Limbo is one of those movies where the people reflect the landscape. Or vice versa. Set in the dusty Australian outback, Ivan Sen’s new film follows police detective Travis Hurley (Simon Baker) as he arrives at the remote mining town of Limbo. The name leaves little to the imagination as this is a godforsaken place, one that has been stripped of all its resources by mining companies, leaving the mainly Aboriginal populace there in abject poverty. Hurley comes to town to investigate a 20-year-old cold case of an abducted, and likely murdered, Aboriginal girl named Charlotte and then determine whether it should be reopened.
Travis isn’t without his own baggage. Upon arriving at his motel, which is literally situated inside a former mine dugout, the tattooed detective injects himself with heroin. His initial attempts to speak with the missing girl’s siblings, Charlie (Rob Collins) and Emma (Natasha Wanganeen), don’t go very well. They don’t trust Travis, and for good reason. White folks have done nothing but criminalize and victimize Charlie, Emma and their family.
After seemingly hitting a dead end, Travis decides to leave Limbo. But his car is vandalized, and he is forced to stay in town. With nothing but time to kill, Travis decides to investigate, getting close to both Charlie and Emma in the process. Sadly, it appears that Travis arrived too late. The man who was under suspicion of kidnapping the girl had died from dementia the year prior. His brother, Joseph (Nicholas Hope), still lives in the squalid mine they both called home. Like many of the Aboriginal residents of Limbo, Joseph also looks for opals to sell. But Travis suspects Joseph isn’t telling him the full story, even though his brother had been cleared of the abduction.
Filmed in gorgeous black and white, Sen’s movie traces the scars of colonization and how they still ache, even after a place is chewed up, spit out and forgotten. Filmed in Coober Pedy, South Australia, Limbo features a landscape of destruction, one hollowed out by mining companies. Aerial shots of the discarded mounds share similar patterns to the Aboriginal art created by Charlotte. One character explains to Travis that the circles in the sandpainting represent the family but that there is no father. He gets his own painting. This could represent the family’s own missing father. Or Charlie, who blames himself for his sister’s disappearance and now lives in a remote trailer, an absentee father to his children who are staying with Emma. Or it could represent the mining companies that left Limbo in a bardo of forgotten suspension.
It is clear from the beginning that Travis isn’t going to solve the case, nor will the case be reopened. Charlotte’s siblings know well enough that if she had been white, a greater effort would have been made to find her and bring her abductors to justice. But that’s not going to happen, even if the evidence is there to make a conviction.
Travis also suffers from lost loved ones and Limbo wisely avoids the trap where via the suffering of Charlotte’s family, he can feel whole again. Rather than solve the case or mete out vengeance, Travis still finds a way to help Charlie and Emma heal. In the process, he can hopefully move away from the limbo of his own life and find the same path toward recovery that he provides for Charlotte’s family.
Photo courtesy of Brainstorm Media / Music Box Films
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