War has become an obsession in the Australian national consciousness, particularly stimulated by conservative politicians looking to replace more progressive mythology surrounding outback union organising. This process has been combined with a genuine need to commemorate the tens of thousands of Australians that perished in the two wars that defined the earlier 20th century. And yet ANZAC mythology remains fixated on the First World War, and Gallipoli in particular. A thoroughly imperial war for Britain’s dubious interests still has a greater hold on our imagination than the horrors that Australians endured fighting Japanese imperialism in our own hemisphere in the Second World War.
But the human cost of the horrors of the War in the Pacific, and the moral morass that this ‘war without mercy’ remains, are an important thing to contemplate. Asking questions about this war forces us to confront our relationship with war in general. How do we, rightfully, recognise and remember the suffering Australians endured in Rabaul and Papua, on the Thai-Burma railroad and the Sandakan death marches? How do we simultaneously confront the horrific atrocities Australian soldiers themselves committed — often in reprisal to the brutality of the Imperial Japanese Army.
In Journey to the End of the Night (1982), Australian director Peter Tammer attempts to grapple with these questions. The short documentary is deeply affecting in its simplicity, Tammer presents no archival footage, and includes no expert interviews. Suddenly this is not really a film about the war after all, but about how the war is remembered. It centres around Australian Pacific War veteran Bill Neave, who survived the Australian defeat at the 1942 battle of Rabaul, and the gruelling escape across the island of New Britain. Neave was fortunate to escape — a fact he repeatedly wrestles with all throughout — while around 1000 Australians were captured by a much larger Japanese force. As Tammer explains in a muted introductory text panel, at least 160 of those taken prisoner were murdered in the brutal Tol plantation massacre, and another 800 or so were killed when the Japanese transport ship Montevideo Maru was torpedoed by an American submarine.
It is the memories of this survival, and as revealed later, the memories of reciprocal atrocities committed by Neave himself, that haunt the soldier’s psyche. Tammer’s approach is unique: the documentary consists of a silent camera watching Neave recount his part of dialogue that took place during the war 40 years later, interspersed with scenes of Neave and his family going about their day. This makes for an intensely personal experience focused on memory as opposed to fact. In short, we only see Neave’s side of the story, and how he attempts to understand what he has experienced and done.
This makes it an exceedingly confronting documentary. Neave repeatedly breaks down as he recalls difficult conversations with dead mates. In particular, Neave’s recount of his friend George’s death from illness during the arduous trek through the jungles is deeply affecting. Many scenes focus on Neave’s tears — including the opening moments of the film, featuring the veteran crying before a cenotaph. Additionally, an emotional rendition of “Danny Boy” on the piano, a song George taught Neave during their escape, builds Neave as a sympathetic figure. Neave’s recount of finding a dead Australian soldier — his throat slit by a Japanese knife in an act of execution, and the photographs of his family still on his corpse — also contributes to an affirmation of Australian innocence and ‘civility’ in the face of Japanese brutality.
This makes for particularly troubling viewing when, in the last act, Neave begins to unpack his own role in atrocities. After spending 45 minutes constructing a narrative of victimhood and survival around Neave, Tammer places sections of the audio diary in which Neave confesses to the murder of two wounded Japanese soldiers, along with the conspiracy to murder an unreliable Papuan.
Neave breaks down as he pleads with God for forgiveness, and invokes his parents as not raising him to be a murderer. He confesses that he could’ve saved the Japanese soldier, but instead he bayoneted the young man to death — an act committed not in “cold blood,” but allegedly in the passion of rage. We learn that Neave himself was ostracised in the recuperation hospital following rumours of the murders, and subsequently faced a military investigation.
This complexity is the strength of the film; by placing Neave’s memory on display, Tammer interrogates our own collective memory of the war. There is no doubt that Imperial Japan was singularly brutal in their conduct of the War in the Asia-Pacific, particularly in China and South-East Asia, where violence was genocidal in scale. However, Australian conduct in the Pacific should also be interrogated. Despite the efforts of Australian conservatives, our soldiers were not saints. Australian troops have committed atrocities in every war they have fought, and the Pacific was no exception. Refusal to accept Japanese surrender, the murder of Japanese prisoners and an attitude of extreme hatred were rife in the Australian army in the Second World War. This hatred is still visible in Bill Neave, 40 years later, who maintains that he still doesn’t trust “the Japanese,” and that “they’d do it again” if they could.
Tammer, by building sympathy in Neave and then directing the viewer to confront his war crimes, builds a microcosm of Australian war remembrance that all Australians should reconsider in the age of Ben Roberts-Smith. Tammer also forces us to ask how we level the genuine and necessary memorialisation of Australian suffering, sacrifice and achievement with a recognition of our role in perpetuating suffering, brutality and death outside the normal, ‘legal’ contexts of war.
As a result, this is a troubling and exceptional film beneficial for contemporary public discussion. It is possible to remember and respect both narratives — a fact seemingly lost on those who continue to rally to the defence of war criminals in the wake of revelations of a persistent culture of atrocity in the Australian SAS’ conduct in Afghanistan. Tammer’s Journey to the End of the Night is an excellent starting point for figuring out exactly how to do that.
Journey to the End of the Night (1982) is playing at the Cinema Reborn Festival which is screening restorations of classic films at the Ritz Randwick. Click here to access the 2024 program, running from May 1-7.
Student prices for tickets to the 2024 Cinema Reborn Festival have been set at $15.00.