The New Boy: NZIFF Review

Samson and Delilah director Warwick Thornton returns with a deliberately opaque story that's filled with religious symbolism and hardly any solid answers.

Starring Aswan Reid (and introducing him as a talent), The New Boy is the story of Reid's unnamed Aboriginal boy showing up at a convent after being arrested by a policeman. 

Dumped into the care of Sister Eileen (Cate Blanchett, in an unshowy role) and Sister Mum (The Sapphires' Deborah Mailman), the boy shows no sign of toeing the line in among the other youngsters in their charge.

However, after he defeats a would-be bully, he finds an easy peace with the others, just as Sister Eileen starts to question his presence and some signs of miracles around the orphanage.

There's an interesting dichotomy here at play - both within the film and perhaps within the filmmaker's planned subtext.

Is the film about colonisation and about Christianity snuffing out any spark the Aboriginal race may have (certainly final scenes here would suggest so) or is it simply a film of religious iconography writ large among a beautiful set of cinematography?

Certainly, Thornton isn't keen on revealing more, preferring instead to leave deliberately vague moments to waft in the air for cinemagoers to keenly debate later. While the film is built on Thornton's own youth and his own upbringing in a Christian boarding school, it's in no hurry to reveal any answers.

But there's beauty in the film's rollout and a certain bucolic lyricism to what unfolds. There's no direct conflict between the boy and the nuns, but his arrival precipitates a change in Eileen who feels she has to atone for what she's done that she believes is right.

Perhaps Thornton felt too much conflict would be too cliched, but in the case of The New Boy the sensory experience is second to none, even if the intellect doesn't quite get the reward it requires for the necessary workout.