mental‘The singular thing about this story, given its tragic ...

„The singular thing about this story,given its tragic dimension,its almost biblical reach, is how strangely uplifting it is.Somehowthrough the pain, there is not only a sense of possibility,butofpromise,held in the relationship of that father and son. ‟

–Richard Roxburgh(Director o f Romulus,My Father)

Intro d uc t io n

Romulus,My Father is based on Raimond Gaita‟s award-winningmemoir of the same name.The film stars Eric Bana as Romulus,Kodi Smit-McPhee as his son Raimond and Franka Potente asChristina.The film was directed by Richard Roxburgh and adaptedfor the screen by poet and playwright,Nick Drake.

Some people will go to see this film because they loved the memoiron which it is based,others will see it to supplement their studyof the book,which is currently on the Victorian VCE English listof texts,as well as in other states;others,who may not have readthe book will go because they want to see Eric Bana as Romulusor to see how Richard Roxburgh,better known as an actor and stagedirector,directs this film.The film has much to o ffer both thosewho enjoyed the book onwhich it is based and a general audience.Adaptation from book to screen.

What do we expect?

When we read a novel or a memoir,we often picture the characters,from the way they look to how they behave and relate to oneanother.We may also have a visual sense ofplace and landscape.When the film or series is as well-known and widely read and lovedas those based on the novels of Jane Austen,Charles Dickens, J.R.R.Tolkien or J.K.Rowling,we are sometimes delighted by the filmedadaptation,but at other times disappointed that the actors playingthese much-loved characters are not as we imagined them when weread the book.

This seems to be particularly the case when detective novels are madeinto films or a TV series,where our sense of the main character, thedetective,has been developed,understood and even fixed over a longperiod of reading the series of novels. I am thinking here particularlyof IanRankin‟s Rebus novels and Reginald Hill‟s Dalziel and Pascoeseries.Equally,we may feel that the director and writer have not gotthe tone quite right, that they have chosen the„wrong‟emphases.Butis this fair?

What should we expect ofa film adaptation ofa novel or series ofbooks?For me it is that the film adheres to what I see as the essenceof the novel and is a true reflection ofthe author‟s intent.Butjustwhat this „essence‟and„intent‟ is can be quite different from readerto reader.

Films and novels,or„visual texts‟and„written texts‟as they aresometimes described on English courses,are different artistic

creations in many ways.While each o ften has a narrative(manyof the best films have strong story lines,reflecting their genesis inthe written word), the means available to the author or director forpresenting the story are very different. Increasingly,directors arecreating,or engaging writers to produce screenplays from novels.This can often do wonders for book sales,even in the case of theHarry Potter novels or The Da Vinci Code,where readership wasalready enormous before the films were released.Zoe Heller‟s novelNotes on a Scandal has recently been made into a film and salesof this and her other novels are said to have skyrocketed throughpeople seeing the movie and wanting to read the book.

However,despite providing the essential source material for thefilm,authors get little industry recognition for their work,apart frompayment for the film rights, the often increased sales ofthe book andprobably a higher pro file.While there is a category at The AcademyAwards for Best Adapted Screenplay, it is not often that the authorof the book and the writer of the adaptation are the same person.Sometimes we read in reviews that a film is a very faithfulrepresentation ofthe book on which it is based.However, suchfidelity to the text doe s not nece ssarily make for a strong, satisfyingand entertaining film.Sometimes a voiceover, filling out the narrative,can be intrusive and substitute for the director showing us whathappens.A recent film Children ofMen,directed by Alfonso Cuaron,based on a novel of the same name by P.D.James, set in 2027,hasbeen both widely criticized for failing to faithfully follow the novel,and praised as being a fine explorationof the issues the novel raises,brought up-to-date to better reflect changes in the English society inwhich it is set. Is the film entertaining and convincing in its vision;does it present insights into aspects of a world without much futureor hope now that infertility has cast a pall over the world,a pall asgrim as global warming?My answer to this question is yes.Both thenovel and the film are powerful and entertaining in their own ways,each well able to stand alone,despite the film‟s obvious inspirationcoming from the earlier novel.

