Above : Jack Thompson plays the silkiest of silks, Bob Myers. Featured photo- Sara West plays the gutsy main character, Lyndel.
DON’T TELL is the kind of film that makes audiences “do tell” and strong word of mouth should launch this splendid court room drama into the box office success it so richly deserves.
Sara West is superb as Lyndal, a young woman at crisis point, desperate to be heard and needing to be believed. A decade ago, she was sexually abused by a teacher at a school run by the Anglican Church.
The vile experience together with the bottled up anger, guilt, and fear has derailed a life on track for a stable and productive life.
After ten years of troubled existence, Lyndal must tell of her experience, must publicly dispel her appalling sentence of silence to have any semblance of a normal life.
Estranged from her family and with only a small window left to bring her case to trial before she turns 22, Lyndal returns to the Queensland town of Toowoomba for the first time in 11 years where she seeks counsel from local lawyer Stephen Roche.
With the help of freshly minted lawyer, Jodie Collins, and the bluff barrister Myers, he obsessively sets out to build a case against the Anglican Church establishment, and the office of newly appointed Governor General Peter Hollingworth.
Like the current court room thriller, Denial, DON’T TELL is an undeniably gripping drama concerning the slippery, serpentine swamp of litigation where the pursuit of justice is navigated by strategy rather than truth and moral certitude.
DON’T TELL is also about the conspiracy of the rich to oppress the poor. It’s about the inaction of those who should have acted. It’s about how easy it is for evil to triumph, even under the protection of God and Church. It’s about institutionalised denial and neglect.
These themes are all brought to erudite eloquence by a sterling screenplay by James Greville, Ursula Cleary and Anne Brooksbank, based on the book Don’t Tell By Stephen Roche.
The power of the writing and the gravity of the subject has attracted a stellar cast.
Aden Young slow burns as Stephen Roche, the reluctant advocate of Lyndal’s litigation against the Anglican Church. His championing chafes at a domestic situation that is perilously close to penury, a precariousness beautifully realised in his scenes with Leeanna Walsman as his concerned but ultimately supporting spouse.
In a performance reminiscent of the power and passion deployed in his role as the defending attorney in Breaker Morant, Jack Thompson is the silkiest of silks, Bob Myers.
Rachel Griffiths as Lyndal’s crusading counsellor, Joy, is a tower of empathy and empowerment.
Martin Sacks and Susie Porter are heartbreaking as Lyndal’s parents, as much victims of this atrocity as their daughter, shamed, shattered, and shocked into a guilt edged paralysis.
Ashlee Lollback impresses as the eager beaver legal eagle, Jodie Collins, while Jacqueline McKenzie is forensically ferocious as the Church’s brilliant, burrowing barrister.
And Kim Knuckey is the epitome of entrenched self eminence as Peter Hollingworth.
Director Tori Garrett doesn’t tell, she shows, how perseverance and personal integrity united can take on the might and power of Goliath entities.
DONT’ TELL does tell of a landmark in Australian civil litigation that would eventually lead to a royal commission into the sexual abuse of children in the institutions that were supposed to care for them. It put a spotlight on church, secular and state institutions that illuminates transgressions to this very day.