Warwick Thornton’s latest film sure is a strange one. In sheer stylistic bravado The New Boy matches, and in some ways exceeds, the great auteur’s previous works, which include Samson and Delilah and Sweet Country. But driven by a desire for symbolic heft, The New Boy becomes a cryptic and borderline impenetrable noodle-scratcher stuffed full of heavy religious imagery. Reportedly inspired by Thornton’s own upbringing as an Aboriginal child attending a Christian boarding school, the film revolves around a young Aboriginal boy (Aswan Reid), known only by the titular description, who is seized by police in the 1940s and taken to an orphanage located in the back of beyond.
