Healing is in a lot of ways a pretty typical Australian film. At first, this might sound like a pretty dismissive thing to say but on some level it’s true – it’s set in the Australian outback and emphasizes Australian values like mateship, multiculturalism, conservationism and redemption. While there’s nothing inherently bad in this approach, it leaves little room for Healing to offer audiences something they haven’t seen in other Australian films.
Healing is set on a low-security prison farm camp set in the Australian outback and focuses on the relationships that a handful of prisoners form with injured birds after caseworker Matt Perry (Hugo Weaving) opens up an avery on the prison grounds. The most prominent of these plotlines is the one that brings Perry together with the recently transferred Viktor Khamed, an Iranian killer who has spent the last 18 years suffering for his mistakes. While he’s not the only prisoner in the film that forms a relationship with the injured birds that end up in the avery, his bond with a wedge-tailed eagle named Yasmine ends up being the heart of the movie.
While there’s a lot of talented people involved in the film both in front of and behind the camera on Healing, the supporting cast actually takes the movie quite further than they’ll likely be given credit for. Jane Menelaus practically steals the movie as sassy professional bird-keeper Glynis and Anthony Hayes also does a great job of playing the film’s antagonist. Tony Martin also nails his role as Perry’s co-worker, Leo and the movie lets him have a lot of fun with the part by contrasting so strongly with Weaving’s character.
Given the importance of the birds to the film’s plot, a lot of time has gone into their inclusion and there are some parts of the movie that look absolutely incredible when it comes to this. The bird’s really bring a lot to the typical Australian-film cinematography and the film’s soundtrack did a good job of bringing this all together. That said, there are also a few sequences where the quality falters a bit and the birds look like very cheap green screen props
Although Healing treads much of the same ground as other Australian movies, it did have one particularly exceptional sequence where Viktor takes his first escorted day visit out of prison. This short but exceptional sequence did a lot of alleviate some of disinterest that comes with Healing focusing on such familiar territory and stood out as one of the movie’s best moments for me. It really did a great job of conveying the genuine wonder that his character felt in that moment and demonstrating how far his character had come.
Healing isn’t necessarily a bad movie, it just isn’t the most ambitious one. There is so much more to Australia that is interesting and movie-worthy than just convicts forming mateship in the outback and it’s a shame we don’t see more movies that explore that. Healing comes close to tapping at this potential creative well but ultimately ends up falling back on the same Australian film tropes.
6/10
Fergus Halliday