Last Cab to Darwin

seen 29 August 2015

This film, directed by Jeremy Sims, is based on a play by Reg Cribb, who worked on the screenplay with the director. It stars Michael Caton, Ningali Lawford-Wolf, Mark Coles Smith, Emma Hamilton and Jacki Weaver.

Rex (an excellent Michael Caton) is a taxi driver who has never left Broken Hill. Though he has mates at the pub and a close but not formally acknowledged relationship with his neighbour Polly (Ningali Lawford-Wolf) he feels he can act alone when the doctors tell him that an operation to remove tumours has failed, and he has only months to live. Determined to avoid hospital or palliative care, he drives to Darwin having heard of a doctor there who is proposing to administer euthanasia. (This situation is inspired by real events, though names and situations are altered).

The film is inescapably a road movie, since the opportunity to film a journey from Broken Hill to Darwin through the Red Centre is too good to miss - the sheer scale of the outback, and its austere beauty, provide a visual feast even as they underscore the isolation of its inhabitants. There is also the convention of meeting interesting people along the way, particularly in this case the feckless Tilly, a young indigenous man played with easy charm by Mark Coles Smith, and Julie (Emma Hamilton), a British nurse taking time out to 'get some sun' in Australia.

What begins as a journey to avoid pain and indignity becomes more complicated as Rex begins to engage with Tilly and then Julie, and a further measure of ambivalence is provided by the media circus surrounding Rex's attempt to 'volunteer' for the euthanasia program, and by the realisation that Doctor Nicole Farmer's agenda does not leave a great deal of room for a compassionate patient/doctor relationship. Jacki Weaver shows us a woman to some extent trapped by the ethical and legal constraints on her project, which looks less well-thought-through as the administrative obstacles impinge on it.

Though there are stereotyped situations and themes running throughout the film, and some implausibly upbeat solutions to some of the minor plotlines, Michael Caton's performance remains the focal point of interest, and it is masterfully done. He is not talkative, and certainly not falsely eloquent under pressure, so one rapidly learns to read his expressions as he copes with unwanted personal encounters and the spasms of pain and sickness which assail him. Even the occasional widening of his eyes in pain or momentary panic shows the humanity suffering behind a mask of the stoicism so easily adopted by a lonely old man. Fortunately the issues surrounding euthanasia are not made into a melodramatic debate; instead various scenes quietly make the issues available to our consideration and leave us to draw our own conclusions.