Rachel Griffiths in Underground.
Paul Kalina, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports
What did you make of Underground when you read the script?
It's really quite a critical study for me. Apart from the giant question, which was there from the moment Julian stepped onto the world stage - which is ''What makes a man like that?'' - it's very clever. It's not trying to tell a big story. It's a fragment of a biography. It focuses on a critical point.
What did it tell you about how much activism has changed?
For me, sociologically and historically, what's interesting is the schism in time between an organic and analog activism, represented by Christine parading outside an embassy trying to draw attention to what she feels is a wrong, and reaching what Julian sees, in the movie, as a certain kind of futility, the energy of the baby-boomer optimism waning in its ageing years - the voices aren't as clear, the feelings between people to create protest aren't as strong. A point where he recognises a new activism of information in a digital age.
You have protested yourself against gambling in Melbourne.
I did an incredibly analog protest at Crown. It couldn't have been more analog. [That was] old-school protesting. It goes back to the mediaeval girl on a white horse, naked, protesting a tax. It's ancient and it's very female because it requires community. It uses voice and body and organisation. But in this moment, in Julian's mind's eye, the future that he can see is one where the power to protest lies in disseminating information and using it against those that want to keep it.
Do you think it works?
If we move forward to the Arab Spring, to how Twitter is being used in Iran, to non-traceable satellite phone technology being used so massacres in Syria cannot be kept from either the West or their own people, it's been a more powerful tool. It's destroying secrecy. How many boys are being liberated because they're finding out they weren't the only one being molested by their parish priest? I think that is so positive. It's very masculine, it's digital, unemotional and it's the strength and weakness of Julian. I don't … believe all information should be in the public arena, but who decides? Who has that power?
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