The New Boy tells the story of an Aboriginal boy who’s sent to a Catholic orphanage to master the civilizing rigors of religion and society. This brief description might lead. you to expect a message movie about the abuses Australian culture has inflicted on indigenous people.
Set during the 1940s, The New Boy meets some of our expectations but winds up taking a more ambitious look at the innate spirituality of a boy (Aswan Reid) who upsets life at an isolated Christian school run by Sister Eileen (Cate Blanchett).
Writer/director Warwick Thornton mixes straightforward drama (the new boy adjusting to life in an orphanage) with mysterious events that dip into the supernatural. The unnamed boy heals wounds. He also summons light by rubbing his fingers together.
The unnamed boy also develops a strange fascination with Jesus. At one point, a wooden carving of Jesus on the cross winks at him from the altar of the orphanage's modest church. To further underscore the suggestion that the boy and Jesus may be kindred spirits, the boy also develops stigmata.
Blanchett, working again in her native Australia, effectively makes it clear that Sister Eileen doesn't know what to make of any of this. Neither, for the most part, do we — or perhaps I should refer only to myself.
Thornton mixes Christian imagery with a primal poetry that makes it seem as if a film full of period detail might be taking place in an indeterminate and timeless zone. Thornton may be trying to tap into the wellsprings of spiritual experience, which -- in western societies - can be lost and which the boy seems to possess naturally.
It's an interesting enough idea but American viewers may feel culturally distanced from an odd and sometimes mysterious film that can leave us puzzling over what it's trying to say.