Eric Bana and Robert Connolly Are Back on the Case

Photo: Roadshow Films

In 2020, actor Eric Bana and director Robert Connolly got together to produce an adaptation of Jane Harper's celebrated debut novel, The Dry. The film followed Bana as Aaron Falk, a Federal Agent who returns to his hometown in regional Victoria to investigate the deaths of a childhood friend and his family. The collaboration spawned a superb and deeply Australian mystery, but no one could have predicted the phenomena it became. With stellar reviews and a shortage of Hollywood releases due to the ongoing pandemic, the film cleaned up at the domestic box office. It became the film everyone had to see and quickly rocketed to over 20 million dollars, making it the 14th-highest-grossing Australian film of all time.

In the immediate aftermath, Connolly turned his attention to adapting another adored Australian text, Tim Winton's Blueback, which featured Bana. But with Harper having written sequels, it was all but inevitable that the duo would give their agent a new case to solve. In 2022, they were confirmed to reunite once more for Force of Nature: The Dry 2. But while the title links to what came before, the film feels almost standalone in design. It removes Falk from the harsh climate of his past and places him in the wet mountain ranges on a hunt to find a missing informant. The sequel is a worthy extension of the first film, and its shift in setting vividly puts you at the mercy of the elements. Ultimately, it's another feather in the cap for what has undoubtedly become an iconic partnership in Australian cinema.

Following the film's world premiere, I was invited to speak with many of the key creatives involved, including Bana and Connolly. They told me about making their first sequel, the joys and challenges of working in a different terrain, and the new sides of the character they chose to explore. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CONNOR DALTON: Eric and Rob, it's such a pleasure to be speaking with you today. I believe the film we're here to discuss has the distinction of being the first sequel for you both.

ERIC BANA: Ha-ha!

ROBERT CONNOLLY: Very good! That's true.

BANA: Yeah, it's pretty rare. It's rare in the film world and even rarer in Australian cinema. But you're right; it was definitely my first.

CONNOLLY: The interesting challenge of making a sequel is that you've got to try and deliver aspects of the film that people loved about the first one, but also something completely unique and original so that it can stand alone. We were gifted Jane Harper's book because it's set in a completely different location and has this massively bold idea of these five women lost in the bush. So that originality was probably more of what drove us to it, really. 

DALTON: Given the two of you have such storied careers, it's funny to think this is your first time. For either of you, were there any films you were a part of that came close to having a continuation?

BANA: I can't recall one, no. I think just about every film I've been in has been very singular, so I've never gone into one thinking [about sequels]. Even with this, there was another book there that was possible, but we never once spoke about it whilst we were making The Dry. We were just so focused on trying to make the best film we could and then see what happens.

CONNOLLY: Paper Planes, actually, my kids film. A lot of pressure. It'd been a massive box office hit, and we just couldn't work out how to crack it. Everyone said, 'You got to make Paper Planes 2!' And we developed Paper Boats for a while (laughs) … Seriously!

BANA: (laughs) Yeah, I can see why that didn't work!

CONNOLLY: It didn't have the same kind of cachet, but that's the only time. 

DALTON: Coming back to the character of Aaron Falk, were there any different sides of him you wanted to explore, Eric? To me, he felt noticeably more desperate this time around.

BANA: Yeah, I think there's an element of … not a ticking clock, but you can see there's a bit more desperation. I feel like in The Dry, his background creeps up on him, whereas now we can see that he's already been faced with his past, and he's trying to work out other elements of himself. I think he feels really responsible in this storyline. The personal pressure is ramped up, and Jacqueline McKenzie does an amazing job as my co-star in that role. I think it's quite visible. 

CONNOLLY: You want to take your character further than in the first film. If you're going to do a sequel, you want to take them psychologically further, and I think Jane Harper's books really look into the grey area of what policing is. We've got a saturated world of crime drama on the small screen, and if you're making a cinematic work, it's ultimately got to be a psychological portrait, in some way, of the detective. So I love the way Eric actually was able to explore that more complex sense of why do I do what I do?

DALTON: Rob, this film takes things up a notch structurally. Whereas the previous film takes place in the aftermath of the crime and flashbacks of the past are inserted throughout, here you are constantly alternating between the retreat, the investigation, and a new set of flashbacks. How did you manage to intertwine all those threads so smoothly?

CONNOLLY: It's a challenge, but I love the way cinema treats time. I remember someone saying a third of the day, you think about the future, a third of the day, you think about the minute you're in, and a third of the day, you think about the past. That's how we live; we're not always in the present. Cinema captures that really well. You can tell a story and you can look into the future, you can look into the past, and you can entwine it. I love that. It is a challenge, but it's a delightful kind of adventure. 

I've got a great editing team and a great composer. It took a long edit, and some of the storytelling and plotting was tricky on the page, but Jane Harper's book handles that well, too. So there were often a lot of secrets to unlock how to tell the story that way by going back and looking at the book.

DALTON: Like the first film, the landscape of Force of Nature feels like a character in its own right. But instead of a drought-stricken regional area, your location is now far wetter and far greener. What was it like working with that terrain?

BANA:  It was a completely different physical challenge. It was much tougher than The Dry, there's no doubt. What the crew had to endure on this is the toughest I've ever seen a crew have to work in my career. But I think we also attracted a bunch of people who have spent many months working under false light in studios for countless hours who are drawn to the outdoors and being on location. We had no other way of attracting a crew other than that selling point. So we ended up with a really hardworking, physically tough crew in all departments who were excited about bringing to the screen the locations we were in. And nature is the best production designer, right? In terms of capturing where we were and Rob's eye for that kind of vista and detail was really exciting. Obviously, very physical, but every day the cast would sit there and go, 'This is frigging amazing, look at this, it's amazing' (pretends to freeze).

CONNOLLY: And it's a challenge because there's so much stuff people can watch at home on the small screen. How can you make works of cinema that you have to see in the cinema? The last three films I've done have all shot on large format cameras, IMAX level sensors, and big lenses, so that the films have to go deep into locations. You can't shoot in small, crowded spaces. You have to take the actors into locations that have never been filmed in before with these amazing cameras so you deliver on a promise to the audience, which is you have to see this at the movies. I almost feel like the success of the small screen has thrown down the gauntlet to filmmakers now, saying, 'Come on! Come on! Make it bigger! Make it better! Make it more epic!'

DALTON: When The Dry came out, it was really embraced by the Australian public at the box office. And the effects of the pandemic certainly played a part since it limited Hollywood releases at the time. But now that things have normalised somewhat, has that created different financial expectations for this film?

BANA: It's an interesting one because we saw with Barbie and Oppenheimer, there is no doubt that movies benefit by high traffic at the cinema. In some ways, it was more difficult for us with The Dry because even though there was less competition at the time, we know from box office history that you're better off with lots of people going to the cinema. Even if they're not going to see your film, they're more likely to come across it and then go and see it the following week. So time will tell, but healthy cinema, I think, is the best result for drawing good results. 

CONNOLLY: I agree. A lot of my friends in exhibition have said that over summer it's been really exciting because there's been a lot of films that people have been seeing rather than a big hit. Last year, Avatar was half the box office, but this year, about 10 films have made a little bit of money. So people are getting used to going to the movies again. I think, for us, the optimism is that people are going back to the movies and that COVID didn't kill cinema. It's very exciting.

DALTON: Well, guys, this has been great. Congratulations on the film. I do want to keep you on schedule, but I would forever regret it if I didn't ask if I could get a photo with the Incredible Hulk and the director of Paper Boats

BANA: (laughs) Absolutely! We insist. 

This article was originally published by FilmInk

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