Limbo (2023) Outback Film Soleil Noir

 "Cold Case Charlotte"

Written and Directed by Ivan Sen. Cinematography and Music Ivan Sen. Sen is an Indigenous Australian filmmaker, He's a co founder and director of Bunya Productions. We reviewed Mystery Road here but have not seen it's follow up Goldstone, yet.

What is amazing to me is how similar the world of the indigenous Australians is to that of some of the Native Americans on some of their reservations in the U.S. Let me explain. 

I was born and raised in New York City, WTF would I know, right? I have always had a hankering to live in the Western US. I grew up on Westerns. old TV Series and Hollywood Westerns all watched on a GE B&W TV. So, after high school, I went to a 2 year college for surveying and forestry, basically to get my foot in the escape door from city, and parlayed that into a bachelor degree from the University of Montana, in Missoula. (birthplace, BTW of David Lynch). So, I ended up working for the USFS, I married a Montana girl, and for a time also temporarily lived on the Flathead Indian Reservation running a wrecking yard for my stepfather-in-law, who was recovering from a heart attack. 

My wife's side of the family has 1% Native American DNA and 1% Siberian DNA. Her mother's side of the family originally lived around Cahokia, Illinois. Cahokia was founded back in 1699 by French Missionaries. It sits directly across the Mississippi River from St, Louis.  

As the European colonists pushed West a lot of the uprooted tribes eventually settled around Cahokia. Now some of you are old enough to remember the old Daniel Boone TV show with Fess Parker. Ed Ames played his friend a Native American called Mingo. 

Back in the 1750-60s the uprooted indigenous people from the Eastern coastal states collected on the far side of the Appalachian Mountains on the Ohio River into a large village of displaced nations mostly Cayuga, Seneca, Susquehannock and smaller tribes, that was called Mingo Town. So this Cahokia. Illinois was a similar village of many displaced nations. 

So as the Western expansion of the US continued her family with what can only be construed as still obviously having some affinity and connection with Native Americans left Cahokia and ended up in Wolf Point, Montana.

So getting back to Montana and the reservations, We used to travel from The Flathead Reservation to Wolf Point, Montana, where most of my wife's relatives still live on The Fort Peck reservation which was home to the Dakota-Lakota-Nakota (Sioux) and Dakota (Assiniboine) nations. To get there we had to drive through the Blackfoot Reservation, past the Rocky Boy (Chippewa - Cree) reservation, and the Fort Belknap (Gros Ventre and Assiniboine) reservations. 

Aside from the Flathead reservation, one of the more "successful" reservations, the rest resemble the zeitgeist depicted in Ivan Sven's Limbo. They got that hopeless, poverty depressed, look of the government reservation towns, where nobody gives a shit except the people who can take advantage of the existing situation, here in the US. 

Ivan Sen in an interview mentioned that he filmed in Black & White to amplify the connection of the aboriginal people with the landscape around Coober Pedy, Australia. It works, everyone and everything are just shades of grey. 

Shooting in Black & White also makes the film universal, without the color of the mineral soils evident, it all blends with the same type of landscapes around Beatty, Nevada, or the Atacama Desert in Chile, or the Gobi Desert in China or parts of the Arabian and Sahara deserts. This gives the films landscapes a world wide familiarity, an atmosphere that most can at least in some way relate to, and that some are probably very familiar with in different manifestations. 

Another small detail that clicked with me is how when we see Simon Baker driving on the roads with endless horizons, it's just like in Montana. When your on a eight hour drive your CD player will run through all the disks and when you start pushing your seek button on the radio tuner there's no music stations to pick up. Instead like Travis, the only radio he picks up is some high wattage Pentecostal Church station preaching religious gibberish across the barren landscape to all the heathens 

The film stars Simon Baker as Travis Hurley, a police special investigator. Rob Collins as Charlie an opal miner. Natasha Wanganeen as Emma his sister. With Nicholas Hope as Joseph an opal miner, Mark Coe as Zac, Joshua Warrior as Oscar, Alexis Lennon as Jessie, Tina Hartwig as Ava. 

Story

Our tale starts off with a hand working with a brush on an aboriginal dot painting. The prehistoric symbols have been the same forever. From Emma, later on, we find out that the "U" shapes are symbols for family, the big ones mother, older brothers and sisters. the small ones children. From further googling around for info, the concentric circles that the U shapes sit around is a campsite / fire / home. There's three campsites on the painting. Is it three branches of one family or of an aboriginal group? The footprint symbols denote someone traveling through the land. The land / vegetation is represented on the dot painting by the surrounding "daisy" like flower symbols i.e., a disk and circular ray florets. These are randomly surrounding the rest. 

The dot painting fades, like the insignificant details in the memory of a dream. It's last tendrils evaporating into consciousness. All that is left is the random patterns of pebbles on the ground. 