All this is not to suggest that filmmakers should be able to plunderbooks and change the tone and emphases in ways that are certainto upset both readers and moviegoers.Neither authors nor audiencesrespond well to such treatment.A bad film will be bad regardless ofits respect or otherwise for a written text. If the characters failto convince,or if we are not persuaded to care about them, thenofcourse we will be disappointed.The often-heard cry of„notas good as the book‟will be repeated loudly.

What about those cases where the film seems to be better than thenovel from which it has been adapted?The Unbearable Lightnessof Being,a film adapted and directed by Philip Kaufmann froma 1988 novel by Milan Kundera seems to me to be a wonderful film

from a rather difficult and sometimes turgid novel.Equally,manypeople believe the Godfather films are better than Puzo‟s novels fromwhich they have been adapted. It is interesting that in these examplesthe films all go for more than the usual 100+minutes of a featurefilm.However length and complexity are not the main touchstonesfor assessing quality or fidelity to the original text.

Romulus,My Father

From book to screen

Raimond Gaita‟s memo ir,Romulus,My Father,won a VictorianPremier‟s Literary Award in 1998, the year it was published.S incethen it has been reprinted many times and found a place on Englishcourses and in book groups throughout Australia and elsewhere.It has been translated into several other languages.After readingthe book, it is not hard to see why a filmmaker would want to putthe story on screen; there is a strong narrative line about a boy froma migrant background growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in countryVictoria,a cast of characters who include a beautiful troubledmother,a strong and complex father and a number of friends whoselives become interwoven with the Gaita family.There is the ruralsetting, the theme of the difficulties migrants may encounter whenthey come to Australia, troubled relationships between the centralcharacters and several different kinds of„love stories‟. It is a storyof love and friendship,displacement,mental illness and belonging,told with subtle humour and a commitment to the often complextruths about families and friendships.

However, it is written as a memoir from the perspective of a manlooking back on his boyhood, in the first person, from theperspective of Raimond Gaita. It does not have the passagesof dialogue novelists often use to bring their characters to life;however the directness and beauty of the prose does bring thesepeople to life.Sometime s a director may use voice-overs to fillin this lack of dialogue but this can be irritating and distract fromwhat we are watc hing.

What are director Richard Roxburgh and writer N ick Drake ab leto do with this material in the film?What expectations shouldwe bring to the film in terms o f fidelity to the memoir in termsof c harac ter,narrative deve lop ment and to ne?

Given the collaborative nature of filmmaking, the number ofindividuals involved in putting the film together and the inherentlydifferent medium film is from text,we need to make some allowancesfor the film deviating from parts ofthe memoir, telescoping someparts and exploring others in more depth.Budgetary constraintsand tight time schedules as well as final length of the film afterediting are all factors we need to at least be aware of.We shouldwatch the film with an open mind,acknowledging that the filmis a separate, though related,entity to the book on which it is b ased,

and try to see the story through clear eyes,without looking to findfault with what is left out or who gets more screen time than theyget pages in the book.What will make the film a satisfying experience,both as entertainment and as a way ofpresenting a story?

Raimond Gaita is an academic,working and writing in the areaof moral philosophy.His story of his life with his father Romulusis both tragic and at times humorous,a loving tribute to a fatherwhose life was difficult and troubled.While the story focuses onthe life of his father, it is as much a story about Raimond,whois telling the story from an adult perspective, recalling his ownmemories growing up and now,as an adult,reflecting on theprofound influence his father had on him.A key theme in thememoir is the effects on a child living in a family where both hismother and father suffered with mental illness at different timesand with very different consequences.Both the strengths andlimitations of his father,as well as the good and bad aspects ofthe country and time in which he grew up,are all described withfairness and even a sense of detachment that makes it all seem utterlytruthful.So, for me I would be looking for this kind of truthfulnessin the film,an authenticity and respect for the qualities I most admirein the book.

If you are watching this film,having read the book, look at it openly,bearing in mind that no film can,or should be expected to,offera„faithful‟representation o f the details o f the written text on whichit is based.

