Thomasin McKenzie: Justice of Bunny King is the story of many women

McKenzie came to the world’s notice only three years ago, when she came to the Cannes Film Festival as the young star of Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace. It was the story of a father and daughter who live in the woods of Oregon. Ben Foster played her father, a former soldier with PTSD that makes living in a house unbearable, while she was compelling as a child of the woods, as diligent as a beaver and as watchful as a faun.

When she spoke, it was with the drawl of the Pacific North-West. It was a shock afterwards to hear her speak in her real voice, the vocal equivalent of hokey-pokey ice-cream. After doing so many accents for different films, she believes her own accent must have shifted. “A lot of people have been telling me recently that I’ve got a very subtle, soft Kiwi accent, which I feel insulted by!” Don’t worry, I say. They’re lying.

McKenzie had never been overseas before, let alone to such a grand event. From her home in Wellington, she travelled with her parents across America to Heathrow Airport in London, where she got into trouble. “In my carry-on, I had a bullet I’d completely forgotten about,” she says, as if this were something anyone might do. A bullet? You were carrying a bullet? “I’d picked it up on my boyfriend’s farm as a memento and put it in the pocket of my bag and then forgotten about it. it was one of the stupidest things I think I’ve ever done in my life but there you go.”

By the end of this year, McKenzie will have three major films launched into the world – Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho and the recently released Old, by M. Night Shyamalan. That’s a whiff of the awards season, right there. Her forthcoming birthday could be seen as a time for taking stock, deciding what she wants to be as an adult.

“Hmm,” she says dubiously. “I think I’m figuring that out as I go. A couple of the films I’ve done recently have really reminded me how important it is to stay in the moment and stay present, so what I’m trying to do these days is just take things as they come.” As long as she goes on acting, she adds. “My ultimate goal in life is to be in a Miyazaki film. My Neighbour Totaro (1988) is the film I always go to if I’m not feeling so good or missing home.” To voice the English version of a Japanese animation: is there an actor in the world with such a modest ultimate goal? It’s as Kiwi as the bullet story.

Loading

She knows she has missed out on some of the waymarks of youth, such as the school formal and going to university, though she hopes to go sometime; she is interested in so many things, from Greek myths to biology. What about campus life? “I have missed out on some of those things but I’ve never wished I wasn’t doing what I’m doing. When I go home to Wellington I get to spend time with friends and do those things that are, as you say, specific to this time of life. But I also think that through acting, you get to experience such a huge range of things. I’ve lived through so many different lives. I feel pretty satisfied with that.”

Turning the tables on homelessness

Homelessness is a growing problem in Australia as well as New Zealand. In 2016, the ABS estimated there are 25,000 homeless people in Victoria, with the majority dossing in overcrowded houses. A state standing committee report into homelessness in March found that while the biggest group were young, there was a growing cohort of older women with no money and nowhere to go. Behind the figures must be hundreds of human dramas but there are very few films on the subject. “Which is odd, don’t you think?” asks Gaysorn Thavat, director of The Justice of Bunny King.

Her film has often been compared to Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake. “He wasn’t homeless but he was on his way to it – it shows the process of how it happens.” But Loach had already made the definitive film on the subject: Cathy Come Home, a BBC Wednesday Play, in 1966. Cathy and her husband are forced from one home after another and finally lose their children. The play was watched by a quarter of the British population, led to a public outcry and the formation of the homeless charity Crisis, and has since been voted the most influential television program of all time.

Source: | This article originally belongs to smh.com.au

ncG1vNJzZmhqZGy7psPSmqmorZ6Zwamx1qippZxemLyue82erqxnpJ28rq3SoqVmpZOgsq%2FGyJ5ko62jqbaksYyonWaapaO7unnKoqWgZZmoerW0xGaqraeirnqwsoymmKexXay8rrHNaA%3D%3D