Island of the Hun­gry Ghosts

The wonky tin­gle of a theremin, which seems to have been chan­nelled through some kind of echoey effects ped­al, lends a super­nat­ur­al aura to Aaron Cup­ples’ score for the doc­u­men­tary Island of the Hun­gry Ghosts. And per the title’s point-black decla­ma­tion, Gabrielle Brady’s film is a ghost sto­ry in its own ele­men­tal way.

Its sub­jects are the human souls who have some­how become detached from their phys­i­cal form, cer­tain­ly in the eyes of neigh­bour­ing right wing gov­ern­ments whose insid­i­ous, mil­i­taris­tic crack­downs on immi­gra­tion have caused untold suf­fer­ing. These are the refugees and being sta­tioned – appar­ent­ly tem­porar­i­ly, prob­a­bly indef­i­nite­ly – in a deten­tion cen­tre on Christ­mas Island, a tiny speck in the ocean which sits south of Indone­sia, but is an exter­nal ter­ri­to­ry of Australia.

Their only form of emo­tion­al respite comes from ses­sions with supreme­ly empa­thet­ic trau­ma coun­cil­lor Poh Lin Lee who, through the course of the film, dis­cov­ers that she is a pow­er­less paci­fi­er, unable to help in the bureau­crat­ic bid­ding these peo­ple so des­per­ate­ly need. As we hear their deeply upset­ting sto­ries, and see sim­ple reen­act­ments with the help of a child­like dio­ra­ma, Brady tells the par­al­lel tale of a mass migra­tion of grabs from the island inte­ri­or to the sea.

Trans­port links shut down, and vol­un­teers build ad hoc bridges and damns from tree branch­es in an attempt to help the crabs along their per­ilous jour­ney. Any­one trav­el­ling around the island needs to bring a broom with them so they can sweep the lit­tle blighters out the way of their oncom­ing tires. The crabs are referred to as the ​“hun­gry ghosts”, and locals build mighty pyres as a way to spir­i­tu­al­ly sanc­ti­fy this nat­ur­al won­der. So on one side you have peo­ple caged and abused, and ani­mals treat­ed as if they were royalty.

It’s a hushed, del­i­cate film which is high on atmos­pher­ics and ethe­r­i­al land­scape footage (care of cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Michael Lath­am). And yet, the mate­r­i­al is stretched might­i­ly thin, and learn­ing that this is an exten­sion of Bandy’s 20-minute, 2017 short, The Island, comes as lit­tle sur­prise. The scenes of Poh Lin Lee inter­view­ing refugees are undoubt­ed­ly pow­er­ful, but there are also sequences out­side of her work­space which feel as if they have been per­formed for the cam­era, giv­ing the film as a whole the bit­ter sense of con­trived spec­ta­cle. Aes­thet­i­cal­ly speak­ing, all the footage here is worth­while, it’s just the film makes its point a lit­tle too swift­ly and obviously.