From this we segue into establishing shots of the landscape found in the Breakaways near the Stuart Range on the fringe between the eastern edge Victorian Desert and western edge of the Simpson Desert. Another ground shot is possibly of dingo tracks, and then shots of the Kanku – Breakaways Dingo fence, then shots of an arrow straight highway across barren lands. 

We jump into a sedan traveling down a two lane highway. Travis Hurley is the driver. We hear a Pentecostal radio preacher droning on and on. 

Simon Baker as Travis Hurley (who looks a lot like Brian Cranston in this)

At first, you're wondering whether or not Travis is some kind of religious nut or a Jesus freak.  Like I mentioned earlier, when I was out driving on the high plains of Montana, a lot of times that's all you can pick up, which turns out to be the case.  

We see more bleak desert landscapes, scarred by mullock heaps. As the sun is setting we finally get to a shot of a neon sign announcing the Limbo Motel.

The Limbo is a motel that is carved into a hill of sandstone bedrock. Called a dugout. Later in the film we see that a church is also built into another sandstone hill. Its not a gimmick its a strategy to escape the heat. Many residents also live underground. The ambient air temperature in a dugout is a comfy 73 degrees. Outside temperature in Winter (Australia's Summer) is in the 90s.

We watch as Travis schlepps his bags down long tunnels, de facto hallways with rounded ceilings. Your wondering if your going into a hobbit hole, lol.

Travis drops his bags pulls out his kit containing a syringe and we find out he's some kind of addict. The holly roller station was what I suspected, the only radio for miles. 

Travis shoots up and goes on the nod.

It's not until the morning that we find out that Travis is a federal cop following up on a cold case murder of an aboriginal girl named Charlotte Hayes. He goes to visit Charlie Hayes, the woman's brother. He's not at his town address.

Travis finds out from the local cops where Charlie's opal mine is at, and heads out to see him.

Rob Collins as Charlie Hayes

Charlie lives out in a tin can trailer in an opal mine. Charlie, who is bitter, is not cooperative at first. He tells Travis, "A white girl disappears, Charlie says, and it gets on the TV. The helicopters turn up. Black girl goes missing, it’s swept under the rug." We also find out that Charlie was also a suspect in the disappearance of Charlotte. 

Travis offers Charlie his card, he holds it out, but Charlie ignores it. Travis on his way back to his car slips the card under Charlie's windshield wiper and drives off, back into town.

Travis next visits Emma Hayes Charlotte and Charlie's sister, who runs the Waffles & Gems Cafe in Limbo.

Natasha Wanganeen as Emma Hayes

It reminds me of a roadside attraction in Mina, Nevada. It just had a sign advertising "Cold Drinks & Rocks," lol.  At first the meeting with Travis, Emma proves standoffish. Travis gives her his card if she changes her mind. She takes it.

Emma is taking care of two of Charlies kids along with her own daughter. For extra money they go out noodling on top of old mullock heaps looking for overlooked pieces of opal to take to Star Opal a opal buyer / dealer for money.   

Which would be an obvious place to scrounge since they dig down to an opal layer, and when they finally hit it they know by checking the mullock pile dump, from every bucket or auger, for signs of potch and precious opal. When they get to the level they stop digging vertical and follow it horizontally.

Both Emma and Charlie eventually prove to be more cooperative giving Travis some leads to a couple of opal miners. 

One is a crotchetily old timer named Joseph, whose dead brother, Leon, fancied young aboriginal girls and threw booze parties for the locals as a way to attract them to his cave.

We follow the threads of information. The false leads that the cops half assed followed back in the day were the result of false accusations pinned on Charlie of him fooling around with his own sister. 

Travis and Emma connect a bit and she invites him to a Friday night dinner. Over bottles of  Eastern Grey Bitter, Emma tells Travis a bit more information about Charlotte. The dinner also provides a humorous break in the story when the two girls repeatedly a ask Travis if he is gonna be their new "uncle," according to the girls they've had lots of uncles.

Noirsville

 

       

Ivan Sen created a film that will take you to a completely different, bizarre and depressing Noir world down under, that most people will be unfamiliar with. A world of neglect, discrimination, poverty, and casual entrenched racism. 

If there wasn't the vast expanses of undisturbed wide open spaces of Australia surrounding you 360 degrees in all directions during the opening drive to Linbo, you'd have the impression that the entire story is taking place in an immense gravel pit. The scarred and damaged Swiss cheese landscapes (of the Coober Pedy opal mining district)) depicted are dotted with vertical shafts that were sunk down to "the level" (opal bearing level). Each shaft has a corresponding mullock heap. Man made craters on some unknown moonscape. Old windlasses, rusty hoists, and discarded puddlers and scrapped blower trucks sit in abandoned workings. Junked cars and trucks cluster in impromptu wrecking yards.  All compliment and add to the atmosphere of total despair.

Simon Baker's acting is understated, Rob Collins is brooding, Emma is earth mother steady and Nicholas Hope exudes melancholy and regret. Bravo! 9/10