Storm Boy

An old man sits in a company meeting. His granddaughter takes part in environmental protests and opposes the firm's mining plan. He is to make the decision. Just then he remembers his past. As a boy he lived in a hut with his father on the coast of South Australia; his mother had died and his father saw nobody. One day he finds the chicks of a pelican shot by hunters. He raises the three of them and one stays with him. Fingerbone Bill, an Aboriginal man, teaches him how to care for the bird. Shawn Seet directs. Geoffrey Rush plays the old man; Jai Courtney and Morgan Davies are in the cast. The source is Colin Thiele's novel; the book is taught in schools in Australia and had been filmed once before in the seventies. This version adds a frame set in the present and puts the environmental question directly inside the narrative. The pelican scenes were shot with real birds and the training took a long time. The matter it works at is loss; although made for a young audience the film does not soften its ending. The coastal landscape carries the visual side and the setting is inside the narrative. Its limit is the frame; the present day sections are weak and break up the narrative. Who it is for: viewers who like family films and narratives grounded in nature. Who it is not for: the ending is sad, the frame unnecessary, and the narrative predictable.