The Lingering Melodies of Trauma
A TALE OF COMMUNAL HEALING BETWEEN TWO EMOTIONALLY WOUNDED MEN, BEN LAWRENCE’S FICTION DEBUT TAKES AN INTIMATE PREMISE AND INJECTS IT WITH LARGER-SCALE SIGNIFICANCE, TACKLING ETHICAL REPORTAGE, MASCULINITY AND MENTAL ILLNESS, AS WELL AS INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE. WITH ITS ETHNICALLY DIVERSE CAST AND SENSITIVE INVOLVEMENT OF RELEVANT COMMUNITIES, THIS FILM ALSO BRINGS TO THE FORE THE TANGLED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ART AND ACCOUNTABILITY, WRITES HANNA SCHENKEL.
A picture – or so the saying goes – is worth a thousand words. After all, to see something is to confirm its existence, verify its truth. But it’s not always as simple as that. When you’re looking from the outside in, it’s easy to miss the things that run beneath the surface. And a picture is never just that; the ‘truth’ of an image lies as much (if not more) in the framing of its photographer and the biases of its audience as it does in the captured lived experience of its subject.
The nature and ethics of responsible representation form a longstanding debate among those who build their careers around documenting others’ lives. As such, it is perhaps unsurprising that they also form the core themes of a documentarian’s first fiction feature. Co-written and directed by Ben Lawrence, Hearts and Bones (2019) is the story of two men united by their struggle to voice their respective traumas, set in motion by a photograph one took of the other during his moment of greatest suffering and vulnerability.
Sydney-based Dan Fisher (Hugo Weaving) is nothing short of a national treasure. A much-celebrated artist and fearless
