Book Week reminds us that even the most outwardly bitter characters are still human

By Scarlett Sherriff, Fourth Year, French & Spanish

Heath Davis' film is a small-budget, Australian film that subtly encourages us to question our notions about literature and our ideas of masculinity.

Directed and written by Heath Davis, the film’s character development of Nicholas Cutler (Alan Dukes) is particularly heartwarming in this film. The protagonist teacher is a troubled middle-aged man, with a slight alcohol problem to say the very least.

Working in a world of primary colours where book week and costumes are all the rage, the school atmosphere contrasts with the image of Cutler. He’s a disenfranchised teacher-cum-writer who wears dreary, dusty clothes. The music really makes this powerful but low-budget film, using simple but emotive songs to reflect the unfolding story.

The film is littered with quotes from writers including Hemingway: ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ This does perhaps play too strongly on the overdone trope of the troubled writer. Yet, while Cutler is somewhat of a stereotype, he’s a well-developed, complex and insightful one who conveys the angst and pressure of navigating writing and alcoholism.

The overhanging threat of the publishers who have his fate in their hands highlights the difficult relationship writers and all artists have with their work, which is often accepted or rejected on the basis of commercial interests. The particular focus of the publishers on ‘image’ puts into perspective a changing world. Cutler is a man who would have been much more at home in the 20th century world of Hemingway than in today’s atmosphere of constant scrutiny.

He has a similar relationship with modern education. Cutler is consistently arrogant and sarcastic, he bemoans the lack of interest his students have in the literature he so loves. Indeed, he hates teaching so much that he wants to leave as soon as he can get his novel published.

The only student he truly connects with is Tyrell (Thuso Lukwake), a teen who’s had his own troubles and has even been to ‘juvie’. The deep-down good nature of Tyrell reflects Cutler’s own reality of a good heart beneath the promiscuous, drunken mess on the surface. Nicholas Cutler hates everyone, but we realise everyone hates him too. Eventually, somehow the audience is made to feel that while he’s not got his life together and his regular mishaps are seen throughout, he is misunderstood.

It’s a lesson about masculinity, which teaches us that beneath the drunken escapades and the sex, there is often a person at loss with themselves. We see this poignantly in Dukes’ portrayal of Cutler, which is both agonisingly useless and extremely caring. At heart, our protagonist is kind. He’s just carrying his troubles around, symbolised by the stain on his shirt from the coffee that’s thrown on him after an altercation.

In the end, all the characters have their cross to bear and their own paths to find. Book Week is ultimately a film about humanity. In the words of Cutler himself, on lessons learnt and lessons yet to be learnt: ‘Don’t make the same mistakes I did, you’ll only end up bitter and twisted.’

Book Week is screening at Rebel Film Festival on Sunday February 24, 6.45pm. Tickets are still available via the Rebel website.

Featured Image Credit: Photo courtesy of Rebel Film Festival

Will you be quoting Book Week in your future existential crises?

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