The Giants Review
The titular giants of this film are the towering Eucalyptus Regnans presiding over lutruwita / Tasmania’s old growth forests, alongside - of course - the giant of the Australian Greens movement, Bob Brown.
Filmmakers Laurence Billiet and Rachael Antony follow Brown’s life, from childhood growing up in the New South Wales High Country, to his time as a young man leading the blockade of The Gordon below Franklin Dam project, through to his ultimate ascendancy as the leader of the Australian Greens in Federal Parliament.
It is in this narrative that a portrait of Brown as a thoughtful, kind and resilient, if reserved, leader is painted. He is a survivor; not only of child sexual abuse, but of attempted gay conversion therapy. In the late 1970s, he is publicly ostracised because of his sexuality, but still chooses to campaign vocally to protect lutruwita / Tasmania’s millennia-old forests.
Meanwhile the hidden complexities of these unique Gondwanan forests are brought to our attention via scenes interspersed within the film. The filmmakers skilfully employ the use of LiDAR scans and animations to provide us with all-seeing 3D wireframe visualisations of the intricate symbiotic networks which exist within these forests.
The animations are accompanied by factual narratives from eminent scientists and academics who impress upon us just how little we know of these complex environments.
While this film is immersive, the audience may be left feeling a lack of focus. The aforementioned forest visualisations, though interesting in their own right, would perhaps have been better suited to a standalone Attenborough-esque documentary on lutruwita / Tasmania’s old growth forests. These scenes were awkwardly interspersed within the film, often removing the audience from Bob Brown’s personal narrative, which was the more compelling tale within the movie.
Though the traditional narrative approach taken by The Giants is somewhat staid, the films’ photography and subject matter is still strongly gripping. Bob Brown’s achievements and his graceful, compassionate world view afford the film its place in the overstory.
The Giants is most successful when it is focussing on its protagonist. The film’s highpoint for me came around mid-way; following the fledgling Tasmanian Wilderness Society, as led by Brown, in their opposition of the Franklin Dam proposal, dreamt up by the all powerful Hydro-Electric Commission. Archival super 8mm footage shows a young Brown barely staying afloat in the white water of the wild Franklin river, orchestrating on-water blockades and civil disobedience actions, ultimately prevailing in one of the most significant environmental campaigns in Australian history.
