#STORM BOY MOVIE HOW TO#

Pelican crossing joke incoming – young Michael (Finn Little) takes his pets to townĪn expertly-handled combination of mysticism and realism imbues the whole film: whether Bill’s reverence for the land and his storytelling around the pelicans’ origins, or his and Tom’s insistence that not only must the growing birds return to the wild but that Michael must be the one to teach them how to fend for themselves. Both Tom and Bill have voluntarily removed themselves from their communities – “I didn’t much like what happened to me in the world” Bill tells Tom – yet seem to be wistfully regretful. Though these have parallels within the 1950s storyline anyway. The two timelines do highlight how battles thought won are always up for “debate”, as well as the timelessness of the movie’s big themes of misplaced grief, and solitude versus loneliness. Both Michael and Madeline lost their mothers and both are alienated from their fathers while the threat to the environment in the present day has echoes of the 1950s vote between turning the area into a bird sanctuary or increasing hunting. The 1950s scenes are so beautiful and absorbing (I’ve already found myself rewatching those and fast-forwarding though the rest) that the sudden returns to the present often jarr, the parallels between the timelines sometimes too obvious. Soon memories of his childhood with the pelican babies resurface, reminding him what the area meant to him. His son-in-law Malcolm, heading up Mike’s old company, wants to allow sustainable mining protestors demand it be left as it is. Michael, now retired, has come home to vote on the fate of the land where he grew up. (In the first film Fingerbone Bill was played by David Gulpilil, who has a tiny cameo here as this Fingerbone Bill’s father.) It was previously filmed in the 1970s, with that version considered a triumph of the Australian New Wave I haven’t read or watched either, though the device employed in this new Storm Boy – frequent flash forwards to the older Michael (Geoffrey Rush) relating his pelican adventures to his ecologically-minded granddaughter Madeline (Morgan Davies) – is apparently a new addition. The film is based on Colin Thiele’s novella, familiar to generations of Australian schoolchildren. He takes them home, where he and Bill use the outboard motor to mash up fish which Michael then feeds to the still-blind and featherless chicks with a pipette. It’s on one of these trips he meets Fingerbone Bill (Trevor Jamieson), an Aboriginal man living alone in a tent on the dunes, and discovers three pelican chicks whose mother has been shot by hunters. By day while his father fishes from their small motorboat, Michael plays on the beach or takes his little raft around the shallow bay. There is some home schooling, and many nights in front of the fire while gorgeous sunsets or screaming gales frame their house outside. She means well, but she is resented by the father - he doesn't want anything to change in their reclusive life.Finn Little as Storm Boy, with his baby pelicans She is concerned about the boy's education, and pushes hard for him to be sent to school, or at least to do schoolwork by correspondence. Another intruder is the new primary school teacher, brought by the park ranger.

Two are never seen again, but one, Mr Percival, keeps coming back. Three pelicans become a lot to feed when they reach maturity, so his father insists on releasing them. Amongst the dead are some pelicans whose chicks are still in the nest. Mick's father resents any intrusion of their secluded life, be it a washed-up radio or a mob of idiot bird shooters who kill a number of birds before they are scared off by Fingerbone. He is not attending school he is illiterate and ignorant. He lives with his father, who supports them by fishing alone. This boy is growing up in an isolated corrugated iron shed next to a wildlife sanctuary. Storm Boy tells the story of a 10-year-old boy, called Mick by his father Tom, and Storm Boy by the Aboriginal loner Fingerbone he befriends. In search of friendship he encounters an Aboriginal native loner and the two form a bond in the care of orphaned pelicans. Mike is a lonely Australian boy living in a coastal wilderness with his reclusive father.

Storm boy movie