In the moody magical-realist drama, “The New Boy,” an Indigenous boy (Aswan Reid) is captured in the outback and forced to live in a Christian orphanage in rural Australia. It’s the early 1940s, and the Australian government is continuing to implement brutal policies geared toward the forced assimilation of Aboriginal people. Missionary groups are taking Aboriginal children from their families to convert them to Christianity. The fate of what came to be known as the Stolen Generations befalls our nameless newcomer in the film’s opening scene, which Thornton visualizes as a stylized, slow-motion face-off on cracked desert grounds.
The boy doesn’t speak English, and for most of this uncanny film, he remains silent, baffling the other children in his orphanage with an innocent disregard for the rules. He walks around shirtless, sleeps under his bed, and eats with his hands — behaviors that the abbess, Sister Eileen (Cate Blanchett) treats with patience and understanding.
The formidable Blanchett in a rare role in her native Australia, is neither severe nor overly innocent here: Eileen curses and takes sips of wine, bringing unexpected levity to a film that is ultimately about spiritual warfare.
Filled with overt, and often poignant, symbolism and touches of fantasy, the director Warwick Thornton (who is also the film’s cinematographer, and an excellent one at that), draws parallels between Eileen’s passionate Christian beliefs and the new boy’s supernatural capacities. In one luminous scene, his touch seems to heal a fellow orphan who has been bitten by a poisonous snake — he’s a miracle worker, though his exterior prevents the other children and orphanage workers from recognizing the obvious.
Thornton, who briefly attended a Christian boarding school when he was a child, brings a textured perspective to this story of cultural violence and white guilt. He opts for a dreamy, lugubrious atmosphere and oblique imagery that might alienate some hoping for a more straightforward narrative — and mesmerize others captivated by its slow-burn vision.
The New Boy
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters.
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