Film Review : Passengers
Michael Bond’s new independent film Passengers, an Australian project, which recently debuted at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, has been labeled “brutally honest, thought provoking and confronting”. After its premier at Mill Valley in the US, Passengers was described by director Joe Carnahan as “compulsive viewing” and actress Gena Rowlands noted that it was “very well acted, very well written and eloquently directed”.
Set in L.A, the film follows an Australian couple who are attempting to make it in Hollywood – Tom is a screen writer (played by Cameron Daddo) and his wife Melony (played by Angie Milliken) is an aspiring actress. It is obvious that the couple are experiencing issues after living away from home for five years, and viewers can immediately sense the emotional detachment between them in the opening scene.
Most of the film is shot within a car (a very intimate and claustrophobic space) as the couple travel through the notoriously stressful L.A traffic from their home in Santa Monica, to a dinner party in Hollywood. Daddo has noted that the film “was intense. I was actually driving the car in real traffic. I had the director in the car, the camera operator, the actress, the sound person, and the continuity person. There was a car full of people…and I guess that really forced me to focus on the material and the job at hand. I had to maneuver that vehicle through peak hour traffic for twenty nights”. This no doubt, is an expression of the director’s desire for realism.
Viewers may become uncomfortable at times due to the close up shots of the actors, which highlights their facial expressions while underscoring their inner pain. The cinematography is interesting: while most of the shots are medium close ups, there are some divergences, such as when the camera is placed on the front of the car, and cuts between shots of the couple on their own, emphasising their distance from each other. The car only detours once, when Tom makes a stop at Roger’s house (played by Oscar nominee Bruce Davidson) to discuss a script they’re working on together. Melony gets the opportunity to meet Roger’s much younger wife Pam, and she suddenly becomes suspicious of her husband’s fidelity. Ultimately, the couple don’t make it to the dinner party, and by the end of the film, their marriage is over.
As Daddo has noted, the themes in the film are universal, and viewers will certainly be able to relate to communication breakdown in relationships and the stresses that can result from living in another country. One comment that is particularly poignant is when Melony says that “time erodes our dreams”. Daddo has indicated that the central message of the film is to “listen to what your partner is saying, whether it’s a business partner, a sibling relationship, a parent-child relationship, or a lover. Stop and listen and pay attention”.
