Review: In Stateless on Netflix, Cate Blanchett (and Immigration)

Cate Blanchett was an executive producer as well as the star of Hulus Mrs. America, but the multi-Oscar winner made his debut as a television producer when the Stateless miniseries premiered in Australia in March. She also created the six-part drama, with Australian writers Elise McCredie (a longtime friend) and Tony Ayres, and appears in a supporting role as a torch singer who leads her cult self-help racket. Dance School.

All this Blanchettness is a good thing, of course, it is excellently predictable as Pat, who happens to exercise his little singing and dancing talents in the service of the scam, and distorts an honorable Let’s get away from it all.

But it is also a case of wrong direction, because Stateless does not concern charismatic fraudsters, at least not directly. This is the troubled story of the mandatory detention system in Australia for visa-free immigrants, particularly the centers where asylum seekers are stored while their cases are being processed.

And while the series, available in the U.S. on Netflix from Wednesday, is well done, well played, and well intentioned, it’s probably less interesting as a social drama than as an example of what even the Cates Blanchetts of the world have to do to make a social drama.

The solution, in this case, is a four-part narrative, each part involving a lost soul washing in a detention center in a desolate part of southern Australia. One is an immigrant, Ameer (Fayssal Bazzi), an Afghan seeking asylum. The other three are white Australians: Clare (Asher Keddie), the new director of immigration at the center, essentially the director of what is a prison in all but his name; Cam (Jai Courtney), a local who occupies a relatively well paid guard post; and Sofie (Yvonne Strahovski of The Handmaids Tale), a troubled woman whose participation in worship leads her, through a series of lies and misadventures, to hold her in the center under a false name.

The disappearance of Sofie, an Australian citizen, in the detention system, her family has no idea what happened to her is the most equal among these equal discussions, and given current cultural trends, it is impossible not to not notice that a criticism of immigration policy is delivered largely through the story of a white woman’s dilemma. But before you jump into judgment, consider that Sofie is based on a real person, Cornelia Rau, and that it was the public shock of the imprisonment in Raus that finally triggered an investigation into the wrongful detentions. In this case, the form follows the madness of the government.

There is another solid argument for focusing on Sofie: Her story is where we can see not only Blanchett but also Dominic West, as the Pats’ predatory husband and business partner, Gordon, and Australian star Marta Dusseldorp (A Place to Call Home) as frantic sister of Sofies. The most interesting moments of the series occur in the first episodes when Sofie is attracted and then rejected by Pat and Gordon. West and Blanchett are particularly good in a scene where Gordon, suddenly realizing that Sofie has turned on him, stands up to denounce her publicly and Pat accompanies her improvisation perfectly.

The other converging stories of Stateless are credible and at times moving, but rarely surprising. The writers, McCredie and Belinda Chayko, bend over the tropes of the prison film. (Emma Freeman and Jocelyn Moorhouse directed.) Cam is the idealist beginner, facing a sadistic veteran (Rachel House). Clare is compassionate but takes a hard line to compensate for the perceived disadvantage of being a woman; his counterpart is the cynical director of the ‘s private security guards, played with engaging weariness by Darren Gilshenan (no activity). People include a silent lifer, looking away with his suitcase by his side, and a talkative nut job, among other familiar types of prison lessons.

Running in parallel are the fates of Sofie and Ameer fleeing from his family, trying to maintain his; she gave in to his delusions, fighting him to keep his reason. Bazzi and Soraya Heidari are fine like Ameer and his young daughter, but they are struggling with a rigid dialogue and a prefabricated nobility. As in so many stories of immigrants told by Westerners, characters from the Third World tend to speak as if they were schematizing each sentence in their heads.

There is a tinge of this kind of witty evidence across stateless people, in the way it strategically deploys the Australian legal designation of illegal non-citizens and satirically frames declarations of due diligence and the culturally appropriate treatment of detainees. And its finale, not surprisingly, offers sweet and sour catharses for the figures of Australian authority and a sentimental irresolution for the prisoners.

But there is also a current of humor in the representations of bureaucratic and disciplinary madness, especially in the first episodes. And from start to finish, the pleasure of first-rate casting is certainly another aspect of the Blanchett effect.