Life
Directed by Lawrence Johnston
Reviewed by Vanessa Sparrow
Lawrence Johnston's Life is a stark yet compassionate film. Based on the 1991 play Containment (written by lead actor John Brumpton), it is ostensibly about a group of male prisoners, confined together in segregation from other inmates because they have HIV.
In facing a future that is monotonously predictable, yet deeply uncertain (the dreaded T-cell count is used to effect here), they are forced to confront their isolation and innermost fears. As they dream, fantasise and remember, we witness the pain of mistakes now realised and desires unfulfilled.
It is through this intimacy with themselves, however, that Des, Ralph (played with sensitivity by David Tredinnick) and the others come to understand and in some ways help each other (although Johnston has no pretensions about the transcendental power of male bonding in such circumstances).
It is this exploration of masculinity that drives the film and gives it power beyond potentially banal observations about prison life and living with HIV. In particular, the focus on the paradoxical relationships the men have with their bodies — both worshipped and feared — is revealing and skilfully done.
John Brumpton brings an edgy grace to the character of Des — by turns courageous and clumsily destructive — providing a focus for the ongoing tension between what is said and what is meant. He is well supported by a strong cast, consistently avoiding cliché as they move their characters towards whatever resolution is possible.
The look of the film is both beautiful and frustrating — cinematographer Mandy Walker's clever use of theatrical devices and tableau-like shots somehow serving to distract from, rather than engage us with, the grim reality of the lives that unfold.
This is not an easy film to watch — the unrelenting brutality making it, for me, strangely unmoving — but there is no doubt that Johnston's is an intelligent voice and a sure hand at work.