This is what director Richard Roxburgh has said about adapting

Gaita‟s memoir for the screen.

It was a tall order to find somebody to adapt the book because adapting any book isreally a fraught process,done often with varying success.Adapting a biography wherethere is so little dialogue is also complicated because there‟s a whole worldof invention that has to happen.So finding the writer was really hard.

I worked a lot with Nick[Nick Drake, the screenwriter] in the developmentof the film.What we didn‟t want to do was turn it into a bio-pic.We wereconstantly having to steer it away from being too reverential to Rai Gaita‟s bookalthough we obviously wanted to keep intact all those elements that first appealedto us.

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Later in this guide there are further extracts from Richard Roxburgh‟sinterview about the making ofthis film.

Curriculum Relevance

Romulus,My Father will have interest and relevance for students andteachers at middle and senior secondary levels,as well as tertiarystudents studying in a number o f areas including:

•English–particularly students in years 11 and 12,who may alsobe reading and studying the memoir on which the film is based.

For other students the film offers an example ofkinds

of b io grap hy/autob io grap hy.

•Media Studies–particularly in the area of screenwriting andadaptation oftext to screen as well as showing a numberof different ways to tell stories as much through images as words.

•Cultural Studies and Australian Studies–particularly in the areaofpo st World War Two immigration to Australia,notionsof family and the difficulties and joys of rural life.

Synopsis of film

Romulus Gaita has immigrated to Victoria,Australia from his nativeYugoslavia with his beautiful German wife,Christina,and theiryoung son,Raimond.Here,on a lonely and harsh rural homestead,Romulus cares for his young son and makes a living as a blacksmithand farm labourer.Tom Lillie and his wife and her sister and theeccentric homeless man,Vacek,are his immediate neighbours.The glamorous Christina,out ofplace in a desolate and foreign land,increasingly struggles with her role as a mother and wife and desertstheir family after she begins an affair with Romulus‟ friend,Mitru.Consequently,Raimond is raised mainly by his father who findssolace in his work and the calming presence of the stoic Hora.

Mitru and Christina come to Frogmore to stay and things go wrong.Romulus has a devastating accident on his motorbike and ends upin hospital, leaving Hora and Christina to look after Rai.Hora andChristina fight and she returns to live with Mitru.

Upon hearing the news that Mitru and Christina are to have a child,Romulus is distraught but provides his wife and her new lover withfinancial support.With his wife living with another man,a reluctantRomulus is encouraged by Hora to write to his friend Lidia,overseas.Christina returns to Frogmore for Rai‟s birthday.Rai is deliriouslyhappy as his father,mother, the Lillies and Miss Collard give hima birthday dinner to remember.Christina stays on at Frogmore and,estranged from Mitru and her husband Romulus,attempts suicide.Rai decides to be with his mother in her time of need when shereturns to Mitru and b aby Susan.C hristina sp irals further intodepression, trapped in a cycle ofpoverty and conflict.Young Raitries to keep the brokenpeace and look after Susan as best he can.Unable to cope,Mitru commits suicide byjumping off the watertower.Christina and Susan are financially supported by Romulusuntil Christina gets a job.

Rai leaves Maryborough to board at a new school,St Joseph‟s Collegein Ballarat.Rai is one day visited at the school by Christina who takeshim out to a local caféand begs to be allowed to come home to himand Romulus.Angry with her for not writing to him,Rai declines.Christina takes her own life and Romulus and Rai are left to gatherher few belongings from the boarding house and attend her funeral.After Mitru and Christina‟s deaths,Romulus makes the decisionto provide his son with a new life and mother.He is going to bring

Lidia to Frogmore from Romania and adopt Susan.Romulus andRai work hard to restore Frogmore to a family home.Hora returnsto Frogmore to tell Romulus that Lidia is already married.Romulusspirals into a madness of his own,erecting an enormous crucifixon the side of the house and attacking Rai and Hora.Hora has nochoice but to commit his friend to the Ballarat Psychiatric Hospital.In late autumn,Romulus finally returns to Fro gmore from the psychiatrichospital and Romulus and Rai get to know one another again.

