I found it a moving story of love and innocence on the one hand and ignorance, prejudice and bigotry on the other. All the actors from Piper Laurie and Mel Gibson to the Australian actors who played the deeply loving parents and the bigot sister and husband were simply great. I have rarely seen Mel Gibson acting better after this movie. Compliments for the director. The most wonderful but also saddest thing about this movie was that Gibson grew from an almost tabula rasa mind to a person with more grasp of what the world is about. Thanks to the loving guidance of Laurie he learned to read and appreciate art and music. But it also lead him to understand more of the complexity and sometimes ugliness of people. I would love to see it again. Even though I have seen it twice . Of course looking at a young and beautiful Mel Gibson does not hurt.