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Monkey Puzzle
[Mon 21/07/2008 02:19:32]
Australia / 90 mins /
Co-writer/director Mark Forstmann Producer Tamara Popper DOP Justine Kerrigan Production Design Sam Hobbs Editor Ken Sallows Composer Amanda Brown Key Cast Ryan Johnson, Ben Geurens, Ella Scott Lynch, Billie Rose Prichard and Socratis Otto
For Sydneysiders, the Blue Mountains, just two hours distant, beckon from the western horizon, their purple-blue haze seducing the day-trippers and the lifestyle-change devotees taken in by the clean air, “English” climate and picture perfect scenery.
For the five adventure seekers of Monkey Puzzle, the mountains signal a heady mix of lust, the chance to conquer inner fears and for some, a remote possibility of redemption. But the deep dark valleys of the landscape become something much more sinister and threatening as the narrative unravels.
Lead by gung-ho tour organiser, Dylan (Johnson), his best mate Carl (Geurens) and girl (-friends at the start but possibly more?), Pippa (Scott Lynch) and Toni (Prichard), the group head for a planned three-day return trek to a mysterious tall timber, it’s location marked dubiously on the boys’ hand-made map. Expectation fills the air as the team descends from the sun-dried peak-tops into the colder, darker valleys of their trek. The perfect symmetry of the two “potential” couples is immediately thrown off kilter by the introduction of tag-along drug dealer Zac (Otto), whose disturbing presence hints at manifold imminent cruel intentions.
Forstmann and his trusty band of dedicated actors and crew have thrown themselves into this story with abandon, allowing the Australian bush to take centre stage and dominate proceedings in this film which launched internationally at the Shanghai International Film Festival in June.
If the ensemble has achieved one thing, it is the revelation that the Australian landscape will rapidly strip bare the layers of façade that we suit up within our everyday life. Of all the journeys, it is the outwardly capable and charming Dylan who comes most of the rails. Johnson’s interpretation of a young man who’s burden of guilt becomes too much to bare is measured and nuanced, although at times the character’s mood swings appear way off the logic scale. The enterprising cast works hard as an ensemble and hit the beats for much of the duration of the film.
It’s true that while pain and trauma are the staple ingredients in this Deliverence-style drama, it’s not necessarily the final state of the characters that leaves the biggest imprint. While absorbing in the immediate dark of the cinema, what lingers is no more than the bleak and suffocating image of the mountain gorge.