In the middle of the night,Romulus wakes Rai and tells him theyare leaving Frogmore.They drive for hours and hours, sleepingon the top of some cliffs. In the dawn light,Rai wakes to find hisfather gone.Panicked,he looks over the cliff face.He sees his fathercrouched down,on his knees in the grass,collecting frozen bees.Together they warm them on the car‟s engine,returning life to them.Romulus releases the bees into the clear,blue sky as father and sonstand to gether.

Those of you who have read the memoir will notice that thissynopsis does not include everything from the book;neither doevents happen in precisely the years referred to in the memoir.Thefilm‟s focus is on three years of the Gaitas‟ lives.Your understandingof how these changes and emphases are an essential aspect of thefilmmaker‟s intention should become clearer as you work throughthe activities suggested in this guide.

Note to Teachers and Students

Some of the activities in this guide, such as Activity 8–Key Scenesand Possible Changes,will be appropriate to students who have readthe book before seeing the film,while other activities focus moreon the film on its own terms and do not assume any prior knowledgeof the book.Teachers are encouraged to select from the activitiesmost appropriate for their students.The first two activities are centralto any detailed understanding of the film.

Glossary and background information

Papi–name Rai calls his father, i.e. like dad

Muti–name Rai calls his mother, i.e. like mum

Fritz–affectionate name Hora uses with Rai

Frogmore–name of the house in the countryside outside Baringhup,near Maldon in central Victoria,where the Gaitas lived.

Post World War Two Migration to Australia

When the Second World War ended in Europe in 1945, there werethousands ofdisplaced people whose lives had been devastatedby the war and who were unable to return to their countries andhomes.Many came to Australia to begin new lives which oftenbegan in migrant camps,generally in the country.Romulus Gaita,with his wife Christina,and son Raimond,along with Mitru andHora arrived in the early 1950s.Life in Australia often began atthe Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre near Albury/Wodonga.

Government project (in this case the building of a dam on theLoddon River which created the Cairn Curran Reservoir) in centralVictoria, some 150 kilometers from Port Melbourne where they hadarrived by ship.

You can find out more about life at Bonegilla by visiting this websiteat http://www.alburycity.nsw.gov.au/museum/bonegilla/index.htmwhere there are photos and accounts of life at the centre. It operatedas a reception centre between 1947 and 1971 and provides a starkcontrast to the centres now operating for people who may have fledwar-torn co untr ie s.

Map ofArea

Approximate distances between towns and citie s

Baringhup to Maldon 12km

Baringhup to Maryborough 24km

Baringhup to Ballarat 83km

Baringhup to Melbourne 150km

Activity 1

Before watching the film

1.Make a list of any films you have seen after reading the book onwhich the film is based.

2.Name anybooks you have read after seeing the film on which thebook is based.

3.Comment on whether you thought the filmed version,or writtenversion, in each case,was more enjoyable.

4.What are the main differences between reading a book andwatching a film?Discuss and create a list of what each is able todo.Explain what is specific to each experience.

5. Imagine you are the author of a popular book about your life.Youhave been persuaded to sell the film rights to a Director whosefilms you admire.Consider how you would addre ss concerns thatyou may have about how your story is to be filmed.Discuss someof the issues raised below.a.Are you going to trust the Director to present your story or doyou want to retain some control over how this is done, such asassisting with the scripting process?b.Do you want to have a say in which actor will play you?Shouldshe or he physically resemble you?c.Do you expect to share in either the profits the film makes,oraccept some ofthe losses?

Activity 2

Close Viewing

This activity is broken into five p arts (A,B,C,D,and E) to makeit easier to follow the film as it develops.The film does not havethese artificial divisions.

A.Early scenes

1.What does the opening scene,ofthe warming ofthe bees

(before the cast credits appear), suggest about the relationshipbetween Romulus and Raimond?

2.While there is little dialogue in the next few scenes, they establishimportant aspects o f the world and country the Gaitas live in.Describe what we see of their life in these scenes.

