The Daughter (2015) Reviews

• When a secret long hidden makes its way out...

  Reno-Rangan2016-10-14

  A very surprising Aussie film. Not all the Australian film makes big at the world stage. So this film was not known to many people, but I am lucky to watch this. The film was based on the Norwegian play called 'The Wild Duck'. It was adapted several times for the screen, but this is the latest and a modernised version. The first film for the director and he was amazing in handling the screenplay as well. Obviously I did not know anything about the film. The cast looked good and also the storyline, so that's my reason to watch it. It began like a simple drama about a family who are going through a difficult time after the wood mill was shut down in their small town. Their's daughter, Hedvig, who is studying in the high school worries that she's going to lose her boyfriend if they move out of the town. That's not it, the narration had layers like from other people surrounding this small family and their perspective too has a big impact on the storytelling. Not just this family, but many from the town were out of the job and that leads to some unexpected decisions. Another family who ran that wood mill for nearly a century, welcomes their son, Christian from the United States who is having a tough time with his girlfriend and also to attend his father's wedding. He accidentally meets his childhood friend which is actually a Hedvig's father. They spend lots of time together and that's where a new issue arises. Christian reveals some hidden truth for the decades between their two families. Everything breaks loose and becomes impossible to fix it. From all this, the daughter is the one who directly get affected, but to learn how is why you should watch this film. You won't immediately understand the meaning of the title. The film very smartly progresses like bit by bit with lots of suspense around. The best part is, it never reveals the actual secret at any length of the film, but still the viewers going understand the situation very clearly. That's really amazing, particularly the writing being so clever. I don't know the original material which is more than a hundred year old, but I loved this to tell the story in a smart way. "You do not need to be scared of the truth." The characters were the best part of the story. The switching time was excellently done. Like the whole film is not intended to deal with one particular issue, but multiple. Everybody had something to deal with, some were personal and some were concerned for their whole family. The story always engaged with details, so there's no time for relaxation for the viewers. In the first half it succeeds to keep everything neat, despite the story developed from different angles. Because the end pulls them all together to conclude the tale on high. High mean, neither happy or sad, the timing when the twist takes place was a perfect setting. If you are a melodrama fan, this must not be missed. I haven't seen a good tearjerker for a long time and then I found this one unexpectedly. I did not know the film would turn this way, but that's one of the reasons why I liked it a lot. The twist at the final act was kind of predictable if you were focused enough in the early part, but nobody gets a clear picture of how it all ends. That's the point. Despite how the film characters react when the suspense was revealed, we have our own respond too, but unable to deliver where it requires. That is funny, but the film gets very serious towards the final segment and you get no time to react, you will be like unmoved till the end credits roll up. But sensing a tragedy is certain. I recently saw 'Fathers & Daughter', that I anticipated something what this film offered. The story lines are completely different from these two films, but that father and daughter relationship thing, I liked very much from this one. Especially the emotions are the most crucial to narrate the tale and this film was way better in that perspective. Comparison between these two titles only on the sentimental side, other than that it's not fair to bring a debate on them. Anyway, both are the fine melodrama. This film definitely would appeal strongly to the family audience and I highly recommend it to them. There's no strong nudity or the sex scenes, but thematically it goes some length to record the required event. Other than those couple of parts, this is a film for everybody. Very satisfied with the overall film. I might not consider it my favourite, but very close to be called one. Like I said the story was thoroughly written, so I'm feeling this film won't go unnoticed. I am not talking about it would find its audience, but the remakes. European, Korean, Bollywood, even a Hollywood version might come. So fingers crossed, but I suggest this one to watch if you are convinced with my review. 8.5/10

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• Excellent all-round Aussie Production

  edhart082015-06-07

  I was lucky enough to see this film today at the Sydney Film Festival....adapted from Henrik Ibsens late 19th century play ''The Wild Duck'' but totally rewritten and retold into a modern Australian story set,maybe in the logging areas of Tasmania but actually filmed around the very atmospheric Snowy Mountain towns of Tumut and Batlow. The acting is superb, particularly the wonderful Ewen Leslie who just gets more magnificent in each role he takes on...Script and cinematography add to the overall brilliance of this terrific Jan Chapman production....a must see for all lovers of great Aussie films both here and overseas...I cant wait to see it again on its general release

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• Revenge, Truth, Promiscuity, Patriarchy

