Mabo

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Mabo is a 2012 Australian film focusing on Eddie Mabo's fight for the recognition of Aboriginal Land Rights. It premiered on ABC on the 10th of June, 2012. Notable for being the first well funded and widely broadcast film to deal with Aboriginal Land Rights, without it being an allegory told through white, lower-class larrikins.

The director also made Bran Nue Dae, which too deals with Aboriginal rights but through song.

Tropes used in Mabo include:
  • Australian Accents - Broad and Aboriginal accents are featured.
  • As You Know - several characters exposit on things they should both know, including the Aboriginal Protection Act.
  • Archive Footage - news reports, interviews and protests interspersed with the actors.
  • Biopic
  • Crowning Music of Awesome - a lot of the score, especially the traditional indigenous chants.
  • Hey, It's That Guy! - Miranda Otto pops up as an English judge, and Deborah Mailman, who plays Eddie's wife, has been in what feels like half of Australia's media output including The Straits, Bran Nue Dae, Play School and The Secret Life of Us.
  • Foregone Conclusion - every Aussie knows the ending - Eddie succeeds, dies of cancer and though it's not shown, his grave gets graffitied by racists.
  • Scenery Porn - The Torres Strait Islands, within universe to Eddie, but oddly averted considering the director's previous work, Bran Nue Dae.
  • Tear Jerker - he can't go back to the islands when his dad gets sick and dies.
    • Eddie waiting for a beer in a segregated pub, or when they can't find a hotel room (implied to be because they're black) they have to sleep at the train station, with their toddler son.