25.4 C
Byron Shire
March 29, 2024

Healing

Latest News

Blue skies for Bluesfest day 1

If yesterday at Bluesfest was anything to go by, it's going to be an incredible event and with the weather holding, (so far) the Easter weekend's future is looking bright.

Other News

Save Wallum finalist in NSW 2024 environment awards

The Save Wallum campaign has been named as a finalist in the Nature Conservation Council of NSW Environment Awards 2024. The award ceremony will be held in Sydney tonight, and Save Wallum spokesperson and ecologist James Barrie will be attending with Tegan Kitt, another founding member of the group.

Peter Garrett gives Bluesfest the nod

If I say the words ‘US Forces give the nod’, I can pretty much guarantee that you will hear the unmistakable voice of Peter Garrett ringing in your ears. Your head may even start to bob up and down a bit. 

We just love him!

If you’re over 50 you might not be a fan of Tom Jones, but you can bet your mum is. If you’re under 40 you might not even know who he is, but your grandmother probably wet her pants at the mere mention of his name.

Blue skies for Bluesfest day 1

If yesterday at Bluesfest was anything to go by, it's going to be an incredible event and with the weather holding, (so far) the Easter weekend's future is looking bright.

Caper Byron Bay Food & Culture Festival

Caper Byron Bay Food & Culture Festival returns to Byron Bay in May, and this year ‘locals favourite’ pub...

NORPA’s wild ride at Lismore Showgrounds

NORPA is taking audiences on an adventure outside the theatre once again, announcing it will stage its original work Wildskin in a warehouse space at the Lismore Showgrounds. A sensory, destination theatre experience, Wildskin inhabits an outrageous and unpredictable world that’s part bush-thriller, part road-trip and a whole lot of NORPA’s signature theatrical style.

Before Origin last week, one of the talking boofheads slipped in an advertorial for the dead-boring X-Men – as if the squillion-dollar juggernaut needs a leg-up. Meanwhile, a fabulous, much lower-budget Australian flick withers in the shade. That’s The Coliseum for you.

The opening sequence in writer/director Craig Monahan’s unheralded gem Healing, of an eagle in pursuit of a hawk, is breathtakingly fast and tense.

When the mighty raptor is entangled in barbed wire, it is collected by the inmates of a prison farm and, with other damaged birds, nursed back to health in an aviary constructed for the purpose.

Viktor (Don Hany), an Iranian, will be its chief minder. The obvious metaphor, in the title and circumstances of the men’s captivity, is beautifully dealt with in a script that creates mounting tension without resort to mawkish sentimentality or thrill-seeking violence – it is subtle in a way that has become all too uncommon.

Performances are great – Hany, whom we know from TV, gives to Viktor an embittered stubbornness and inner turmoil that easily elicits empathy, the ever reliable Hugo Weaving is stoic but likeable as Officer Perry, while Mark Leonard Winter’s Shane, the weedy but rat-cunning stoner, delivers lines of deliciously un-PC humour.

Lifting it to greater heights, the music of David Hirschfelder, so perfectly withheld until exactly the right moments for maximum effect, makes poetry with Oscar winner Andrew Lesnie’s cinematography.

Perhaps the real star of the show, however, is Yasmine – a wedge-tailed eagle, just like the ones we see soaring on the thermals of our own skies.

Releasing her into the wild, Viktor tells her, ‘All you seek, is you’. As in real life, the perfect ending might not always be what you anticipated, for, as Bob Dylan sang all those years ago, ‘are birds free from the chains of the skyways?’

The greatest learning is gifted to us when we’re able to cope with the hardest truths.

This is by far the best movie on in town, one that will let your heart take flight.

Go see it.

~ John Campbell


Support The Echo

Keeping the community together and the community voice loud and clear is what The Echo is about. More than ever we need your help to keep this voice alive and thriving in the community.

Like all businesses we are struggling to keep food on the table of all our local and hard working journalists, artists, sales, delivery and drudges who keep the news coming out to you both in the newspaper and online. If you can spare a few dollars a week – or maybe more – we would appreciate all the support you are able to give to keep the voice of independent, local journalism alive.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Retired local professor launches book on grief

A leading international thinker and researcher in the development of innovative sport coaching and physical education teaching has returned home to Byron Bay and is launching his first non-academic book, 'Grief and Growth', on April 4 at The Book Room in Byron. 

Resilient Lismore’s ‘Repair to Return’ funding

On the eve of the second anniversary of the second devastating flood in 2022, Resilient Lismore has welcomed the finalisation of its funding deed with the NSW Reconstruction Authority, which will enable the continuation of its ‘Repair to Return’ program.

Editorial – Joyous propaganda! 

The NSW Labor government marked its one year in office this week with a jubilant statement of achievements issued from Macquarie Street HQ.

Man charged over domestic violence and pursuit offences – Tweed Heads

A man has been charged following a pursuit near Tweed Heads on Monday.