Force Of Destiny

Synopsis: Middle-aged sculptor Robert (David Wenham) is diagnosed with liver cancer. His wife, Hannah (Jacqueline McKenzie), from whom he is recently separated wants to look after him, while daughter Poppy (Hannah Fredicksen) is a constant loving support. When Robert meets a much younger Indian woman Maya (Shahana Goswami) he can only regret he didn’t meet her sooner. Then, miraculously he is put on the list for a liver transplant and the waiting game begins.

Paul Cox has long been a much-respected director with several of his overtly art-house films having a gentle and at times mystical quality in their accounts of love, loss and longing. His latest film creates a solidly realistic story suffused with moments of surreal reverie as the ailing Robert goes on some strange journeys in his imagination.
The mix of down-to-earth realism and lyrical other-worldly sensibility is a result of the fact that Cox has also made an intensely personal film based upon his own experience of the same dire diagnosis, followed by the reprieve from what seemed a death sentence and, as a result, a second go at life.

Art as such figures large in this film with the beautiful but perplexing sculptures created by Robert being shot as enigmatic symbols of obscure meaning. Oft-repeated motifs, such as flocks of blurry birds or Robert as a child with his mother no doubt represent inner thoughts, while the impossible magically realistic trips in which Robert accompanies Maya to India can surely only be manifestations of subjective longings. Medical procedures and jerky black-and-white x-ray type shots are frequent, giving a sense of the vulnerability of the body, along with a possibly unnecessary later scene of an operation, more suited to a TV medical series.

Robert, whilst being notably talented is also mundanely human, and at times a droll and amusing voice-over articulates his inner thoughts ranging from shock and disbelief at his diagnosis through to questioning internal conversations about his hallucinations and ponderings upon the nature of his love for Maya. Wenham, tapping into our shared fears of mortality, plays an Everyman to whom we can all relate.

The film is also about hope, love and gratitude. McKenzie, in a fine performance, is simply lovely as the spurned wife who still loves Robert enough to give her all, the father-daughter relationship is delicately portrayed, while the new love of his life, Maya, though probably half his age, is possibly a symbol of that “soul-mate” we all hope to find. This odd love affair is at once beautiful, but perhaps hard to believe.  Back in India, Maya’s beloved uncle is also dying, and scenes with him and his wife give rise to somewhat self-conscious dialogue centring around Indian philosophies of life and death to which the film’s title is presumably an allusion.

Force Of Destiny is a film of contrasts and at times, anomalies. Performances are uniformly solid, the cinematography ranges from crisp to artistically adventurous, and the themes are universal. In some ways the parts, seeming still embedded in Cox's personal experience, are more than the whole yet I found the outcome pleasing, touching and life-affirming.

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