Inside, MIFF film review: an Australian prison movie poised on perfection

One of the hardest things to do in film is to say nothing at all and yet speak volumes. Think Glenn Close removing her makeup in the mirror as the ruined Marquise de Merteuil in Stephen Frear’s Dangerous Liaisons, or Riz Ahmed’s punk rock drummer losing everything he loves in Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal. Then there’s the remarkable Michelle Williams in four Kelly Richardt movies, from Wendy And Lucy through to Showing Up.

Conveying multitudes in a facial flicker or stolen glance is usually the mark of a seasoned actor. It’s quite the thing to witness this gift commanded by a freshly emerging actor like Vincent Miller. He brings a wounded frailty and the flinty possibility of violence to the role of Mel Blight in Australian writer/director Charles Williams’ striking feature debut Inside, which this week enjoyed its world premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF).

A young man seemingly cursed by nominative determinism, Mel (depicted as a boy by Raif Weaver) has, we gather through flashback, left another lad dead in a moment’s fury. Ageing out of juvenile detention, we follow him from a place where he receives rapturous applause on departure and into a maximum-security prison where he’s reduced to wide-eyed restlessness, surveying the escape routes like a small animal shivering with the effort of survival.

Set upon a well-trodden path to the wayside of life, a fork immediately presents itself.

Which way now?

Blighted by quietly fuming anger, Mel’s fortunes tumble further when he’s thrown into a cell with one of the country’s most notoriously unhinged criminals in Shogun star Cosmo Jarvis’ electrically kinetic Mark Shepard.

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Again affecting a bold accent choice, this time also with a crooked-mouthed lisp, Jarvis portrays Mark as a strange sort of fallen angel, shrouded in white and offering salvation as a tongues-twisting Pentecostal-style preacher calling down justice from the lock-up’s chapel. But is this Lucifer’s newfound faith hypocrisy or a true reckoning with his sins? Williams’ screenplay and Jarvis’ performance offer no clear answers – in the very best way.

Should Mel follow Mark’s evangelical path through a baptism of fire, or side with temptation in a devil’s bargain offered by a close-to-career-best Guy Pearce as inches from parole Warren Murfett, a shaggy bearded beast of the clinker. Pearce swaggers between easily combustible menace and an oddly paternal, though no less corrosive, guardianship.

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He tempts the younger man with thousands of dollars, offering a freshly hewn shiv to betray a trusting Mark, ensuring a longer stay but a glimmer of future security, however tenuous. But Warren’s not sure Mel has it in him, with the young man’s nervous energy manifesting through constantly fluttering eyelashes.

Miller is a wonder to behold in a role that, on one level, requires little more than limpid blinking, but, like the greats listed up above, requires plenty of work underneath, telling us more about Mel and the treacherous paths presented to him than any words could.

Death or glory?

Along with horror, crime fiction has become of mainstay of Australia’s filmic export business, which is both a curse and a blessing. How to stand out, rather than fall into formula? Much like the mould-reshaping shock of the Philippou brother’s Talk to Me or David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom, William’s Inside feels energetically fresh.

An already assured voice, Williams’ fifth shortform film, All These Creatures, brought home the Palme d’Or from the Cannes Film Festival in 2018. A multitude of gongs followed as it did the festival rounds, including picking up the MIFF prize for Best Australian Short, so expectation was circling his feature debut.

The tinder-kindling suffocation of prison is a prime bonfire-starting setting for stories about toxic masculinity and ever-wavering redemption, but these tales are ten a penny. Williams performs miracles, channelling Miller’s remarkable inner strength in navigating Mel’s limited options while allowing both Pearce and Jarvis to go larger without ever seeming too much – the latter sells a truly startling moment musing on the worth of the soul over flesh. Toby Wallace, so good in Acute Misfortune, is heartbreakingly broken as Warren’s estranged son.

There are no small roles here, with impeccably crafted bit parts ranging from the warden who formerly worked in childcare and exasperatedly wisecracks that corralling kids was easier, to the back and forth in the chapel between those there to kill time and those genuinely open to remorseful contemplation.

Even the internecine plotting of competing gangs plays out with weight, without too much foregrounding. Chiara Costanza’s score is sublime, as is Mick Boraso’s deft sound design that stitches non-linear timelines into a seamless whole. All three protagonist’s knotty lives are sewn into something remarkable so that when cinematographer Andrew Commis’s liminal visions coalesce into a sun dappled finale, Williams has convinced us the future is not fixed.

Inside is a film dealing in uncomfortable truths about violence that makes room enough for hope without that feeling like a cop-out.

Inside is currently showing at the Melbourne International Film Festival.