trout with stunned mullet.
Stewart OK. Hold it up.

We see a shot of the sunset over the valley. It is nighttime and the fish is being cooked on a campfire.
Rocco Can’t wait to get down to that river.
Carl I can. I’m rooted.
Billy I feel really trippy.
Carl Too much sun.
Stewart I’ve never known anything like it.
Carl Something’s put the river spirits in a good mood.

Billy and Stewart are washing their hands in the river.
Billy Look, I don’t care what you guys do, but I’m going to leave tomorrow morning.

Stewart, alone, is squatting by the dark river. He turns over a body that is floating in the water.

It is daylight. The four men are loaded up with their gear and are hiking out. Billy looks out over the valley and the river below. Along with haunting music, we see a close-up of the body – insects and leeches are crawling along the skin. We cut back to Billy, who continues walking.