wendyvarro: Cannes 2011: Snowtown and the banality of serial killing

First-time director Justin Kurzel describes how he tackled the horrific real-life story of Australia's 'bodies in the barrels'

Driving through the poverty-stricken Adelaide suburb of Salisbury North isn't for the faint-hearted. Cars roar through the streets; houses are often looted. Yet there remains a strong sense of community, a collective conscience that even murderer John Bunting couldn't quite break. Although he came perilously close.

In 1999, eight bodies were discovered within a disused former bank in neighbouring Snowtown (four others were subsequently discovered in adjacent locations). They were dismembered, stored in over-sized barrels and preserved in acid. The victims, from the Salisbury North area, were, Bunting reportedly claimed, rumoured to be gay, paedophiles, or drug addicts, or simply people Bunting considered undesirable. The case soon became known as the "bodies in the barrels" murders. They remain Australia's worst-ever spate of serial killings.

Now, first-time director Justin Kurzel has dramatised this most horrific of crimes. Kurzel grew up just 10 minutes away from where the crimes took place and, having spent a decade working on various short films and videos, was drawn to this shocking slice of recent history in his hometown.

"I guess there was a burning question in me, as to why and how this happened," Kurzel says. "The script had a very fresh perspective, and a very strong point of view: this kid's point of view. I was very conscious that it should be told from the inside out. That meant casting mostly first-timers ? and shooting it all in the area, where it happened."

Victims' families were up in arms as soon as the film was announced. Kurzel had to move quickly to dampen the fires of controversy. "We contacted the South Australian Victim Rights Association straight away, and started a dialogue with any people who were concerned about it," he says. "We wanted to be as honest and upfront as possible as to why we were doing it ? and that it wasn't being made as some kind of horror-slasher film."

Indeed, the film bears no comparison to that other infamous serial killer tale: Greg McLean's 2005 splatterfest Wolf Creek, partly inspired by the story of backpacker murderer Ivan Milat. For Kurzel, the examination of Bunting's crimes had to feel genuine.

"What was so horrific about the violence in this film is that it came out of a domesticity, of a banality," he says. "It happened in the middle of the day: they were killing people while they were watching the cricket, and eating breakfast, living next door to kids playing in the backyard."

Kurzel admits to being deeply disturbed during his lengthy research. He gained access to a wealth of evidence from the case including police transcripts (Bunting said very little in court) as well as key books on the subject (notably, Killing for Pleasure, by journalist Debi Marshall).

At no time, though, did he wish to meet the real Bunting or the other three men imprisoned for their role in the killings. The film, he insists, is an interpretation of these characters, grounded by an attention to detail of what happened, and when.

"What I was most intrigued about was, how does a man like this infiltrate a community and win the trust of not only a family and community but also this teenager boy, and then exploit that vulnerability in that landscape?" he says.

"That has to be on screen. It has to feel like a western: he's come to fix things up. He's come to bring an ideology in, and be someone they can believe in. Almost like a preacher. That these people, they feel like their shepherd is leading them. And it's how that twists and turns in a very simple, subtle way ? You almost can't see it happening. That's what we were interested in."

The boy Kurzel refers to is Jamie Vlassakis. The real Vlassakis was also convicted over the killings and, in the film, he is quickly won over as a teenager by the Queenslands drifter Bunting. As with almost all of Kurzel's cast, Vlassakis is played by a newcomer and an Adelaide local, Lucas Pittaway. The film is told from the boy's point of view. The only professional actor in the cast is, appropriately, an "outsider", from Sydney: television actor Daniel Henshall, who plays Bunting.

Henshall approached playing Bunting, his first feature role, with caution. "We worked through what this guy should be, the depth of depravity, the menace we should have and so on," he says. "You're doing enough just by having a conversation on screen. That's what makes it terrifying. And I lived in the community for weeks at a time with what became the cast. So we built up these relationships. That's why it looks so real on screen. It is."

Kurzel, meanwhile, is philosophical about the horrific, fact-based tale, and how it will play at Cannes. "It's interesting," he says. "I think the story is quite universal, in terms of the relationships and the dynamics: the nature of nurture versus the corruption of innocence. How the violence is interpreted, I don't know. We do watch violence differently on screen in Australia. And, obviously, we produce it in a different way. So we'll see."

? Snowtown screens as part of Critics' Week at the 2011 Cannes film festival, which runs 11 to 22 May.

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