Breaker Morant

I didn’t have contemporary relevance in mind when I decided to re-view this classic of military injustice, but it was hard to escape while watching. It may be that the Boer War was the first modern insurgency against the last modern empire. With the Bush-men so bent on resuming the British imperial role in the Middle East, there are lessons to be learned in this film. But apart from that, the film is as well made as I had remembered. It’s an early high point in Bruce Beresford’s up-down-&sideways directorial career, from peaks like Tender Mercies, Driving Miss Daisy, and Black Robe, to troughs like Bride of the Wind, with whole ranges unscaled by me. Edward Woodward was excellent in the title role, indelibly so since I never saw him in anything else. The courtroom drama of the original play is successfully opened out by flashbacks to the incidents of testimony. The true story is apparently legendary among put-upon Aussies as emblematic of British imperial hubris, with themselves as pawns and scapegoats in Big Power machinations. (1979, dvd, r.) *8*