Review: The Travellers – At a leisurely pace

Directed by Bruce Beresford
Starring Luke Bracey, Bryan Brown, Shubshri Kandiah, Susie Porter

6.5/10

Aussie filmmaker Bruce Beresford has had quite the diverse and illustrious career for over 50 years, having made more than a handful of grouse movies here in Australia and overseas, but his newest film is more on the leisurely side. Front and centre on its poster is Bryan Brown, giving the indication that this could be something of a swansong performance from him, but The Travellers is more about Luke Bracey’s opera stage manager character as he returns home to Western Australia from Europe.

The Travellers appears to be about many things, without a focus. There are cultural tensions between the self-confessed “sophisticated and refined” Stephen (Bracey) and the locals of his hometown, particularly his high school bullies, the Bell Brothers (Ryan Graeme Allen and Declan Brown), who have grown up to be adult bullies.

Perhaps they’re jealous of the success he has with the ladies, as Stephen has three—count them, THREE—women he’s involved with. First, there’s his girlfriend back in Europe, then there’s an old fling he becomes a homewrecker with. Most uninteresting is his college ex, Margie (Shubshri Kandiah), who later happens to become the real estate agent of his father’s house. She is simply a badly staged character, and we can predict pretty much her entire “characterisation” as soon as she appears on screen and fawns over Stephen like she’s still a schoolgirl.

And then there’s his father, Fred (Brown), whose cluttered old house Stephen gets to stay at while he’s visiting to see off his dying mother. The Travellers does feel quite alive with the number of characters it fills itself with, but many of them aren’t terribly convincing or even interesting as characters. The main focus should’ve been on the curmudgeon Fred and the father-son relationship they have in the wake of the mother’s illness, as well as the difference in generational attitudes they have, as Bryan Brown makes each and every scene of his so damn amusing to watch, though also a little heart-wrenching, due to his increasing senility.

Eventually, the film does culminate with a sequence towards the end that shows off some pretty effective acting and powerful music, all culminating in some devastating emotional resonance … But this all comes from the opera that Stephen was working on. The film, in contrast, is a far more mannered affair—it’s a very nicely shot portrayal of Western Australia and its homely towns, but the characters that inhabit it don’t generate much interest or intrigue. This just takes away much-needed attention on the characters that do, this father and son.

DAVID MORGAN-BROWN