TV Feature: The Silence

Two of Australia’s biggest names in cinema – Somersault director Cate Shortland and in-demand actor Richard Roxburgh – team up for the striking TV crime drama The Silence. By James Mitchell.

While you’ll only see it on your television screens, don’t be surprised if The Silence, the new ABC mini-series from Somersault director Cate Shortland has you convinced you’re perched in a cinema.

It’s another in a growing line of television dramas – think Love My Way and Remote Area Nurse - with a depth of character, nuanced script and high production values that rival any quality film.

It’s no surprise then that a top notch team of Australian cinema are attached to the production. Shortland reteamed with Somersault collaborators, the producers Jan Chapman and Anthony Anderson while Richard Roxburgh (Moulin Rouge!), Essie Davis (Girl with a Pearl Earring) and Emily Barclay (In My Father’s Den) lead a talented cast.

The Silence tells the story of Richard Treloar (Roxburgh) a Sydney police detective still reeling from the gruesome death of an informant and now relegated to curating an exhibition of crime scene photos from the 1960’s at a Police and Justice museum.

Added to that, he’s facing a relationship on the skids and has to endure enforced counselling sessions in an attempt to get his old job back. As the photos become his obsession, one crime begs to be solved leading Treloar on his own journey of self discovery.

While it may sound like just another police drama, The Silence is a taut, strikingly atmospheric production that expertly weaves murder mystery, relational drama and film noir into one striking whole.

For Roxburgh, the decision to return to television after compelling performances in 2002’s The Road from Coorain and Blue Murder was heavily influenced by The Silence’s script and talented director.

“I thought it was a really complex script, really quite tense,” he says “It was a script that had obviously had a

lot of work done on it. That’s pretty rare. Also the fact that Cate and Jan were involved in it. I really admired what Cate brought to Somersault.”

Roxburgh’s role, says Shortland was far more challenging than she’d envisaged.

“He brought a real fire to the role,” says Shortland. “He didn’t want the character to be passive and neither did I. Part of the reason it’s called The Silence is because his character doesn’t speak or can’t speak about his feelings. 

"It was kind of a struggle. Richard’s incredibly smart and nothing was easy because he wanted to be pushed. He said to me ‘I want to be vulnerable’. He’s not usually vulnerable in his roles.”

In a powerhouse performance which is amongst the actor’s best, Roxburgh believes it was Shortland’s craftiness that contributed to his getting under the skin of the emotionally muted Treloar.

“I had a really strong contract with Cate from the beginning,” says Roxburgh. “She knew where she was allowed to take it, that I was happy to be pushed around a bit. She’s a very psychologically crafty director.

“On a few occasions in the middle of a scene she would either whisper something to me, or to the actor I was working with. She would slightly change the situation and throw a depth charge into the middle of it that surprised either me or the other actor. There were pretty terrific results from that. She’s a very clever director.”

Roxburgh, no stranger to police related characters – he played infamous dirty cop Roger Roberson in Blue Murder and can be seen as a detective alongside Toni Collette in the forthcoming Like Minds – was intrigued by the psychological stress endured by policemen.

“I’d met a couple of police officers for this project,” he says.

"There was one officer in particular who had to leave the force because of trauma and so meeting him and talking to him about what he went through was a revelation in the way that he dealt with it and the way the police force dealt with it.

“You really go through all the phases of grief that you go through when somebody close to you dies, this whole period of uncontrollable depression, rage.”

But Roxburgh says he learnt not to bring the angst of his character home.

“What I find now, and this is quite interesting, is the only time I take angst home with me is when I think the project is crap,” he laughs.

“That is really when I go home with a lot of angst.”

Indeed, the gifted actor has had plenty of call for home-angst appearing in forgettable Hollywood popcorn flicks from Mission Impossible 2 to the vapid Stealth and his most prominent role as Dracula in the horrifically awful Van Helsing. At least on that production he met his now wife, Italian actress Silvia Colloca.

“Everything has a silver lining,” Roxburgh says diplomatically.

“Although I would temper that by saying not everything! Playing a detective concurrently is infinitely better than “playing the undead,” he quips.

The actor and budding director is heavily in the midst of refocusing his attention on passion projects such as his feature directing debut Romulus My Father which begins shooting this month with Eric Bana.

“I hope I don’t fuck that up!” he laughs.

Asked whether he hopes to spend more time behind the camera he replies;

 “I’d be asking me that in three months time! What I can say is that I absolutely love it so far.”

So don’t expect Roxburgh to pop up in any dire Hollywood fare any time soon.

“It’s just that I’ve come to a point now where I’ve been there and felt the pain of doing projects that I didn’t believe in,” he reflects.

“Even though those projects might be allowing you enough security to do things that you dearly love, there’s a lot of pain involved in that. It’s a real trade off. I’ve found that a genuine conflict at times.

“Whereas with something like The Silence, I thought ‘No matter what I have to go through when the cameras are rolling, at least I can go home thinking this is a beautiful story’.”

This is an edited extract of a feature first published in Filmink Magazine, May 2006.