The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson

“In The Legend of Molly Johnson, code switching becomes a matter of survival.”

Title: The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson (2021)
Director: Leah Purcell 👩🏽🇦🇺 (Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri)
Writer: Leah Purcell 👩🏽🇦🇺 (Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri)

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

—MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 3.5/5

In the 1892 short story by Henry Lawson, The Drover’s Wife, a woman fends for herself in the harsh Australian outback. But while Lawson had seen fit to name the protagonist’s son and even her dog—Tommy and Alligator, respectively—the woman herself remains nameless.

Enter a full reimagining by Australian Aboriginal actor-filmmaker Leah Purcell. In her 2016 stage adaptation, The Drover’s Wife found a defiant subtitle: The Legend of Molly Johnson. Critical acclaim was followed by a 2019 novel by the same name, and has since migrated to the silver screen for a world premiere at this year’s SXSW.

In its motion picture format, The Legend of Molly Johnson feels straightforward. Billed as a feminist revenge tale with an Indigenous lens, the movie deploys its critiques of domestic abuse and racism with little nuance. Villains use the n-word and commit rape; stoic heroes serve as martyrs who can do no wrong. The tropes work, delivering an engaging movie that does subvert Lawson’s colonial Australian literature. But it operates at the simplest of levels, never challenging its audience to think beyond “good is good” and “bad is bad”.

Similarly, the cinematography does the job but leaves room for improvement. Its most unique visual effect, of time lapse photography, can feel gimmicky at times. During the film’s darkest thematic material, the decision to reduce lighting makes sense in theory but results in scenes that are frustratingly difficult to see. But for a feature directorial debut, such technical quibbles feel slight.

Importantly, Purcell’s adaptation of The Drover’s Wife pulls off a cinematic experience. Never did I get the sense that I was watching the remake of a play. Considering the plethora of recent stage-to-film works that cannot say the same, that triumph did not go unappreciated.

Gender: 4/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

The Legend of Molly Johnson demonstrates the tenets of second-wave feminism in ways that feel distinctly worn. For example, the strength of our leading woman, Molly Johnson (Leah Purcell), derives from traditionally masculine traits: She wields a rifle with ease, gamely clenches her teeth through physical and emotional brutality, and at nine months pregnant with a litter of children already her prized treasures, she subscribes to the bible of maternal instinct. “Strong,” yes, but only by the most widely accepted expressions which value physical strength, stoicism, and fertility.

The second female protagonist, Louisa Clintoff (Jessica De Gouw), appears alluringly ill for the majority of the film even as she finds pockets of time to pursue a career in journalism. She also lacks dimension. Introduced as the wife of the town’s new sheriff, Louisa comes across as naive, and her passion in spreading awareness of the sort of domestic abuse that had destroyed her sister receives outsized emotional heft.

Call me jaded, but simply publishing two articles that highlight violence against women, without doing much to actually help victims, feels a bit toothless. This isn’t to diminish the important work of investigative journalism—rather, the dissonance takes place within the film itself. The injustices we see on screen are enormous. In contrast, Louisa’s actions, such as a late-movie protest where just five women gather wearing white dresses scrawled with vague phrases like “Hear Her!” and “Legislate Women’s Rights,” feel minuscule in scope. Yet the climactic timing of the scene, accompanied by mournful and uplifting orchestral strings, seem to suggest that viewers are meant to feel placated by such weak showings of solidarity.

It would be one thing if the original material included any mention of domestic violence, or even the deaths of any of its characters. But it doesn’t, which begs the question—for a modern remake, is this really how little we want to push? To depict abuse against women for the sake of recognizing that abuse against women is bad?

At the end of the day, it goes a long way that this story was penned and directed by a woman. But I can’t help feeling as if The Legend of Molly Johnson strives for far too little. Rather than argue for the humanity of women through symbolism and sacrifice, why can’t we simply render them as complex individuals living their best lives?

Race: 4.75/5

Much of the above critique goes double for its Indigenous characters. Flatly rendered and unnecessarily martyred, it’s wearisome to rehash centuries of oppression by restating the obvious: that white men, drunk on power, often commit atrocities against marginalized people.

