It's certainly a grim and disturbing film but it also has a strange beauty. There is no sentiment and no easy solutions. For me, the triumph of this film is the way it captures the desperate struggle to establish a foothold in the Australian landscape. The tension throughout the film is brilliantly achieved and everything is done with subtlety. No-one in this film is truly bad but bad things still happen to them because they are engaged in a life or death struggle. The idealistic father must be representative of many men and women who came to Australia to create a land with none of the old world's injustices. Even at the end of the film the boy still has this dream to cling to and he will rise from the ashes. In short, it's definitely worth watching!
Review of Dark Frontier
