Limbo

A gaunt, grizzled Simon Baker stalks an arid, haunted alien wasteland in Ivan Sen's immense yet decidedly inward Limbo, an eerie, sorrowful Australian police procedural drama that unfolds in stark black and white against the unearthly backdrop of an opal mining town. Twenty years ago a teenage indigenous girl was murdered here, the killer never found. Baker is the cop called in to reevaluate the cold case, a man who has a past so troubling he takes heroin just to cope with the day to day. The locals initially seem less than willing to help given the neglect and indifference of the police overall in this forgotten region, but eventually the brother (Rob Collins) and sister (Natasha Wanganeen in one of the year's best performances so far) warm up to him and express long buried desire to find some closure. Closure doesn't exist in such an open, vast, lonely corner of the world though and the bizarre stone structures and desert dwellings seem to hold secrets in steadfast silence. Baker stays at a motel that is literally carved into a mineral structure underground, his room akin to being on the moon in terms of tone and atmosphere. He resembles someone like Bryan Cranston here, I'm so used to him as the glib clairvoyant dude on The Mentalist, to see him in such a quietly despairing, resolutely rugged characterization is jarring, but in a good way. He has clearly sacrificed a piece of his humanity for the work, and his journey through this hushed desolation almost beckons him to regain some of it by finding a few long hidden answers. Almost. It's a quiet, hypnotic tale unlike many other cop/killer mysteries, where meaning and significance are found in the wavering pauses between words and all the collective pain and confusion that ripples out from a crime like that can be seen in Wanganeen's ghostly, impossibly wide eyes as she, a relative unknown to me, gives some career best work in a fantastic film.

I have watched and do follow Australian TV and cinema and the likes of "Black Snow" and "Limbo" only seem to have scratched the tip of the iceberg in terms of racism... "Limbo" feels even more personal though. You can see it in the austere setting and cinematography, sparse dialogue, superb delicate and minimalist method acting, symbolism throughout... seems black and white, but there truly are far more shades of grey to start snowballing a real conversion which, in all fairness, never, in a million years, have I thought Aussies needed to tackle... At the end of the day, this IS a "whodunnit", but at a much larger scale... TOTALLY RECOMMENDED!

Ivan Sen's Limbo is a stark and poetic exploration of grief, justice, and memory, set against the haunting Australian outback. Shot in black and white, the film's minimalist style and sparse dialogue invite deep reflection, capturing the silence surrounding long-forgotten crimes.

As writer, director, cinematographer, and composer, Sen crafts an immersive and cohesive experience. Limbo isn't a typical mystery-it's a meditation on loss and the unresolved pain of marginalized communities.

A quietly powerful film that lingers long after it ends. Essential viewing for those who appreciate meaningful, thought-provoking cinema.

Limbo is a murder mystery, but more importantly, it is the story of prejudice, neglect, and discrimination.

A detective from the city (unwillingly?) came (to review a 20 yrs old cold case of the murder of an aboriginal girl) to a remote outback city fittingly named Limbo, coz the city as well as the residents seem to be in a perpetual state of limbo.

The motel, where he stays, the residence of key characters, and a few other buildings are repurposed (old & abandoned) opal mines, giving the city a medieval feel. The attitude of authorities (law and order) towards the majority aboriginal community is of racism and apathy and can be best described as medieval. This is also reflected in their profession, at least the way the investigation was done in this particular case. The key characters are also in a state of emotional limbo - the battered detective (with a failed marriage and an estranged kid) and the victim's siblings with the feeling of bitterness, frustration, and helplessness, are unable to move on in life due to the injustice done and lack of a closer.

The slow pace of the narrative, characters, and camera added with minimal dialogues and hauntingly beautiful black & white cinematography, especially the slow, panning, wide-angle drone shots at night, enhances this feeling and you feel that you are in limbo too.

Aside from the stunning cinematography and some convincing performances, This movie is a recycled crime noir half-baked from the clichés of the genre. The story just ticks off the tropes of a lonesome, emotional wreck sort of cop who gets too personally involved in a case. No real reasons are offered for the detective's emotional involvement nor the way he resolves the mess the victim's family is in. The bleak detective 1. Has a broken marriage, 2. An estranged son, and 3. The guilt of killing someone in the past. He also is a drug addict and his addiction plays no role in his major decision-making moments nor becomes a struggle to prevent him from performing his heroic actions.

--Spoiler Alert--- The story unfolds as the victim's family refuses to talk to the detective because he is a cop and a white one too. Now that the trope is ticked off and we have some conflicts arrayed, the plot jumps over resolving this conflict and simply have the family members, without any change in their external or internal circumstances, to not only cooperate with him but also see him as a dear friend to the point of confiding their utmost feelings or reaching out for help in their very messed up family matters. The story conveniently ignores the fact that such a degree of vulnerability can only be shared with someone who has earned that kind of trust, and it fails even to offer a single trope-driven scene to cover this point.

Moving on to the next trope, when the lonesome detective gets to play a saviour to the victim's brother while drunk driving and a shoulder to cry for the victim's sister when she suddenly confides her twenty-year-old guilt, we are to believe that a cop who himself finds refuge in drugs to run away from his own dark feelings is so adeptly capable of giving generous care and compassion to some strangers. While it is possible for an emotional wreck to empathize with others, in this case, we have a character whose choice for dealing with emotional upheavals is escape. If this approach is to change, we must see him going through a serious struggle to earn that sort of mental strength, but again the story simply lets him without paying any price to switch gear and offer a great deal of openness and courage.

Mentioned above are only a few issues, there are too many complaisant moments in this film that make it barely engaging, yet the overwhelmingly positive feedback given on this website (currently at %95) which I believe is mostly from Australian critics indicates one thing. We set a much lower bar for an Australian film.