The Dry, a whodunit film based on Jane Harper's best-selling novel, arrives in theaters and on demand May 21. The Australian murder mystery was so sought after that it was optioned by Reese Witherspoon and famed producer Bruna Papandrea before it was published, and eventually landed a talented cast led by screen star Eric Bana (Dirty John).
When Federal Agent Aaron Falk returns to his home town after twenty years to attend the funeral of his childhood friend Luke, he is tasked with clearing Luke of a horrifying murder-suicide that rocked the neighborhood. In order to do so, Aaron must face down his demons and make peace with his past.
Director Robert Connolly spoke with Screen Rant about how he adapted the haunting novel, and why it was so important to portray the landscape faithfully.
What has your professional history been like with producer Bruna Papandrea? I know you've worked with her, so how did your collaboration process work?
Robert Connolly: Yes, it really interesting. Bruna Papandrea is one of Australia's greatest producers, known in the US from Big Little Lies among many projects. I know this is crazy, but I mentored her in the beginning of her career. It's quite surreal; I had just produced my first film, it was like '97, and I'd met her as this really impressive emerging producer here.
I was offered a film to produce that I couldn't do a film, called Better Than Sex with David Wenham and Susie Porter. And I said to the director, "I can't do it, but I've met this really young producer. You should use her, and I'll be there. I'll be a consultant to help make sure it goes okay." And as Brenda joked to me about The Dry the other day, "Isn't it amazing that at the beginning of my career, you mentored me, and now I'm employing you?"
But she's incredible, and a very loyal and decent person, but also an amazing creative producer. She's wonderful.
I love how the film really incorporates this decade-long drought the town is experiencing as its own character that helps you understand the story. How did you approach that as a director, filming the sequences and exploring what effect the weather has on these people?
Robert Connolly: Yeah, that was really at the heart of it all. And we filmed five and a half hours from here - out in the Bush Maze part of the world, in a little town called Warracknabeal, and all these satellite towns around it. We needed to film authentically in the real world of it.
I love how cinema takes people to somewhere they've never been, and that an audience in the US can be transported by this film to a part of the world they've never experienced or visited. And it was so strong in the book, the way that this world impacted on all the characters; the pressure cooker of these two crimes, one in the past one in the present. Can the audience solve these crimes? How is this climate and this world and this town forcing these people together?
So, it's probably one of the great gifts in my career that I get to travel and film in different places. It's made trickier at the moment because of the limitations of travel at the moment for us all, but it's certainly an amazing part of the world. It's tough, but also very beautiful as well. And I hope that film captures the difficulty and the challenge of a world suffering from drought, but also the beauty of that world.
Speaking of the mysteries that are connected in the past and the present, I really loved how Joe Klocek's performance as Aaron bleeds into and yet is different from Eric's. Can you talk about balancing those two sides of Aaron?
Robert Connolly: Yeah, Joe Klocek is an amazing young actor. I remember when I offered him the role, that he was going to play the young Eric Bana, I think it was a bit of a shock to him. He's quite a sensitive young man, and I think you assume the young Eric Bana is going to be really tough. But Eric's performance and Joe's performance dovetail really well as the kind of human threads of this man and the tragedy, and the way that has shaped him as an older man.
But I just loved what Joe did with that character. I think all four of those young Australian actors who are doing massive things now. Sam Corlett was in [Chilling Adventures of] Sabrina; BeBe Bettencourt's just done a TV show; Claude Scott-Mitchell's in the UK. They're kind of the four young Australian actors of the moment.
I wanted it to feel a little bit like Stand By Me, which was a great film from my early cinema going. And to have these four amazing Australian actors play those young people was awesome.
The Dry will be out in theaters and available on demand May 21.