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Having fallen in love with Jack (Simon Burke), Joe (Patrick Phillips) is heartbroken when the parish priest, in the confessional, tells Jack their association is a mortal sin. Jack decides he must end their ‘affair’, to him an intense though largely innocent friendship.
Curator’s notes
Joe’s brand of faith is that of a new age: he believes in a loving God. So when the parish priest denies Joe his love, Joe damns both his faith and his God for not understanding his humanity. This was pretty strong stuff in 1973 when the play was written, although perhaps not as powerful by the time the 1980 screen version aired, in the wake of films like The Devil’s Playground (1976), in which a younger Simon Burke played the object of a priest’s desire. A Hard God reflected a reduction in influence of the Catholic church on an increasingly secular Australian society.
On a technical note, we can see here how the shooting of both studio and location sequences on multi-cam videotape contributed to the static quality of the drama. However, grading the pictures to the green end of the spectrum certainly helps with the sense of period.
