Phillippa Hawker.
IT SOUNDS like madness. Adapting a Tim Winton short story for the screen is nothing new. But 17 stories? Each with a different director? And many of them first-timers? Surely that’s asking for trouble.
The sheer effrontery of the notion, according to Winton, was a positive for him. ‘‘It was so crazy brave, so odd, that I was attracted right from the start.’’
The movie adaptation of The Turning was set in train and overseen by producer-director Robert Connolly. Connolly, who loved Winton’s work and its atmosphere of ‘‘cryptic originality’’, had the idea of acting as a curator for a project ‘‘in which each chapter was interpreted by a creative person, in their own voice’’.
Making it happen was a complex logistical exercise.
Connolly and producer Maggie Miles oversaw the whole; Connolly ( The Bank, Balibo) directed one segment himself. Justin Kurzel ( Snowtown) and Warwick Thornton ( Samson & Delilah) were among the more experienced film-makers on the project. Among the newcomers, actor Mia Wasikowska wrote and directed her first film. So did fellow actor David Wenham. At one point, Cate Blanchett was due to direct, but decided instead to take a role in her story.
Winton’s book consists of 17 interlinked stories set in a small coastal community in Western Australia. Characters recur, most of all Vic Lang, who turns up in eight stories, as a child, a teenager and an older man. Incidents reappear in different contexts and experiences echo and play off each other.
Wasikowska – a rising star who played the title roles in Jane Eyre