The Dry

The Noir in Negative

or

"When You've Been Lying About Something For So Long, It Becomes second Nature."

Most folks know the genre known as "film-noir," the post-war group of films conceived in post World War II cynicism, displaying a world of moral ambivalence, exemplified by high contrast photography of glaring light and enveloping shadow "where the night is black with something more than dark." B-movies, which couldn't afford or requisition the lights being used in "A"-features, used the pallet so effectively that it became its own cliché, one poked at by Alfred Hitchcock in North By Northwest, where, instead of having his hero have a meeting in a drizzly dark alley, decided to go another way staging it in a flat open field in the middle of the noon-day sun.

Mystery writer Jane Harper did something similar with her debut novel, "The Dry," staging a murder mystery, featuring cases running both hot and cold, in the dusty (and fictional) farming community of Kiewarra, Australia. The book, written with Harper's equally dry style, won many industry awards, so it was only natural that a film be made of it—especially as the Australian film industry has ramped up in the last few years—and Harper has kept her area of interest down-under, and continued writing best-sellers.

The Dry (novel and film) up-ends the traditional mystery/noir tropes; it's Australia is a sun-blasted, heat-stroked terrain suffering from a years-long drought making the entire environment threatening. Nobody can lurk in the shadows in the baking heat, but that doesn't make the situation any less dangerous...or combustible.

Eric Bana plays Aaron Falk, an Aussie Federal Policeman in the Big City, who is drawn back to his home-town after the apparent murder-suicide of the Hadler family, perpetrated by Falk's childhood friend Luke. The tragedy has upended the rural community. An accusatory note from Luke's father guilts the prodigal son to return to the fold—after he and his father were run out of town following the suspicious drowning of another of Aaron's friends, Ellie Deacon (BeBe Bettencourt)—and he he goes back into the dust and the past to find answers, both forensic and personal.

All fingers point to Luke having shot-gunned his wife and son (but, curiously, not his infant daughter) then driving to a dried lake-bed and killing himself. There had been no contact between the two friends for the twenty years after Ellie's death, and Aaron had lied for Luke about his whereabouts at the time of their mutual friend's death. Could the two be tied together? Could Luke have killed Ellie? Could the guilt have finally caused him to snap and kill again? Why now?

There had been four of them—Ellie, Gretchen, Luke and Aaron—and they were mates through high school, easy to do in a small farming town. Ellie had been found drowned and man-handled in the nearby river, now merely a trench undistinguishable from the rest of the parched area. Her father, Mal Deacon—the mother had left years earlier—was screaming for blood, and Aaron, because of an incriminating note in Ellie's pocket—was under suspicion. Then, Luke had come by and given him an alibi—the two were together at the time shooting rabbits. But, was the alibi for Aaron's good or for Luke's. Aaron had had a teen-crush on Ellie, and twenty years of doubt have cob-webbed his mind. Run out of town by the threats of deacon and his nephew Grant Dow, he had never gone back. But he has wondered.

So his current presence in town is not welcome and whispered about, except for Gretchen, the last of the compadres still in town, now a single mother, raising a son on her own. Luke's parents (Bruce Spence, Julia Blake) are wracked with grief, raising the surviving infant of the murder, and desperate for answers. Luke had been fine. Luke had been happy. How could people think he was responsible?

They're in the same boat as local Police Sergeant Greg Raco (Keir O'Donnell), who's investigating and out of his depth, while feeling responsible for the whole town. He wants to believe the Hadler family deaths were murder/suicide and everything points that way and he doesn't want to believe there's a killer wandering around Kiewarra. But, what's the motivation? Nothing is clear-cut as far as who might be responsible. So, for him, it's good to have a fed nearby, doubling down on the evidence, even though that fed is a past-friend of the suspected killer, and even though he's attracting a lot of attention because of his complicated, implicated past.

It's a lot of story and director Robert Connolly—hewing closely to Harper's novel and only leaving out some forensic details—does a masterful job of keeping past and present intertwined with nothing but weighted questions obfuscating the solution until just before the end. Although it's not consistent, the focus is on Falk's perspective, both in the questioning present and the past in his head. Connelly's strategy for keeping this clear to the audience is to transition using sound—an echo of memory intrudes into the current time-line before a hard-cut takes us to the source of the sound back in the world of sixteen year old Aaron. The only time that rule is broken is when the sound trails image—mercifully, for the audience—in a final flashback as Falk is supplied information not known to him before.

It's a fine translation of the book, taking advantage of an excellent, understated cast and the blighted Australian landscape that seems to roil and shimmer with buried malice impinging on the surface. During the Pandemic, I have been intrigued, entertained and challenged by a cloister of mystery writers—Dorothy Sayers, Tana French, and Harper—who have sustained me with colorful characters and intricate puzzles through "troubling times." I have been grateful. The film of Harper's first literary effort does it justice, and in subtle, visual details even surpassed the scenes I saw in my head while taking it in. Good on you, mates.