The Sound of One Hand Clapping

CRITICAL REVIEW

PLOT SYNOPSIS and DISCUSSION

During the winter of 1954, in a remote Tasmanian construction camp of migrant workers, Maria Buloh (Metila Jurisic) a young Slovenian migrant walks out into the snow and never returns. She leaves her three year old daughter Sonja (Arabella Wain) and her husband Bojan (Kristof Kaczmarek) alone. Employed by Tasmania's hydroelectric company and living at remote camps, Bojan is forced to have friends take care of Sonja, but after the attempted molestation of the eight-year-old Sonja (Rosie Flanagan) by her carer Picotti(Jacek Koman), Bojan finds work in Hobart so he and Sonja can remain together.

Life continues for Bojan and Sonja until Bojan begins a happy relationship with Jean(Essie Davis), but when the affair ends because of Sonja's rejection and hostility, the despair of the past resurfaces and he turns to alcohol. By the time Sonja turns 16, his drunkenness turns violent and eventually prompts her to leave him to reside in Sydney.

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Nearly 20 years later, single and planning an abortion, she returns to Tasmania's highlands and to her father, in an attempt to put the pieces of her life into some coherent context. She finds that her father is a bitter alcoholic and is consumed with memories of the war and the effect it had on him and Maria. The sight of her alcoholic father recalls Sonja's childhood and her abandonment by her mother.

While staying with Jenja (Evelyn Krape), her mothers best friend, she decides to stay in Tasmania and keep her child. During her pregnancy, Sonja and her father reconcile Sonja and Bojan slowly unravel her family's history, especially a secret she never knew about her vanished mother. She discovers her mother was so consumed by the memory of her rape at the hands of Nazi soldiers, that she hung herself. Sonja and Bojan learn about love and are brought together again through new understanding.

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The Sound of One Hand Clapping is a film about an average woman who had an unusual childhood. Sonja's parents immigrated from Slovenia to make a new life in Tasmania and when her mother one day leaves and does not return Sonja finds herself staying with numerous friend's of her father so he can continue to work in the manual labour employment he is limited to.

The film portrays familiar Australian issues such as the conditions, experiences and difficulties that immigrants were confronted with during the 1950's. It is a damn good story but falls short by the inexperience of the director Richard Flanagan. His passion to tell the story is misplaced and the film that remains is confusing. The film deals with social issues of alcoholism and abandonment. The screenplay was written first and the novel followed. The Sound of One Hand Clapping is a beautifully emotional novel but was not successfully adapted to film. The elements and issues that could make this a powerful film are not utilised and the film is confusing, emotionally subtle and forgettable.

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The main emotional element of the film is Sonja's abandonment by her mother, a subject that is only questioned by Sonja over 30 years later. The author of the novel and writer of the screenplay, Richard Flanagan, made his directional debut with this film and attempted to translate the emotions of the characters through metaphors and symbolism. Broken china symbolises Sonja's broken family and her and Bojan's broken hearts. Many of the emotional elements can be missed by the audience due to their subtlety. The result is somber drama that leaves the audience confused that the Ôsecret' has managed to ruin the characters lives so thoroughly.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping could be placed in the genres of the melodrama and the social problem film. The modern melodrama Ôaddresses contemporary social and ideological issues' (Neale, 2000). And because the film is based predominately in the 1950's the issues involve the treatment of the Ôwog reffos' in Australia. The melodrama often has the function of either escapism of subversion. The Sound of One Hand Clapping provides neither. The film follows Sonja's emotional journey for over three decades and at times this can be confusing for the audience. The films jumps erratically from one point in time to the next. This does allow the audience to understand the painful experience from Sonja's past but this does not allow the audience to really feel connected to any of the versions of Sonja portrayed in the film.

www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?Article_ID=1049

www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:160631

http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/flanagan

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Last Updated April 2004

Copyright Rachel Powell 2004

The Sound of One Hand Clapping, by Rachel Powell