Western Australian director David Vincent Smith’s first feature film, He Ain’t Heavy, begins with an attempted home invasion. On a suburban street, a man in a hoodie screams bloody murder and tries to kick in the front door, but the house’s middle-aged resident (Greta Scacchi) is strangely unfazed and is in the kitchen. drinking a cup at the table.
Quick facts about He Ain’t Heavy
What it’s about: An Australian family drama about the desperate measures a woman takes to help her addicted brother.
Screenplay/Director: David Vincent Smith
Starring: Leila George, Sam Corlett, Greta Scacchi
You may feel: Nervous and emotional.
Location: Currently showing in theaters
That’s because she’s safely barricaded inside her room. Locks on the interior doors allow you to section off your home like a prison. The man outside is her son (Sam Corlett from Netflix’s Vikings: Valhalla), dragging his feet and looking for cash.
This is not the first time the family has faced such an incident. His 30-something sister (played by Leila George, Scacchi and Vincent D’Onofrio’s biological daughter) is unable to travel or keep her relationships in check for fear of ignoring the latest crisis. What if she misses an emergency call and her brother dies?
So she offers her brother money to help her clean her grandmother’s house. However, when they arrive, she locks him in a room she had previously prepared, complete with iron bars and surveillance cameras. He’s going to be cold whether he likes it or not (he’s not).
Max (Sam Corlett) is locked in a room by his sister and mother (Greta Scacchi) in an attempt to get him off drugs. (Courtesy of Bonsai Film)
It’s a family drama that doubles as a hostage thriller, with a setting reminiscent of horror films like Saw, where characters are held against their will and tortured.
“I wanted to lean into it and subvert it,” Vincent Smith says. “It’s like kidnapping someone for love instead of kidnapping someone for rape or murder or something like that.”
“You can’t just kidnap people.”
Vincent Smith grew up with 15 foster siblings. One of his siblings joined the family when he was just two days old. His mother suffered from schizophrenia and lived on the streets. He grew up to be an anxious child, and the family ended up in a “big mess” with Child Protective Services. Soon, Vincent Smith’s younger brother began to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol.
“When you’re a teenager, you don’t have the responsibility or the understanding that this isn’t trauma therapy,” the filmmaker says.
“Then things went haywire. He then spent the last 10 years of his life in and out of prison.”
Leila George and Sam Corlett play brother and sister in He Ain’t Heavy. (Courtesy of Bonsai Film)
Vincent Smith was often torn between wanting to protect his parents and caring for his troubled younger brother.
“This person was becoming more dangerous and was attacking my parents, and it was happening frequently,” he recalls.
“But I also understood the bigger picture: It was just someone who was really angry and distraught and had no idea how to deal with it. And the prison system is a place where people can recover from trauma. It’s not really made to help.
I ask Vincent Smith if he ever resorted to locking his brother in a room. Or are movie scenarios purely about wish fulfillment?
“To tell you the truth, I was driving home from shooting a movie down south and my mom called me and I was so flustered. And I was so tired and burnt out. It had a huge negative impact on my relationships with friends, my job, and everything else, and even traveling abroad for film opportunities became stressful.
Vincent Smith was rushing home along the highway when he had an idea. “Put your brother in the car and say, ‘Come with me, I’ll buy you dinner and I’ll give you $50.’ Then you load up the trunk of the car with food and water and literally drive to the desert in the middle of Western Australia. I’m going out.”
He threw away the car keys and they spent two weeks trying to resolve the issue.
“That was the thought I had. By the time I got home in heavy traffic, I was like, ‘Let’s not do that,'” he laughed. “You can’t just kidnap people.”
That sentiment is reflected in the film, where Scacchi’s character appears and is horrified to see her son caged like an animal.
The fact that Greta Scacchi and Leila George (pictured) are biological mother and daughter made this scene even more convincing. (Courtesy of Bonsai Film)
The fact that the actors arguing for and against his release are played by a real mother and daughter only lends weight to their argument.
“There were a few moments where I could feel Greta throwing lines at me, and Layla was like, ‘Are you talking to me as a character? Or are you talking to me?'”
learn to talk to each other
He Ain’t Heavy is an impressive first feature. Tight and suspenseful, Vincent Smith has a clear eye for subject matter as he resists the temptation to tie things up neatly.
“Finally, the reason I didn’t want to give you a blanket answer is because I don’t actually know the answer. If I knew the answer, I would make a five-minute YouTube video and say, ‘So… , here’s the problem.” It’s too complex and subtle. ”
Director David Vincent Smith resisted the temptation to tie things up neatly. (Courtesy of Bonsai Film)
Vincent Smith also decided not to identify specific drugs or depict drug use in the film. Drug use is a symptom, not a cause.
“This is really a story about a family dealing with this kind of trauma, this kind of pain, and issues that go unspoken…In fact, it’s a story about a bunch of people who aren’t being honest. And it’s just corrosive. It becomes something.
“I think that’s really the main problem. As a society, we haven’t learned how to talk about it and how to deal with trauma, and that becomes cancer and destroys people’s lives.”
The director, who screened the film at both the Sydney and Melbourne film festivals, saw how it enabled people to talk about their experiences with their mothers, siblings and nephews.
He now realizes that his own experience is not so unusual.
“But the common thread was that people didn’t really talk about it because of shame.”
“He Ain’t Heavy” is currently showing in theaters.
