Storyline
It’s Australia in the 1940s and things are already tense when a nine-year-old Aboriginal boy just sort of appears at this out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere monastery. The place is run by a nun who basically does her own thing (Cate Blanchett, naturally making it weird and fascinating). The kid’s arrival, honestly, messes with everyone’s heads. The nuns have their routines, their secrets, their fragile sense of right and wrong—all of that gets thrown into total chaos when this silent, watchful kid starts floating through their days. The story digs into deep stuff—faith, power, who belongs where, and what it even means to survive. There’s this wild push and pull between traditional beliefs and the forced religion of the place, so you get lots of moments where it feels like something’s about to break. The kid doesn’t say much, but he doesn’t really have to—the tension and the sense of being out of place are thick enough you could cut it with a knife. It’s not a comfortable watch, but it sticks with you.
