n.  Hugo Weaving ~ Exile

AU Mini Series 1993
Reviewed Version: Edited, Feature-Length Version for US Market
96 mins     Hugo Weaving Content 3%
Character: Innes ~ taciturn Scottish settler in 1800s Australia
Cast: Peter Costello    Aiden Young, Mary    Beth Champion, Jean    Claudi Karvan, Timothy Dullach   David Field ,  Ghost of a Priest  Norman Kaye, the mainland Priest   Chris Haywood,  MacKenzie (Jean's husband) Nicholas Hope , Jean's father   Tom Lewellyn-Jones , Sherrif Hamilton Barry Otto , Innes    Hugo Weaving , Midwife    Gosia Dobrowolska (who was also the costume designer)
Dir: Paul Cox   Wri: Paul Cox
Availablity: not available in UK. Edited feature length video available in US (Amazon Z-Shops, half.com etc.).
Hugo Weaving, Exile, Hat

Hugo Weaving: Exile Plot/Comments:

Beautifully shot and unfolding at a leisurely snail's pace, this miniseries (based on EL Grant Watson's book, Priest Island) features an incredible Australian cast, whose parts have all but been cut out of this heavily edited feature-length version.
      Peter Costello (Aiden Young) is spared the death penalty and exiled to an uninhabited ~ and seemingly uninhabitable ~ island, where he is made 'outside the law' and banished from society to spend the rest of his life alone. His crime? Stealing a handful  of sheep to increase his stock to the level needed  to marry upper class Jean (Claudia Karvan), later found pregnant with his illegitimate child and given a shotgun wedding to the charitable MacKenzie.

Scared, confused and utterly alone, Peter manages a meagre survival on the island while coming to terms with increasingly overpowering hallucinations. His isolation is eventually broken by the unwelcome arrival of Mary, a servant and social outsider with romantic delusions, who breaks the banishment by offering herself to the seemingly glamorous outlaw figure. 
     When she unwittingly becomes trapped with him, Peter is forced to come to terms with the intrusion and her dependence on him. As they inevitably grow closer, his hallucinations intensify, and when Jean finally comes to the island to be with him, he rejects the woman he sacrificed his freedom for as just another illusion.

With very little background music and effective use of natural sound (especially the constant murmur of wind and sea), shot in Tasmania's Freycinet National Park, with what looks like a blue filter, Exile is beautifully crafted. 
     However, the varied characters which make up the contrast to Peter's world have been almost totally cut out in this feature-length version: Barry Otto's emotional, decent, helpless Sherrif Hamilton; Claudia Karvan's deserted Jean; and (most notably) Hugo Weaving's taciturn Innes, have been utterly slashed. 
    It's a possibility that Otto and Weaving got involved as a favour, to give the financial backing more clout: they appear very low down in the credits. Maybe they were only cameos in the miniseries, too. 
Hugo Weaving, Exile, bar

Exile Gallery
Next: Frauds 
Back: The Custodian
Web Weaving 

From the presskit, Jean was shown to be the real exile: isolated from the community both by her sin and her being from an upper class family; isolated from the man she loves and trapped in a marriage to a much older man who doesn't understand her. However, because Karvan's part has been  cut down so much, we never get time to care about the tragic relationship which was the cause of both Peter's exile and his torturous hallucinations.

 The feature length version concentrates almost soley on Peter, with Aiden Young carrying around 95% of the film alone. He has an incredibly open face and his excellent  performance is emotive, vulnerable and damaged.

It's impossible to weigh up the success of Exile as a miniseries from this version. However, all indications point to an incredibly high quality, thoughtful production.
The feature length edit has an equally high pedigree and it's a brave attempt at showing the utter isolation of one character. For this reason, it's possibly more 'arty' than the miniseries might have been: 'interesting' rather than 'gripping'.

Hugo Weaving content: 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

From the edited version, we really have no idea who Innes is, his place in the story or the cause of the apparently angry, betrayed and intense close up given when Innes is one of the handful of men  who see Peter into his exile.
     His only other remaining scene is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it one-liner asking after Peter and whether he was angry that someone had acquired his confiscated sheep. 
Hugo Weaving, Exile, Hat

Trainspotter Comments and Queries:
 
  • Barry Otto, co-starred in The Custodian, with Weaving as his nemesis.Gosia Dobrowolska also appeared in The Custodian. Norman Kaye appeared in Bangkok Hilton and Bordertown.Aiden Young was the younger version of Weaving's father in After the Deluge , though they have no scenes together. See The Usual Suspectsfor a huge list of recurring Weaving co-workers.
  • Beth Champion also appeared in The Seven Deadly Sins. Weaving was in the Lust section of this miniseries. She also has a cameo in Reckless Kelly .
  • Was this filmed before or after  That Eye, The Sky ?