Everyday Creative

Chapter FiveThe Courage To Feel

Activate your social, emotional and aesthetic intelligence

One of the greatest Australian films of all time took just five weeks to make, from idea to final edit. The Castle became an instant cult classic, grossing over $10 million at the box office and cementing its place within the Australian cultural landscape.

Set in the early 1990s, in an outer suburb of Melbourne, it tells the story of a working-class family (the Kerrigans) in a battle with big business. In a David and Goliath–style tale, the patriarch and lead protagonist, Darryl Kerrigan, fights his way to the Supreme Court to keep his family home from being bulldozed for a proposed airport development.

In one infamous scene, Darryl’s small-time-lawyer friend, Dennis Denuto (played by Tiriel Mora), is making their case in the first of many court appearances. Struggling his way through much of his appeal, Denuto’s closing statements have become the stuff of legend:

In summing up. It’s the constitution. It’s Mabo. It’s justice. It’s law. It’s … it’s the vibe.

I’m sure you’ve had moments like that at work. Struggling to express how you feel and why it matters. Fumbling and bumbling with the limits of language. Contorting your face, shrugging your shoulders, gesturing wildly with your hands, all in a failed attempt to articulate ‘the vibe’.

That misunderstood magic that is so palpable yet so intangible. So obvious yet so easy to overlook. So meaningful and yet so hard to measure.

But ...