On October 19, 2001, a deteriorating fishing boat bound for Christmas Island sank in international waters, killing 353 of its passengers. On board were over 400 asylum seekers, and Steve Thomas’ (Welcome To Woomera, Least Said, Soonest Mended) feature length documentary Hope follows one of the incident’s few survivors, Iraqi refugee Amal Basry, as she tells her story to the world. Basry’s personality makes for great doco fodder, as she undergoes massive changes throughout her traumatic experience, while also dealing with the major task of integrating into the new cultural environment of Australian society.
The film overreaches itself in its attempt to cover in detail way too many aspects of its already complex subject: the incident’s political dimension, the victims’ point of view, and Basry’s personal tragedy as she later struggles with cancer. As the film becomes not one about her, but one with her, it becomes less powerful, getting tripped up in its over abundance of thematic strands. It cannot deliver a detached view of the events, as director Thomas is clearly emotionally involved himself (at one point he is near tears), while ironically, he’s unfortunately incapable of creating that same emotional involvement for the audience. An artistic perspective on the sinking is successfully provided through the eyes of Melbourne’s gifted painter Kate Durham, who created a piece of art for every victim, and in the end dedicated an exhibition to Basry. Contrastingly, the picture itself is quite bare of aesthetic devices to support the film’s mood, and that style hardly helps to make it more accessible.
The victims of October 2001 certainly deserve a movie about them. This picture, however, does not manage to involve its viewers more than a simple retelling of the events would have.
Devoid of any real filmmaking finesse or sense of style, Hope instead charts a difficult story in a straightforward manner, and robs the story of its drama in the process.
