Should film tack­le racial hatred with comedy?

At the Mel­bourne Film Festival’s Cen­tre­piece Gala screen­ing of Abe Forsythe’s Down Under, the out­spo­ken and notice­ably angry direc­tor took to the stage and released a scathing broad­side against local dis­trib­u­tors. He feels that his film is being sup­pressed by insid­i­ous forces, rel­e­gat­ed to sin­gle screen­ings around the coun­try and deemed a gar­ish blight on the Aus­tralian movie landscape.

It’s a gut­sy move – espe­cial­ly as it would’ve looked pret­ty sour had the film end­ed up being plain awful. But, tac­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, Forsythe finds him­self in an intrigu­ing posi­tion. His film went down a storm, because of and not despite its con­tro­ver­sial sub­ject mat­ter. It seems that, even though the appeal might not be broad, you can explore themes of racial ten­sion with jokes about blowies, Wolf Creek and unfor­tu­nate facial tattoos.

Down Under is a film which lists the rea­sons we invent to take action in the name of the col­lec­tive good. Or, some sub­jec­tive def­i­n­i­tion of ​“good”. In 2005, a gath­er­ing took place at Sydney’s Cronol­la beach, organ­ised via text mes­sages which invit­ed par­tic­i­pants to come down fes­tooned with the nation­al flag and bash some ​“lebs” and ​“wogs”. What began as a row­dy dis­play of whipped up nation­al pride inevitably descend­ed into vio­lence. The film opens with doc­u­men­tary footage of the event, as white (main­ly male) rev­ellers are stirred to action by the lagered-up mob mentality.

Forsythe then cuts away and the remain­ing film is a grotesque satir­i­cal reac­tion to that shock­ing open­ing sal­vo. Chris Mor­ris’ sui­cide-bomb-com, Four Lions, instant­ly comes to mind as a point of com­par­i­son, as both films mine dark com­e­dy in the recess­es of a mur­der­ous instinct. The film fol­lows two gangs who, fol­low­ing the ini­tial fra­cas, are up for a bit of afters. On one side is a crew of white men who tool up as best they can with a plan to cleanse the neigh­bour­hood with base­ball bats and an antique rifle (and its sin­gle remain­ing bul­let). On the oth­er, four dis­parate Lebanese men take to the streets to defend their hon­our, not real­ly com­pre­hend­ing the hor­ror that awaits them. The film mon­i­tors both sides until their even­tu­al, ugly clash.

This could have gone so, so wrong, but Forsythe man­ages to retain a sense of bal­ance. He mocks his sub­jects and lam­basts their actions, while also depict­ing them as trag­i­cal­ly flawed imbe­ciles drawn to vio­lence because they have noth­ing bet­ter to do with their lives. It’s quite a feat to see a coterie of foul-mouthed char­ac­ters all dri­ven by intense hatred but who are also human clowns grav­i­tat­ing towards high fail­ure. The sub­tle blend of arche­type and stereo­type is what makes the film work.

It doesn’t take much agency to see that the mak­ers do not endorse what these char­ac­ters are doing, even while play­ing their lunatic antics for bel­ly laughs. What’s rad­i­cal about Down Under is that it is deliv­er­ing a seri­ous mes­sage – about the absur­di­ty and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of racial purifi­ca­tion – that isn’t just primed to appeal to an audi­ence of lib­er­al intel­lec­tu­als. Cul­tur­al myths and folk heroes are torn down, white pride takes a quick break for a kebab, and men har­bour secrets which under­mine their fer­vent nation­al pride. If Aus­tralian audi­ences opt to reject the film (and that would be a damn shame), there’s sure­ly a place for it in post-Brex­it Britain or – god for­bid – post-Trump America.