3.How is the connection between father and son further shownin the scene inthe café?

4.The next shot shows us Christina,Rai‟s mother, standing withher suitcase in the landscape. „Summer, 1960‟ is superimposedon the scene.Why do you think the Director wants to draw ourattention to this date at this point in the film as well as to Christinaas a lonely figure in a landscape?

5.The next scenes show Rai‟s mother Christina,withbothRomulusand Rai.She has come to staywith them fromMelbourne whereshe has been living with Mitru.How are both the tensions betweenhis parents and Rai‟s affection for his mother shown here?Whydoes Christina telling Rai stories about his father in earlier timesinfuriate Romulus?

6.What friendships and social connections are shown in the nextscenes with Vacek and the Lillie s, the Gaita‟s nearest neighbours?

7.The key friendship between Romulus and Hora is shown in thescene where the two discuss sending Rai to school in Ballarat.What does Hora tell Romulus about Christina and Mitru?

8.What part is Rai able to take in the egg production enterpriseset up at F ro gmore?

B.The complexities of family

1.At the lake,Hora and Romulus talk about the possibilityof Christina and Mitru coming to live at Frogmore.Explainwhat Romulus thinks about this arrangement and Hora‟s response.

2.Two scenes are shown next,one with Rai and Mitru outside, theother with Romulus and Christina inside the house.What do thesescenes show us about the unconventional living arrangementsatthe house?How do theyconvey a sense of the complex,butdislocated, sense of connection?

3.What happens to Romulus as he is driving back from the railwaystation where he has taken Mitru?

4.We now see Rai,Hora and Christina together at Frogmore.What tensions are revealed between the three?

5.How does Hora‟s killing of the chickens upset both Christinaand Rai?Contrast this scene with the earlier one where Raiis working with his father and Hora to collect and clean the eggs.

6.What does Rai use the razor for?What does he do with it whenhe sees the damage?

7.What mood is established in the scenes when Hora and Rai aretogether on the lake?

8.When Romulus returns from the hospital the rhythms of their lifetogether resume.De scrib e how they work together cooperativelyon projects?

9.When a letter arrives from Christina,Romulus discovers his razormissing from the trunk.When he questions Rai about this whatis it that so angers him that he beats his son?

10.That evening Romulus tells Rai about Christina‟s pregnancy.

How might this information relate to Romulus‟ reaction to Rai‟slying to him earlier?

C.Summer 1961–Troub les continue

1.Where are Christina,Mitru and baby Susan living in Maryborough?Describe their living conditions.

2.When Romulus leaves Rai with his mother and Mitru,how dowe know how he feels about this separation from his son?

3.How do we see evidence of Romulus‟continuing senseof responsibility for Christina,Mitru and their child?

4.Who seems to provide for Susan‟s ongoing daily care?

5.What is Hora trying to do for his friend Romulus?

6.What is Rai attracted to when he approaches Alice, the girl dancingon her front porch?

7.What evidence is there of the difficulties between Christinaand M itru?

8.How does Hora try to help his brother?

9.What tensions are becoming evident between Rai and his fatheras Rai grows up?

10.What does Rai confront his father with when Romulus is workingon the car with Tom Lillie?

11.When Rai says to his father „You don‟t love Muti and you don‟tlove me‟,what provokes this anger?How does his father respond?

12.Describe the birthday tea where Christina prepares the meal.

13.When Christina says…

…imagine, in America they have machines, labour saving devices to do thesethings.Still,we settled for here.And here we are.There‟s more to life thancooking.Raimond was conceived in a graveyard and look at him.Full of life……what does this show us about her?

14.What does Christina try to do and how do Rai and his fatherre sp o nd?

15.When we see Rai waiting alone for his father to return fromthe hospital where he has taken Christina,what are your feelingsfor Rai,his mother and father?

D.Tragic events

1.What does Rai see his mother doing when he is walking hissister Susan in her pram?

2.After another violent row between his mother and Mitru,witnessed by Rai,what happens?How are we shown the terribleresult ofthis troubled relationship on the screen with few words