...is rising in my estimations.

At first viewing I think I read the murder case a bit too literally. My visceral response was "what a cop-out ending," but randomly, today, I've reconsidered.

Entertain my thought process for a minute. I was in the super and got to thinking of War of the Worlds. Now this isn't a slam on Worlds, but just a consideration for the ending. From what I hear, the son survives a massive explosion to be reunited in a happily-ever-after type scenario. Now this is all good and fine, but in a moment of bitterness I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny if there was an additional ten minutes of footage showing the family fall apart after pulling through the adversity of an invasion?" I guess there are already ventures into the collapse of human behavior (they can get pretty ugly) noted in the movie, but they only run so deep.

People have a way of responding differently to situations of high stress and threat. While one of these ways could very well be an incredible reversion to barberianism and suvival of the fittest, there are also more mild reactions of self-interest, as well as intense unification that holds only as long as the immediate situation exists.

And this is when Lantana suddenly popped into my mind.

Its actually not a cheap cop-out ending once I realize that the movie had little to do with either the case of Hershey's Dr. Valerie's midnight dissappearance, not did it have to do with the murder of her and husband John Knox's daughter a year earlier. It had to do with the range of responses to adversity.

This is the story of three men, actually, and has little to do with any of the women in their lives. Each one exhibits different behavior when dealing with adversity. LaPaglia pulls out a very subtle study of detective Zat. More of his time is spent contemplating his liason with a neighbor, as well as his intense turn-off by having to investigate Valerie's dissappearance. The jogging nose bleed scene was uncanny. A simple expression of the stress he was under, and how he comes clean at the end after having indirectly experiences the marital woes of Valerie and John.

On the other hand, John has suffered ten-fold under both his daughter's murder, his wife's public spree (and book) about the experience of their failing marriage after the fact, and the suspicions that he is the primary suspect in Valerie's death. The couple is a case-study in how "things fall apart." They are alienated by what has happened to them since being together, and no longer relate on the most basic levels. He wants his daughter's death to remain bottled up, a private affair, and Valerie has gone public in the name of therapy and communal support. It really hard to watch, but insightful in its foil of Zat's familial relationships.

The third man, of course the neighbor Nik, is yet another person directly involved in the turn of affairs, and his actions offer the gray range. For fearing of giving too much away, lets just say he is concerned for his own and his family's welfare, but he's not altogether vicious or unsympathetic. In fact he's a very sympathetic and giving character who just mishandles evidence and experiences out of fear.

The three of them together combine for a gem of a commentary on human experience and action. Perhaps Lantana has grown riper with age since I last viewed it three years ago? And I'm sure there are some holes in my memory which gloss over the narrative, but I found all three characters to be unsettling. None of them were preachy, nor were they clearly defined. They didn't really stand as allegorical figures of gender, violence, or any other subject, but were great character studies without definitive "solutions."

Really, in retrospect I find this movie to be one of the best of 2001, and its a shame more people haven't seen it.

Dolce, you got to see it? Wow! I remember recommending this film as one of the Aussie/Kiwi films back at your foreign film festival back in the early days of the forum. Good for you. Brill film indeed I thought as well.