The Year My Voice Broke: School bullies

Lots of schoolyard politics, which is used in the film like a mirror – the adults don’t behave any better in public situations, like the pub.

The Year My Voice Broke synopsis

Danny (Noah Taylor) is a gawky 15-year-old, in love with his best friend, the beautiful and free-spirited Freya (Loene Carmen). They’re misfits in a country town in NSW in 1962. When Freya falls for Trevor (Ben Mendelsohn), football star and apprentice delinquent, Danny’s sexual longing turns to jealous confusion. As he tries to win her back, Danny uncovers a dark secret in the town’s past.

The Year My Voice Broke curator's notes

Beneath its quirky story of coming of age in rural Australia, The Year My Voice Broke is a savage portrait of a small town hypocrisy and sexual repression. The beauty of the hills around the town, where Freya and Danny have played together since childhood, is a kind of paradise, in marked contrast to the unhappy living rooms below, where adult problems play out in secret shame. Writer-director John Duigan continually emphasises high and low angles of view and constructs a sense of paradise lost, with a strongly emotional core. The film is an unusual mix – both romantic pastorale, a nostalgic memoir of growing up in the countryside, and a shocking denunciation of its values. The latter was not especially new, but the film’s delicate balance of dark and light tone, especially its use of laconic humour (the mid-year dance, and Trevor’s constant car thefts) made the film very popular with audiences. Geoff Burton’s cinematography is of immense value in establishing a strong sense of place. The film was followed three years later by a sequel, Flirting, in which Danny, played again by Noah Taylor, goes to boarding school.

Notes by Paul Byrnes

Education notes

This clip shows Danny Embling (Noah Taylor) being tormented in the school toilets by bullies, who taunt him, saying that his love poetry has been found. Danny races into the playground to find another boy and girl sending up his poetry in front of an audience of other students. Danny is wrestled back to the girls’ toilets, where the bullies force his head into a toilet bowl and flush the toilet. An older boy, Trevor, (Ben Mendelsohn), enters, forcibly removes the bullies, takes them outside and slams their heads into a wall, to the enjoyment of onlookers. Freya (Loene Carmen) enters the toilets, where Danny is sitting dejectedly in a cubicle with the door closed, and asks if he is all right.

Educational value points

• The film The Year My Voice Broke has been applauded for its sensitivity to the heightened emotions of adolescence, particularly through its script, direction and acting. In this clip humiliation and bullying are portrayed as an integral part of school life, with Danny’s poetry being derided by a laughing crowd. The clip captures the intensity of adolescent emotion and vulnerability, especially if parts of the private self are revealed in public.

• The portrayal of apparently ideal places, periods or people as ugly or nightmarish is an important thematic component of the film and of Australian writer and director John Duigan’s oeuvre. Schooldays are often remembered or presented as 'the best days of one’s life’ and a time of carefree innocence prior to the challenges of adulthood, but Danny’s violent suffering reveals this as false. Rural life is often presented as being free of the hardships of the city but, while the surroundings may be idyllic, the trials for these young characters are severe.

• The clip demonstrates a contrast that is essential to the narrative and to the love triangle between Freya, Danny and Trevor. Danny is sensitive, vulnerable and a target for bullies, while Trevor is a hero yet borders on being a bully himself, dealing out rough justice to Danny’s attackers. In this clip the film cuts between Freya’s face and Trevor’s, suggesting their mutual attraction.

• Traditional Australian masculine values are critiqued in the clip. Sensitivity, creativity and artistic pursuits are seen to be derided, individual differences and talents are punished and conformity, physical strength, violence and aggression feature as successful strategies.

• The work of two of Australia’s talented male actors is showcased. Noah Taylor and Ben Mendelsohn have both achieved national and international success. While The Year My Voice Broke was only his second film, Taylor has now appeared in more than 35 productions, including Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), the controversial biography of Adolf Hitler Max (2002) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). Mendelsohn has appeared in more than 34 productions, achieving fame for his roles in the Australian hits Spotswood (1992) and Mullet (2001).

• The Year My Voice Broke is one of John Duigan’s most widely known and loved films. It won Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards in 1987 for Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor. Duigan’s films include Flirting (1991) the sequel to The Year My Voice Broke, and the Australian classic Dimboola (1979).

Education notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia