Interview with Pete Postlethwaite

Pete Postlethwaite wants to tell a story, an Australian story. Like all good stories, it goes back a long way, borne of what he calls “happenstance”. And like all good stories it comes from the heart, from a deeply personal experience that has changed the English actor’s life. But what’s most interesting about this story is that Postlethwaite believes it’s one that all Australian’s should know. There’s a touch of zeal in his voice. “How is it we can’t see what’s in front of our eyes” he wonders. He wants to change our world a little.

Postlethwaite was born in Warrington on the River Mersey in England, half way between Liverpool and Manchester. He trained as a teacher and spent five years in a seminary before switching to acting school. After treading the boards with the Bristol Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company, Postlethwaite turned to film. He became a household name when he was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in In the Name of the Father. A flood of movie roles followed, in films as varied as The Usual Suspects, Romeo & Juliet, Alien3 and The Omen. He has the unforgettable face of a sensitive madman, all cheekbones and nose, with eyes that can look right through you and take you to the heart of things. Steven Spielberg once called him the greatest actor in the world (although Postlethwaite modestly suggests that what Spielberg actually said was “Pete Postlethwaite thinks he's the greatest actor in the world.”) For many people he will always be best remembered as Danny, the bandleader in Brassed Off, a film about an old coal-mining town facing an uncertain future as the government plans to close the pit.

Postlethwaite’s Australian story is also about governments and traditions. It involves a film called Liyarn Ngarn that opened this month around Australia, but the whole story is much more than the film. It all stared the first time Postlethwaite came to Australia in 2003, when he was touring a play called Scaramouche Jones. Postlethwaite explains: “It was the opening night in Perth and a man came to the stage door and gave me a film script. I was terrified about the show because it was designed for an intimate space, but we were in a 1200 seater, and so I didn’t take any notice of this man at the time. It wasn’t until after the show, when I relaxed, that I suddenly realised that inside this older man with grey hair was a much younger man I knew from thirty years before. It was Bill Johnson, and he’d been in the seminary with me, when we were both training to be Catholic priests. I had no idea he’d come to Australia. Luckily he left his phone number on the script.”

Postlethwaite and Johnson spent time together, catching up on the missing years, and it was during this time together that Postlethwaite heard about the tragedy of Louis St John, Johnson’s adopted son. Louis had been one of the stolen generation of Aboriginal children, and had been adopted in Alice Springs by Bill Johnson and his wife Pauline before he was two years old. On the day of his 19th birthday, in January 1992, Louis was walking home from a party when he was attacked and beaten to death. He was only a few blocks from his home in a quiet affluent beach suburb of northern Perth, and two young Englishmen were convicted of his murder. It was reported that they told the police Louis was killed “because he was black.” It was a revenge killing of sorts, retaliation for one of their mates apparently being assaulted by blacks.

Postlethwaite was deeply moved by the personal tragedy and its wider context in Aboriginal history since white settlement, particularly because Louis’ murderers were English. “Because I was so shocked and unaware of the situation, Bill thought it would be a good idea for me to come back and have a look around. I thought it would be a great idea to walk the country, see people and talk to them and try and understand what has happened.” Johnson wanted Postlethwaite to have an Aboriginal guide and so introduced him to an old friend, singer-songwriter Archie Roach, suggesting that the two of them make the journey. Postlethwaite explains that the idea of a film was in the air. “At this stage we were already thinking about making a documentary, but we priced a professional crew and realised we couldn’t afford it. Then someone suggested the media department at Murdoch University, so we agreed to shoot the film with students, using their tutor Martin Mhando as director, making sure the set-ups and shots were done properly.”

It was about this time that Pat Dodson met Postlethwaite. Dodson is one of the fathers of reconciliation in Australia and was a Commissioner into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, as well as being a former catholic priest. It was Dodson who recognized Postlethwaite at Broome airport one day. “It was an absolute coincidence,” says Dodson, “a few weeks before this I’d watched Brassed Off, and I admired him in his role dealing with the adversity of miners being screwed down by a fascist government. I walked up to him and said ‘you’re the bloke from Brassed Off.’ We got talking and he said he was thinking about going on a journey in Australia with Archie Roach and he would be amenable if I would play some role helping him interpret what the heck he was encountering. I thought if I could add anything to the interpretation and the encounter that Pete and Archie were going to find on the road, then I’d be more than happy to join in.”

So the journey of the three men began. But it wasn’t long before Postlethwaite realised it wasn’t going to plan. “We thought we knew what were doing, and knew where we were going, but within a couple of weeks of starting the journey the things we encountered were bigger and more important and more emotional than any of us. We had a kind a plan: the story of Bill’s son was the springboard, and the idea for the documentary was to look at the historical, political and spiritual context of the whole indigenous situation. There wasn’t really an agenda, but the deeper we went into the heart of darkness, the more the agenda suggested itself to us. It changed us. I’m still struggling to come to terms with it – its unfathomable.”

Postlethwaite takes a deep raspy breath. He seems lost for words. What he found on the journey was the complex emotional centre of Australian race relations, a path littered with difficult phrases: terra nullius, land dispossession, lost generation, Aboriginal deaths in custody, shared responsibility agreements. As a recent OBE recipient Postlethwaite felt a strange personal responsibility “Here was I, an officer of the British Empire - forced to face what that meant. I mean, we started the whole problem with terra nullius, and I had to question what damage was caused by the colonialism and pastoralism of the colonies”

Dodson agrees that there was something important about Postlethwaite’s OBE status. “There’s a whole lot of unfinished business about the British involvement in Australia as far as I am concerned, and it was opportune that a leading member of the British Empire – and a master at acting - was interested at looking at the lot of aboriginal people after 200 years of the benefits of Westernisation. It should spark every non-aboriginal Australian person’s interest in why things haven’t changed.”

While Dodson speaks eloquently of the big picture, Postlethwaite keeps coming back to his personal response to the things he saw and heard. “I’m not same person as when I started this journey. I’m not a clever man particularly, but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see what is going on here. If we aren’t careful, we’re going to loose a culture with an extraordinary breadth, depth and colour. That’s the way it’s heading.”

By the time Postlethwaite, Roach and Dodson finished their journey, they had captured over 100 hours of film. Various attempts were made to edit the final story for the screen, but Postlethwaite and his travelling companions weren’t happy with the results. “It was a difficult time,” says Postlethwaite, “we knew we didn’t want a polemic, or a historical documentary or even anything educational – which is what the first edit looked like - so eventually the three people in charge – Archie, Pat and myself - said that we’d have a go at it. So we sat with the editor, David Teale, and we brought out the emotional side of the story. That is what we wanted. That’s what Liyarn Ngarn is. People aren’t calling it a documentary anymore. They call it a film.”

According to Dodson, Liyarn Ngarn literally means a meeting of the hearts, minds and spirit of the two unique peoples of Australia: Aboriginal and non-aboriginal. “But I prefer Archie Roach’s explanation. He described it as two stories becoming one, the white fella story and the aboriginal story, where total respect is given for each side of the storytelling.”

Postlethwaite agrees that this sentiment is at the heart of what must happen next. “It’s a fantastic country, I’ve been welcomed by people of all races and all walks of life. Australia has the potential to be a really great country, but you can’t raise yourself into a really, really great nation until you embrace the history of that nation – and that is what we’re trying to do with the film. That’s the story.”