The director John Hillcoat kicked off his career with a sledgehammer to the senses in 1988’s Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead, a high impact prison drama that explores the dehumanisation and institutionalisation of inmates in a maximum security “containment facility” located somewhere in the desert in the not-too-distant future. Hillcoat’s subsequent films also conjure up visions of violent and disturbed worlds but are broader and more accessible, including 2005’s The Proposition, 2009’s The Road and 2012’s Lawless.
The screenplay was inspired by In the Belly of the Beast, a collection of letters written by American criminal-cum-author Jack Henry Abbott. He became a star on the literary scene after being released from a long stint in prison in the early 1980s but was far from rehabilitated: after six weeks as a free man, Abbott stabbed a waiter to death, went back inside and committed suicide in 2002.
Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead is introduced as a story “based on actual events that occurred in ‘new generation’ prisons”. What keeps it just as relevant, perhaps more so, now as on its release is Hillcoat’s scathing critique on the privatisation of prisons and detention centres. Intellectually the film’s themes remain remarkably prescient; emotionally it charters the dark side of the human condition with unnerving depth.
The film is less a story than a collection of hard-edged vignettes. They take place in Central Industrial Prison, a facility designed to house the most violent and unmanageable criminals. Text intertitles explain for the past 37 months the prison has existed in a state of permanent lockdown.
Despite an impersonal factory-like look – like a pared-back and dirtied-up version of Logan’s Run or a more colourful THX 1138 – Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead is full of moments of male pathos. Via voiceovers laid on top of grim faces, the inmates reflect on their lives and explain their backstories. The monologues are captivating but spurious; in the vein of an unreliable narrator they are bound by the characters’ less then subjective views of themselves.
The cast is a mix of professional actors (including David Field, Vincent Gil and Bogdan Koca) and real-life ex-cons. They make potentially heavy-handed lines such as “nobody is ever free; one person released so they can imprison the rest of the world” feel achingly personal. There is a brutal lyricism to the screenplay that syncs perfectly with the cast. Instead of lashings of extreme violence desensitising audiences, the impact remains high largely because the emotional core of the film feels raw and genuine.
About one hour into the running time, Nick Cave arrives on the scene and virtually blows it apart. The musician, writer and occasional actor (who also worked on the screenplay) has a small but terrifying role as a psychotic racist whose linguistic ability entirely consists of yelling the filthiest of insults. His pastimes include decorating walls with vile pictures painted using his own blood.
At one point, guards arrive for a spot check dressed in black and wearing bike helmets. They resemble police from François Truffaut’s 1966 adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or faceless authority types we imagine might patrol the streets of George Orwell’s 1984. The slightly dystopian feel of Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead feeds into broader and more ambitious Orwellian-type messages: we discover, for example, that Central Industrial Prison is less about rehabilitation than sustaining a business model.
In the era of Serco and its $3bn government contract to run Christmas Island and seven other onshore Australian detention centres, that’s a particularly salient message. More than two and a half decades on, Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead remains the ultimate Australian prison drama – memorable for its brutality and unforgettable for its tough but nuanced depictions of institutionalised people.