Thankfully, Purcell does introduce one layer of dimension that elevates the film’s otherwise rote portrayal of racism. For starters, her own background as a Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman ensures that the Indigenous characters in The Legend of Molly Johnson are being crafted by someone with lived experience in the Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander community. While it should be noted that nearly all the characters who drive the storyline are light-skinned and white or white-passing, Purcell shares in her director’s statement that the decision was intentional:

The characters I bring to the screen are not stereotypical, ‘traditional looking’ Australian Aboriginals and this is a deliberate choice to show both my own people and the wider community that we are as diverse in looks as we are in ways.

Bearing this in mind, it makes sense that The Drover’s Wife capably sketches characters who traverse multiple identities, recognizing the fluid interplay that takes place with natural occurrences like migration or interracial relationships.

In the film’s most prominent Indigenous role, Tiwi actor Rob Collins plays Yadaka, a Guugu Yimithirr man adopted by a Ngarigo woman. While Yadaka’s character feels simplistic and his story arc ends in disappointing fashion, his detailed backstory does stand out. Yadaka isn’t just a blanket identity of “Indigenous.” He’s mixed-race with a white father and educated by a white man named Father Matthew. Yadaka’s primary caretaker was a Ngarigo woman named Ginny May, and it’s through Ginny May’s lineage where The Legend of Molly Johnson explores the nuances of colorism.

Specifically, Yadaka recounts the oral history of Ginny May’s sister, known as “Black Mary.” He describes her with “fire red hair, whitest g*n around,” noting that Mary’s fair skin was passed down to her children. As the small mysteries set up within The Legend of Molly Johnson play out, viewers watch as Mary’s descendants grapple with the blurred line between their white appearances and Black heritage. Code switching becomes a survival mechanism, and it’s interesting to watch as white-passing characters invoke their Indigenous ties to gain safe entry into a Ngarigo clan.

I only wish this level of sensitivity applied to the way characters are treated. While Purcell’s camera tastefully avoids ruminating on the trauma of Indigenous characters, their spoken stories of wholesale murder and systemic injustice feel carelessly interjected—used as shortcuts to engineer sympathy. That goes both ways; as unrewarding as it is to hear Black pain gratuitously detailed for not nearly good enough reasons, it’s just as unsatisfactory to see an idealized epilogue that depicts life among the Ngarigo people as a sun-drenched utopia, shot in slow motion with beaming residents whose diverse skin colors smack of a college brochure.

Unquestionably, the film succeeds at technical representation through Indigenous casting of key roles like Yadaka, Molly, and her children Danny (Malachi Dower-Roberts, Kamilaroi-Bundjalung) and Delphi (Amahlia Olsson, Yankunytjatjara Aṉangu). In addition, several minor but normalized Indigenous roles pepper the landscape as local residents and transients. However, deeper characterizations and more inventive story arcs would have improved their narrative representation. Rather than treat them as either tortured martyrs or guileless innocents, I wish the film’s Indigenous characters were given the grace to be human and flawed. In The Legend of Molly Johnson, no such wiggle room exists.

Bonus for Disability: +0.25

Credited as “Ring Mistress,” Pamela Tolentino appears briefly in two scenes. The Sydney actor, who is a little person and a woman of color, first shows up on a wooden stage in front of dark-skinned Indigenous men. A huge wooden billboard reading “Flo’s Fabulous Flock” looms behind them as the ring mistress shouts into a megaphone, “Give us your name, winner takes all!”

While this rowdy market scene alone wouldn’t have been enough to pick up a bonus for disability representation, given the tropiness of correlating little people with the circus, Tolentino’s later appearance among Louisa’s small group of five women who gather to protest a sexist verdict does give her some more dimension.

Mediaversity Grade: B+ 4.17/5

The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson crucially centers an Indigenous woman’s creative vision. But Purcell’s reliance on leveraging the pain of marginalized people as a marker of humanity feels outdated and detracts from its own ideals.

Like The Legend of Molly Johnson? Try these other westerns.

Grade: BLiMarch 18, 2021Female/Nonbinary Creator