What a strange old bird this week’s film, The Trouble with Merle, is. Director Maree Delofski begins with the premise that Merle Oberon, classical-era Hollywood starlet of apparently disputed origin, is claimed by the people of Tasmania as a “favourite daughter”, despite major question marks over their ability to call her Tasmanian. It’s also about the strange way stories about Merle have persisted for decades after her death.

It’s told as a first-person investigation, narrated by the director and ostensibly following her process as she pieces together the “facts” of the Tasmanian story, its status as a fiction concocted by Hollywood studio fixers to quell questions about Merle’s Indian features, and how the story has been passed down through generations of Tasmanians to become a kind of mutually-agreed local fact. She also follows other threads of investigation to figure out the true story of her birth and childhood.

This framing device is quite clearly artificial and the narration is clunky in transitioning from story beat to story beat, so I don’t know if this film needed to be told in the way it was… but having said that, I do think there’s a story worth investigating at the centre of this film: why do so many people in Tasmania have “memories” or family stories about Merle Oberon if she was not, and had never been, from Tasmania?

Unfortunately, there are some significant blind spots and errors in judgment from all involved.

Firstly, I felt quite uncomfortable with the language used to describe Merle and her supposed Tasmanian back story. There was a lot of talk about her facial features, and how certain races look and act in certain ways, how her status as a person of mixed race was lower than that of ‘regular’ Australians, and how she was eventually rescued and taken in by white people. Even the language I’ve used in this post — the people of Tasmania “claim” her — is indicative of the kind of language used to discuss Merle’s personhood in the film, and it’s disappointing that Merle herself has absolutely no presence or agency in anything these people do or say about her. This was true during her lifetime, and it’s true even in death as people tell “her” story.

With modern eyes and ears, of course, this all reflects very poorly on the Tasmanians portrayed in the film. The film is only 15 years old, but I think it’s certainly true that society had a different and less nuanced view of matters of race at the turn of the century.

Should Delofski have done more to reckon with the blatant racism displayed by her interviewees? Does a filmmaker have an obligation to portray people fairly (and by “fairly” I mean true to what their real thoughts and opinions are), even if what they are saying is racist and will reflect poorly on them? Is it only the filmmaker’s job to make sure their views are portrayed accurately, and the fallout is up to the interviewee to deal with, or should the filmmaker protect people from themselves?

It’s a difficult question to grapple with, but ultimately I don’t think Delofski erred by allowing her interviewees to express their morally questionable thoughts. She really shouldn’t be held responsible for the regressive opinions of Tasmanians. But she did err by failing to address it in her narration or in the context of the story itself, which she had ample opportunity to do.

I think the race question was just a huge blind spot for Delofski (she also doesn’t mention at all why it was important for Oberon to have a made-up story about her origin so she could work in Hollywood), and perhaps she didn’t even realise that it would be an issue for audiences. But I think that just demonstrates why it’s so important to be vigilant about issues like this, so your film doesn’t become a relic within 15 years of release.