It’s 1940s in the Australian outback … do you know where your Aboriginals are? The police caught one and sent the little fellow to an Outback nunnery where hijinks ensued. At least I wish there had been hijinks; mostly it was hazing followed by a very confusing and bored introduction to Christ. I’m not sure either took.
The New Boy (Aswan Reid) is so new they didn’t bother naming him. Seriously, everybody else in the film gets a name except for the subject of the film, New Boy. Scraggly, wiry, and completely wild, New Boy takes to his new digs exactly as you’d expect him to. He sleeps under his bed and finds everything confusing. The kids bully him not realizing that growing up as an orphan in the Outback has made him quite a bit tougher than them, both physically and emotionally.
And he has some weird fire and healing powers. Is this an Aboriginal thing or what?
The nunnery, sorry monastery, is run by Sister Eileen (Cate Blanchett, cuz Lord knows we haven’t seen enough of her) under the guise that it is run by a priest, who actually died a year ago. The place is so remote and un-visited that the guise can hold indefinitely. But these are peripherals; the movie is about the New Boy assimilating to white Christian life.
The first half of The New Boy is watchable if even engaging from time-to-time. We care for the silent kid and root for him to either fit in or make others adjust to him. He’s as ill-suited to the monastery life as a giraffe in the snow. But, of course, that never stops Christians from wanting everybody to look and act like everybody else. When you’ve proven you can do that, they send you along t
o enforce their dogma on others. It’s quite a racket. But getting New Boy to play their reindeer games ain’t gonna be easy. Luckily for them, the kid does appear to be Christ-curious. Tell me, son, are you looking for a full-on crucifixion experience, or do you just wish to dabble in Christ?
After New Boy has established his place among the orphans, the film draaaaaaaaaags. Buoyed only by the New Boy’s absolutely bizarre identification with Jesus Christ, the film has little to offer and ends with a split decision on Christianity, both praising it and critiquing it, without any hint as to where the subject of the film is going or even if the kid is going to be OK. We just have to guess.
The New Boy had me for a while. I genuinely wanted to know how Silent Ab was going to fit in with his new gang, if indeed he did at all. But films about Christian stuff can’t help not being about Christian stuff and before long it was “Jesus this” and “Jesus that” and if not for the kid’s outrageous take on religion, I don’t think the film would have anything else to say on the subject other than introducing more of it. Hence, while I don’t recommend the film, I would like to see a sequel, one in which the New Boy departs the monastery and is introduced into civilian life. Does he wear clothes? Does he get a job? Does he ever learn a language? And only at the very end would I care whether the kid thinks anything of Christianity. My hope is he dumps all of it and returns to the Outback.
There once was an Aboriginal kid
Arrested for the things that he did
They brought him to a nun
And his peers, one-by-one
Caved entirely to his takeover bid
Not Rated, 116 Minutes
Director: Warwick Thornton
Writer: Warwick Thornton
Genre: Christ 101
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Native populations
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Missionaries? Non-missionaries? Hard to tell what this film was trying to say
