Film review: Blessed

Released in September 2009, the film Blessed is a screen adaptation of the play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class?. Focusing on the darker emotional elements that accompany marginalisation in Australia, Blessed is a cathartic viewing experience.

The film leads us through 24 hours in the lives of five working-class families, whose actions subtly intersect through circumstance. Firstly, events unfold through the eyes of the children, then through the perspective of their mothers. Taken from one of the film’s more harrowing moments, the title ‘Blessed’ refers to the idea that children are our (sometimes only) blessings.

The original script from which Blessed grew was commissioned by Melbourne Workers Theatre and premiered as a live theatre production in 1998. The story itself was woven from several separate plays, each by a different writer: Trash, by Andrew Bovell (Lantana); Money, by Patricia Cornelius, Suit, by Christos Tsiolkas (Head On); and Dreamtown, by Melissa Reeves. This same team also created the screen adaptation, maintaining the integrity of the writing, and some theatrical storytelling techniques.

While a couple of the more poetic monologues from the plays were sacrificed in translation to the new medium, this filmic treatment brought clarity to the sometimes implicit connections between the characters. Remembering the film’s theatrical roots is important to accepting some of the dramatic devices and smaller details that depart from the real-to-life depiction suggested by the visuals.

Directed by Ana Kokkinos, who also directed Tsiolkas’s Head On, Blessed has a gritty visual aesthetic, holding the characters in a relentless and intimate exposure akin to being caught in the headlights. Bleak though the subject matter is – crime, gambling, dispossession, loneliness, sexual abuse and death – Kokkinos has managed to hint at the possibility of hope. Absent from the play, this underlying thread is a life-raft that lifts the writing, while not letting the audience off with an easy ride.

Excellent casting has formed a stellar Australian ensemble, with Deborra-Lee Furness, Victoria Haralabidou, Monica Maughan, Miranda Otto, and younger actors, Harrison Gilbertson, Sophie Lowe and Eamon Farren all delivering strong performances. Frances O’Connor particularly shone in her role as the young mother Rhonda, delivering some of the most emotionally wrought scenes, with Reef Ireland and Eva Lazzaro, as her children, Orton and Stacey. And it has to be said that Miranda Otto performs what is possibly the best alone-at-home-with-loud-music-and-a-bottle-of-wine dance ever.

Insightful treatment of interpersonal relations is a hallmark of Australian cinema. In Blessed we witness a despair at the lack of control that compels the characters to reach out to others in unexpected ways – small struggles to grasp at comfort and warmth in a world where these things are almost out of reach – all captured beautifully by Kokkinos.

Blessed asks much of its viewers, but offers equal reward to those who take the journey. It is a bold attempt to capture a dimension of our society that is too often ignored. Not for the depressed or faint of heart, but definitely worth seeing.

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