Kings in Grass Castles 1997, 200 minutes, (Four tapes.)

This sprawling drama was filmed to be a mini-series for Australian television. Based on the memoir/biography by Mary Durack, it charts the struggle of her family patriarch (Patsy Durack) to establish his clan as a free, independent, and wealthy land holders.  It is also the story of Australian settlement and the creation of the Australian identity.

Plot Summary: In the late 1840s, the Duracks were dirt poor tenant farmers in Galway, Ireland suffering under British landlords and the potato famine. After the deaths of several family members, Patrick (Patsy) Durack forces his family to emigrate by refusing to pay rent to the British who destroy their home.  They sail to Australia where they have relatives, but soon after arriving logs fall on the family patriarch and kill him. Most of the movie focuses on how Patsy Durack the family patriarch.  He acquires wealth through gold fields and borrowing, until he eventually purchases land for his extended family.  However, Patsy is dominated by grandiose visions and sets out to establish a large ranch in Queensland where, despite drought, the family's fortunes eventually flourish and Patsy creates a cattle empire. When his sons grow up, he deeds them both a station in Western Australia (the Kimberley)--much to their protest--and when his sons have "troubles" with the aboriginals (because they have massacred them), Pats goes out to investigate leaving his brother in charge of his empire.  His brother over-extends their credit and their cattle empire crashes.  However, Patsy and his wife go to live with their sons.  The story ends with Patsy returning to Galway, Ireland and realizing that he is now Australian, not Irish.


Thematic Concerns:

The movie is unique in that an aboriginal man narrates the entire life of an Irish man from birth to death (problematic at best), but it allows the narrator to give a quiet, humorous commentary on the life of a man Patsy Durack who he claims was "his brother." My favorite line is when the major character (Patsy Durack) is comparing himself to Job, having lost everything. Burrakin, the narrator, asks him why God took everything from Job.
Patsy: "To show Job that he was God, and that Job wasn't." 
Burrakin: "Your god. He sounds like a white fella to me."
Although the original book emphasized the increasing prosperity of three generations of an Irish immigrant family that escaped oppression in Ireland, the increased presence of aboriginals in the movie shifts the work to becoming and articulation of the complex racial and class history of Australia and and straightforward facing of the irony that many European immigrants to Australia replicated the very oppressive conditions that they escaped in Europe. The various oppressions that the text notes are as follows:
1.  In Galway, Ireland, the English landowners force the Irish tenants to pay exorbitant rates for small tracks of land.  The Durack family rents a small plot (3 or 5 acres), but can barely pay for the rent.
2.  In the low country, Goulburn, New South Wales, the English oppress the Irish by making them sell their cattle through an auction where the English set the price. They also poison water holes and fire the settler's home
3.  In Thylungard, Queensland, Patsy (Patrick) Durack conquers/appropriates the land (symbolized by the driving the cattle into a water hole where the aboriginals were fishing for their food).
4.  The Kimberley,Western Australia. Patsy Durack gives each of his two sons a station in Western Australia. When they arrive, they “capture” an aboriginal woman for their sexual pleasure.  When the aboriginals fight to get their women back, the police come and kill the aboriginal peoples, shooting them in the head. . . the same type of massacre they did for/despite their father in Queensland.
Links

A History of County Clare, Ireland Emigration
Publicity Site for Stephen Dillane in Kings in Grass Castles