The Australian national cinema is one that constitutes a search for identity, for a place to belong in the face of adversity and alienation. The factors that are necessary to have an understanding of our cinema must be traced back to our beginnings. Our genesis is a dark one, we are essentially an amalgamation of convicts, criminals and offcuts from other societies which is perhaps why we have a innate resonation with those who take matters into their own hands, that deny authority in search of their own identity and to a larger extent, their destiny. The essential “aussie battler” is the typical working-class man trying to make his mark on the world in the face of adversity and the notion of the “bushranger”, an average person who rises up …show more content…
It is only when a member of their crew, Barry Brown (Joel Edgerton) is effectively executed by the police that the order starts to fall apart. Not only is that catalyst that sparks the rest of the events in the film, but it also signals the loss of “J”'s only real father figure, Barry Brown was the only one that was ever truly nice to him or cared about him and now with the absence of his “surrogate” patriarchal figure, “J”'s moral compass becomes unhinged. Jacki Weaver's matriarch is nothing short of disturbing, and not just because she continually insists on kissing all of her grown sons on the lips, one might not find this unusual but she lingers beyond the threshold of acceptability. Despite her small stature and soothing voice, the matriarchal Cody is anything but, she can be cold, manipulative and utterly deceiving, evident when “J” is being held in witness protection and effectively is the prosecutions only witness in the trial of 'Pope' and 'Darren', her only remaining sons, does she contact the family lawyer and utter, without a nanosecond of hesitation that he must “go”, he must “disappear”. The juxtaposition of the average working-man's traditional pastime of watching the cricket with “J's” piecing together of what his uncles have just done and the sociopathic calmness of “Pope” as he makes a funny remark about one of the Sri Lankan players accentuates the notion of a Gothic architecture, the mundane and ordinary are infused with the malevolent and uneasy. This gothic duality is again evident when the Cody boys mercilessly execute two young police officers in response to the murder of Barry Brown, the cowardice slaying is