  renhir2016-09-01

  I found three themes particularly interesting in The Daughter: revenge,truth, and promiscuity. Revenge - Many years after having left home, Christian returns for his father's wedding. He accuses his father (Henry) of having cheated on his mother and of being responsible for her suicide. When the bride asks Henry what's going on, he does not want to bring his coming wedding in jeapoardy and refuses to tell her. Later, Christian calls his girlfriend and hears that their relationship is over. Devastated, he decides to reveal to his best friend Oliver that Henry has fathered Oliver and Charlotte's 16-years old daughter Hedvig. Having failed with his father, Christian's quest for vengeance finds its fulfillment when he destroys his friend's family. Truth - Revealing the truth destroys a family (that of Oliver, Charlotte and Hedvig). On the other hand, concealing the truth to his bride allows Henry to start a new family. Promiscuity - The dramas around which the movie is built are caused by several personages cheating on each other. Very remarkably, the cheating is principally the work of the female characters: - Walter (Oliver's father) tells the story of his wife who ran away with an artist - Paul's girlfriend (Grace) announces to Paul that she has been cheating on him when seeing her old boyfriend again - Oliver learns that his wife Charlotte had an affair with Christian's father and was in love with him at the time they were already together. To make things worse, she tells him that he is not the father of their daughter Hedvig, but that Henry is. Strengthening the promiscuous character of the female personages, the 16-year old Hedvig entices her boyfriend, Adam, to have sex with her. Whereas it is obvious that it is his first sexual experience, she has had sex before, but refuses to say so when he asks her. Later, she feels attracted to Christian and asks him to kiss her. On the male side, only Henry has cheated on all the females of his life. Finally, the patriarchal figure of Henry seems to be unaffected by all the misery he causes around him. At the beginning, he announces to his employees that his factory has to close, obliging all these families that have lived in this small town all their life to go somewhere else to find work. Nevertheless, his lifestyle does not seem to be in the least affected by that. When the financial fraud that he and Walter had organized together went wrong, Walter was indicted and went to jail, while Henry was left unscathed. As to his role in the death of his first wife and to his rejection of Charlotte when she was pregnant, it has not affected him either: he is going to remarry a woman half his age. What's more, the two deaths that mark the movie - that of his first wife and Hedvig's suicide - are indirectly attributed to him, but this does not disturb him: the hunt scene at the very beginning of the movie symbolizes his unrepentant stance.

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• optimistic update of Ibsen's The Wild Duck

  maurice_yacowar2015-10-10

  Simon Stone's The Daughter is "inspired" by Ibsen's The Wild Duck but it's radically different. Stone gives the Danish Nietzschean tragedy a contemporary Australian setting with an upbeat spiritual ending. The basic plot holds. A wealthy industrialist's son Christian returns from self-exile for his father Henry's marriage to his much younger housekeeper. Christian's mother killed herself over Henry's affair with an earlier Housekeeper, Charlotte. Now Christian learns that Charlotte married his best friend Oliver who thinks the daughter Hedvig she had by Henry is his. Whether out of bitter despair over his own romantic loss or out of wrong-headed idealism, Christian reveals the long buried secret. His friend is revulsed by the wife and daughter he has so profoundly loved and rejects them. Hedvig shoots herself. Stone makes significant changes. His Hedvig frees the duck that Henry had shot down and Hedvig and her grandfather Walter nurtured. Ibsen's Hedvig agrees to her father's demand she put the duck out of its misery, then shoots herself instead. Stone's Hedvig is herself a creature of nature. Her science fair project is a study of amino acids, in and beyond the human body. Her eagerness for sex confirms her natural appetite, as she invites both her young boyfriend and Christian. Her sexual initiation in the forest is enigmatic. The boy had earlier postponed this First Time until her birthday. In the event, he -- as university registrars put it -- withdraws in good standing and runs off. Perhaps he felt guilty about not having told her his family was moving away. Perhaps her virginity -- she hurts, despite her claim to experience -- and the unaccustomed condom embarrassed him with a premature ejaculation. In any case, the scene presents him as a modern, sensitive young man, The New Man, in contrast to the bullish self indulgence of Henry and his generation. By renaming Ibsen's Gregers Christian, Stone implies another contrast, between Henry's pagan self indulgence and the new man of conscience. Christian urges Charlotte to reveal her secret to her husband: "The truth can't hurt you." But this son can't escape his father's hold, as his retreat to drink and drug reveals. Embittered that his woman has dumped him, Christian may not be as noble as he thinks when he shatters his old friend Oliver's happy family. The destructive power of the father is visited upon the son, for all his moral pretensions. Henry has ruined the family. He let his friend and partner Walter go to jail for their joint scheme. Giving him a pension and helping Oliver buy his modest house is scant compensation. But his destruction of the family is incomplete until his possibly well- meaning son shares his destructive truth. For that even Henry's promise of a trust fund for Hedvig cannot compensate. The film's last shot poses an ambiguity beyond the play's solid suggestion that Hedvig killed herself. The medic has said she has a chance. The last shot shows her in radiant close-up, eyes closed. Does she recover? Does she die? We're left to our own conclusion. Modern audiences will leap to the hope of a conventional happy ending. But Stone directs us to a more complex conclusion. The radiance makes her appear angelic, confirmed by the religious chorale. The implication is that she dies but in a transcendent way. She returns to her quintessential unity with wild ducks, animal appetites and amino acids. Her wounding has shaken her effective father out of his mad self denial, so he resumes his love for her and his wife. And she is finally freed from her brute father Henry's clutch. In this delicate balance Stone respects Ibsen's tragic vision but allows for the alternative encouragement, the view that we don't live in an uncaring brutal universe but in a world of material and spiritual interconnection.

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• Gripping and Moving Australian drama

  t-dooley-69-3869162016-10-15

  Henry (Geoffrey Rush) is the master in a town where his logging company is the main attraction. His wife has passed away long ago and so he decides to remarry. This coincides with his decision to close the logging factory due to falling sales. The town is imploding but he wants to pull out all these stops for his wedding day. His estranged son, Christian, has also returned from America and immediately reconnects with old friends and this includes Oliver and his wife and daughter. He has long born a grudge with his father and as old tensions resurface so do nagging questions from the past. It is the answer to those questions that are the setting for the calamity of the future and a delve into the darkness that the past can often hold. This is a smouldering watch, all the performances are brilliant especially Odessa Young as Hedwig and Ewen Leslie as Oliver. We also have a fine performance from Rush and the ever reliable Sam Neil – both acting royalty in Australia. It keeps the tempo up almost from the start and is a credit to Screen Australia for investing in such a commendable piece of cinema.

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