Joel Edgerton's Psychological Thriller "The Gift"
What if someone from your past forced you to confront
something that you had been hiding—even from yourself? The line between teasing
and bullying can be razor-thin, and fluctuate greatly depending on which side
of the equation you’re on. What one person may chalk up to an act of harmless
play, another person may internalize as deeply hurtful behaviour is what “The
Gift” addresses the audience.
“The
Gift started for me with a simple premise: what would happen if a high school
bully ran into his victim fifteen or so years later? What would or could be the
effects? How might the past come to bear on the present? How could the past,
unaccounted and unresolved, rupture a present situation? Edgerton shares.
People
view their pasts through the prism of their own individual experiences. What one person may remember as a harmless
practical joke, another may internalize as a deeply wounding transgression. In
any case, most people move forward with their lives, past grievances ultimately
buried beneath the many layers of experiences and lessons that life offers. But
what if you did something to someone who was unable to move on? A person for
whom your actions had become fossilized and hardened: Unacknowledged.
Unrepented.
There
are those who are unable to let go, allowing a slight to gain momentum and
reach critical velocity as resentment and anger seethe to a boiling point. The
Gift explores the impact of two people’s
shared pasts colliding in the present, and the collateral damage that ensues.
“I was interested in the aftermath of that kind of hurt; is it a good or bad
thing to go and rummage around in the past,” explains writer/director Joel
Edgerton,
“and that’s really the starting point for the story.”
“There is a married couple,” producer Jason
Blum notes, “and things seem to be going along fine until Joel’s character,
‘Gordo,’ comes into their life. It turns out Gordo and Jason Bateman’s
character, ‘Simon,’ went to school together a long time ago. Gordo seems
relatively friendly, although a little odd … and as we move through the course
of the story, it turns out none of what you think at the beginning is true.”
“We’re
all changeable beings,” Hall concurs emphatically, “it has to be possible,
forgiveness. I think we’re in real trouble if you can’t get over bad things
that happen to you.”
Recognized
for his extensive career in front of the camera, Edgerton, in fact, began his
career as a filmmaker in Australia, forming the Film Collective Blue Tongue
Films in 1996 alongside other like-minded creatives. “The Gift” is Edgerton’s
feature directorial debut. With long time aspirations to direct, it was
important for him to develop a project for his debut that was strongly character
driven and attractive to a strong smart cast and rooted in meaty ideas and themes.
A long-time fan of intelligent genre films, the intricate plot was also
reminiscent of the great performance-based thrillers and suspense films that
had been a staple of
his adolescence.
“The
Gift” is now showing in cinemas nationwide from OctoArts Films International.
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