‘Crazy’ take on short stories for the screen – all 17 of them

A who’s who of Australian creatives have undertaken a daring cinematic experiment, writes

and Alice in Wonderland – was one of the first on board. Directing, she says, is something she had always wanted to do.

She found her story, and wrote a first draft almost immediately. Then, when the finance was in place and it was time to lock in arrangements, she decided to do something completely different, less complicated, different in tone. Her story, Long, Clear View, features the recurring figure of Vic, here on the cusp of adolescence. Vic, Wasikowska says, is caught up in ‘‘that weird time growing up when your parents decide what they will tell you about certain things . . . And because information is withheld, you imagine things so much worse, or differently. But it’s also this vivid time when you understand a lot more than you are given credit for.’’

It was liberating, Wasikowska says, to be told she could make whatever she wanted. ‘‘I would love to do more.’’

For Wenham, another actor making his debut behind the camera, the adaptation had to be faithful. His story, Commission, is the tale of the adult Vic (Josh McConville) going on a journey to visit his father, Bob (Hugo Weaving), whom he has not seen for years.

He immediately saw Weaving as Bob. They had worked together 20 years earlier, in a stage adaptation of Winton’s That Eye, the Sky, and Weaving embodied exactly the qualities Wenham needed. ‘‘If he had said no, I don’t know what I would have done . . . You can see the stories on his face. And he has a dignity to him – and certainly Bob has that. Bob is a man with a history who has found himself.’’

Theatre director Simon Stone directs Cate Blanchett, Robin Nevin and Richard Roxburgh in Reunion, a tale about the awkward relationship between Vic’s wife and his mother, and the circumstances that transform it.

Winton’s story, adapted by Blanchett’s husband, Andrew Upton, is about the intervention of fate, Stone says. ‘‘I suppose the philosophy of story is one I agree with very strongly. You can’t control when fate will give you a helping hand. It’s kind of like surfing – there’s nothing you can do about when the wave will come, but you have to be ready to catch it.’’

He and cinematographer Andrew Lesnie ‘‘choreographed it on the day.

I had specifically chosen the locations for their ability to achieve what I had in mind. It was a little bit like making theatre – we couldn’t remake the film in the edit’’.

Like many of the directors, Stone is keen to talk about other people’s work. Justin Kurzel’s contribution, Boner McPharlin’s Moll, blew him away. Kurzel has taken a long, intricate narrative and distilled it into an evocation of a single character.

‘‘That really humbled me,’’ Stone says. ‘‘It was so advanced, such a sophisticated and integrated way of thinking about how cinema uses pre-existing material. It’s been a source of my new way of thinking about the film I’m making now.’’

Individual Winton stories have been adapted for the screen before. Films have also drawn on several works of short fiction – notably Short Cuts, Robert Altman’s adaptation of Raymond Carver short stories – but The Turning is different.

Gladwell compares it to the exquisite corpse, a surrealist exercise like the parlour game of consequences, a collective collage of words and images, in which contributors are unaware of what precedes or follows.

‘‘Early on, we decided not to link the stories in overt ways,’’ Connolly says.

‘‘We wanted to maintain the experience of reading the book, of a cryptic narrative that you unlock.’’

The Turning screens from Thursday.