The Beach

'Shot with a small crew in April and May last year, the series captures the acclaimed film-maker – who is the only human presence on screen – practising isolation before it was cool (or compulsory). 

“It’s a romantic idea of self-isolation,” Thornton tells Guardian Australia, “with lots of hunting and gathering, some tears, and a bloke standing on a beach near a bush shack that looks like it’s from a beautiful novel. It’s kind of romantic fiction. It’s Mills and Boon for blokes! With bull catchers, vintage Green River knives and a bunch of chickens to spill your guts to.”

In fact The Beach often feels more like slow TV, with a calming and meditative quality – albeit a tendency to change tones unexpectedly. It is full of conceptually simplistic but ravishing images captured by the cinematographer, Thornton’s son Dylan River – boots in the sand, crabs scurrying along the beach, an upright guitar rocking in the wind next to an open door…

The Beach evokes powerful sense of presence: as if we too have travelled to that lovely, slightly rustic shack.'

Luke Buckmaster in The Guardian, 28 May 2020