Breaker Morant takes the form of a courtroom drama, with flashbacks revealing the incidents that have led up to the trial. The setting of the film emphasises the sense of isolation for the characters and their detachment from civilisation. The trial takes place in an improvised, Spartan courtroom in a small, dusty town. The use of the courtroom scenes allows British justice to be placed on trial, while the use of the small town evokes the mise-en-scène of the western genre and a sense of ‘frontier justice’. Scenes which portray the Bushveld Carbineers in action are framed to emphasise the scale and drabness of the surrounding countryside, consisting mainly of the vast foothills of the high veldt. In these flashback sequences, only three buildings are ever seen. While one of them serves as a headquarters for the unit, the other turns out to be filled with Boers waiting in ambush, while the third is simply a burned-out ruin. The bleak surroundings ofthe front line soldiers are sharply contrasted with the beautiful colonial mansion in which the British commander, Lord Kitchener, has his headquarters.

The highly dramatised scenes in which Boer commandos assault the town where the trial is being held – featuring Boers hurling dynamite and the accused officers being released from their cells in time to heroically man a machine gun – are the exception to the general bleakness of the battle sequences, emphasising the difficulties and isolation of guerrilla warfare. The action in which Captain Hunt iswounded while leading an attack compromises a tense advance in the pre-dawn light that blunders into an ambush. The fighting lasts just a few seconds before the Australians are forced to retreat in confusion, leaving Hunt behind. The second action, in which Morant leads the unit in a surprise attack on the Boer camp, is fought at dusk across muddy, rain-slicked ground. The entire scene lasts less than a minute, with the perspective changing rapidly from the Australians to the Boers and back again, conveying some of the confusion of combat to the viewer.

The accused officers are portrayed as having different characteristics. Morant is seen as a tough, resourceful officer who is doing what is necessary in a confused war zone and has approval for his actions from higher ranks. Witton is shown as a naive young imperial patriot, drinking a toast to the Empire prior to his departure for war. He is prepared to die for the Empire, and the fact he is ultimately sacrificed by the British is tinged with irony. The destruction of his idealism is concluded by the end of the film, when a long, silent shot of his distraught face reveals his sense of bewilderment and betrayal. Handcock is the archetypical ‘larrikin’, embarrassing stuffy British officers with his openness about relationships with married women and signing his final letter before his execution with ‘Australia Forever, Amen’.

The film does not attempt to prove the innocence of the officers, and the flashback sequences reveal that they have in fact committed the crimes of which they stand accused. It is only through questioning the fairness of the trial and of British justice that audience sympathy can be elicited for Morant and his fellow officers, who by modern definitions are guilty of war crimes.  To this end, it is made clear throughout the film that the accused are being set up by the British authorities. The British prosecutor, Major Bolton, is portrayed as an arrogant legal expert under pressure from Lord Kitchener to secure a conviction. Conversely, the Australian defence counsel, Major Thomas, is a solicitor with no experience beyond writing wills, who is only given details of the case two days before the trial begins.  Upon hearing this news, Handcock remarks bitterly ‘They are playing with a double-headed penny!’

With the exception of Captain Alfred Taylor, an officer who had served with the Carbineers, the British characters in the film are portrayed in negative terms, lacking respect for the Australian contribution. At a dinner party, an officer wonders aloud if such an incident ‘Could have happened with any contingent but Australians?’ When it is pointed out that Morant was born an Englishman, the same officer replies ‘He’s been out there fifteen years and learnt all their bad habits!’ Lord Kitchener is portrayed as a conniving figure, eager for the accused to be convicted regardless of evidence and arguing that the ‘sacrifice’ of the Australians is a small price to pay if it leads to a peace conference with the Boers.  Kitchener’s machinations ultimately lead to him telling his Chief of Staff Colonel Hamilton to lie to the court to ensure a conviction.  The double standards being applied in the case are revealed late in the film, when Captain Taylor, also accused of killing prisoners, informs his co-prisoners that he will be spared as he is a British intelligence officer and thus valuable, whereas Morantand the other Australians ‘won’t be missed’.

There is a certain amount of evidence to support the portrayal of the trial and the attitude of the British authorities.  Some British officers were genuinely concerned at the apparent breakdown of military discipline in the guerrilla war in South Africa, particularly amongst colonial contingents.  Equally, the shooting of Boer prisoners took place in number of units, and appears to have had a degree of official sanction (Bridges, 1987, 28). Douglas Haig openly stated in a diary entry in September 1901 that any Boers captured while wearing khaki were ‘shot at once’ (Scott, 2006, 196).

However, other details are distorted in the desire to make a more nationalistic film.  The prosecutor, Bolton, is portrayed as a highly talented legal expert, deliberately selected to secure a conviction.  In reality, he had virtually no formal training and found the task of prosecuting three officers on murder charges so onerous that he requested several times to be relieved of the duty (Kirschke, 2008, 50).  Equally, the defence counsel, Major Thomas, was a jingoistic imperial patriot who vocally advocated extreme methods of suppressing the Boer insurgency, and caused embarrassment in the Australian press when he wrote ‘with less nonsense and sentiment the war would soon be over’ (Bridges, 1987, 25). ‘Breaker’ Morant himself is also portrayed in a positive light in the film that does not necessarily match the reality. Following detailed research, author Kit Denton concluded that ‘Breaker Morant was a much more complex character than I had him in the novel and a much less likeable character’ (Bryant, 1987, 145).

Nevertheless, the film remains a powerful study of the difficulties facing soldiers in guerrilla warfare, and the extent to which morally indefensible behaviour can be condoned by both individuals and higher command during a particularly vicious war. Furthermore, by portraying the British authorities as willingly sacrificing loyal colonial subjects to further policy aims, the film presents a damning critique of the methods and motives of British imperialism.

Spencer Jones (2009)