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The hanging garden
Threat advisory: High - High risk of entertaining activities
Movie propaganda
It's hard to go home... ten years after your death.
The hanging garden focuses on Sweet William, miserable obese boy (Troy Veinotte) who grows up to be a healthy, well adjusted gay man (Chris Leavins). Black humour and visual originality tell the story of his return to Nova Scotia after a bitter 10 year absence. The years have transformed him into a thinner and wiser man, however, once back in the hanging garden, old ghosts resurface.
The story, told in three acts, sees William arriving at his sister's wedding only to find his family as dysfunctional as ever. There is foul-mouthed sister Rosemary (Kerry Fox); Violet (Christine Dunsworth), the sullen 10-year-old sister he's never met; grandmother Grace (Joan Orenstein), devout but deranged; Iris (Seanna McKenna), his controlling guilt-ridden mother; Mac (Peter Macneill), his tormented drunken father; and Fletcher, the new brother-in-law, still soliciting his affections (Joel S Keller).
At the heart of this darkly comic drama is a dysfunctional family with a blind, deaf and gassy dog!
Intelligence analyst
Special Agent Matti
Theatrical report
I sometimes wonder if human beings aren't the strongest argument against Darwinism: surely any species which treats its young so badly would've survival-of-the-fittest-ed itself out of existence by now.It only takes one person to dysfunctionalise a family and when that person is the head of the house it makes things ten times worse. The saving grace of this horrendously believable group is that the children have a sense of humour. It's black, it's nasty, it's cutting, but without it they wouldn't have survived (and I would've seen a completely different film).
Chris and Kerry are brilliantly cast opposite each other: their performances and their characters are as night and day, and that is as it should be. Their dynamism (hers: outward; his: inward) creates an on-screen tension which heightens the atmosphere of pain already pervading the family home. Likewise, Joel's character, whose outsider status (and relative sanity) shows up the cracks in the plastering. (Did you like that metaphor?)
The structure of the film (which was written and directed by Thom Fitzgerald) is way out there, knocking the beginning, middle, end concept for six. While it is based heavily in reality, we are also privileged to witness the characters' psychoses made real. The past and the present and the future are one (which they are anyway, if you happen to be a temporally non-linear being), always interacting always changing. It takes a bit of getting used to but if you remember that this is an independent film and therefore going to be a bit weird, you'll be fine.
There are a goodly number of skeletons in the closets (more architecture), which always makes for interesting viewing and great performances from everyone. I got a bit annoyed with the recurring flower motif but only a bit. This is still a really good film which is easy to recommend, especially to film students.
Security censorship classification
MA 15+ (Adult themes, medium level coarse language)
Surveillance time
87 minutes (1:27 hours)
Not for public release in Australia before date
Film: 7 January 1999
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