SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL: 'I have a little man inside of me with an axe," TJ (Dean Daley-Jones) says in the middle of Mad Bastards, Brendan Fletcher’s idiosyncratic meditation on male violence and fractured families. One of a handful of characters inspired by stories culled from Australia’s Aboriginal communities, TJ—a tattooed bruiser with the face of a snorting bull and the quick-fire temperament to match—can’t seem to help getting in his own way; the little axe-wielder hopping about inside of him has led him away from his now 13-year-old son and into a life of trouble. The admission, when it comes, is also a statement of helplessness: A big man like me, and I can’t seem to control it.
TJ’s son Bullet (Lucas Yeeda) lives in the Kimberley region of Australia along with his alcoholic mother and a rotating cast of her abusive boyfriends. At 13, Bullet has come of delinquency age, and is already running with the Molotov cocktail crowd—the film opens with him being hauled into custody by his Grandpa Tex (Greg Tait) for arson. Meanwhile, down in Perth, TJ is contemplating making the trip to see his son for the first time. His brother is incarcerated, his mother treats him with pure contempt, and TJ can’t get through a friendly pool game without busting a cue over his opponents back. Where might a fellow like that belong?
The credits sequence comprises a non sequitur musical number performed by two of the irresistible Pigram Brothers, who seem to attend the film’s landscape of travelers and seekers like a mini Greek chorus. It’s a great little song (and one that recurs throughout the film) but it’s also the first incidence of a music cue that feels more like an interruption than an organic choice. Throughout the film, Fletcher leans on such cues as introductions, transitions, and codas—brief events or outbursts are followed by contemplative music montages are followed by brief events and so on and so on.
The over-reliance on score sets up an avoidant rhythm that begins to feel like a lack of narrative confidence. For much of the film Fletcher moves between TJ’s picaresque journey north and Bullet’s time spent at a camp for at-risk youth, but the constant intrusion of wordless, lingering musical sequences isn’t as successful a binding agent as a deeper engagement with their characters might have been. The actors are all non-professionals, and I began to wonder if Fletcher, wary of pushing them too far, had them pose instead. Daley-Jones’s powerful presence in particular made me wish he had more to do, and more to tell us about life in that part of the world. Fletcher’s atmospheric approach is not without moments of emotional power, and the raw, unyielding landscapes of Northwestern Australia are framed to resonant effect. An image of Bullet laying himself down on the hot, cracked desert floor is echoed later by TJ; there seems to be no escape from the heat and the exposure. A man must find shelter somewhere within.
'Why do you think he’s running amok?" a neighbor asks Bullet’s mother. 'Because he’s a little shit!" she says. 'Why are you so angry?" a counsellor asks Bullet. 'I guess it’s my mom," Bullet replies. The source of both TJ’s and Bullet’s anger is an open question that is drawn across Mad Bastards like the scrawny, sage-like codger who accompanies TJ for much of his journey. Early in the film Grandpa Tex organises a men’s discussion group whose silent sessions form a running, poignant joke. The men keep turning up, but they can’t seem to find the words. TJ turns up as well, and is humbled by the purity and familiarity of his son’s rage. Though it’s a source of frustration throughout Mad Bastards, in their climactic scene the privileging of tableau over dialogue feels just right: For Bullet his father’s implacable presence means more than any words could.
