6 days ago
18
There’s a great scene in the new Australian film Birthright where Corey, a 30-something man with a pregnant wife, no home or job, asks his father for a home loan.
The mood is sombre: Corey’s father, Richard, sits imperiously behind his desk, presiding over his desperate son as gold leather-bound books glisten in the lamp light.
Richard looks at Corey, pauses, fiddles with his pen, glances at a photo of his younger self before declaring, “no”. Corey is outraged. “Dad, that’s f---ing insane!” he yells.
Richard looks him in the eye and says the speech uttered by every Baby Boomer in the world.
“Corey, when I was 20 years old, my dad sat me down and gave me $10,000 to help me get started. And I bought this house, and it was nothing. No other houses in the street - it was nothing but scrub, dirt, ants and snakes. I built this life,” he pauses.
“And when you were 20 years old, I did the same thing for you – I’ve not been unfair. You took that money, you travelled halfway around the world and you got a f---ing Arts degree.”
Richard, like many of his generation, did it tough – but for him, it worked out. Research by independent think tank the e61 Institute found that older Australians have benefited from a large run-up in the value of assets such as housing, which were also lightly taxed, as well as more favourable taxation during their peak earning years.
The post-tax income of over-60s is now 95 per cent of that of 18- to 60-year-olds. In the 1990s, it was about 61 per cent.
So when Richard tells Corey he managed to turn, “bit by bit … one jacket and one jumper into a whole house,” he believes the recipe he followed still applies to his son. If only he would just “work harder than anyone else”, the world will look after him.
For many Millennials and younger generations, it’s no longer possible to work long or hard enough to save for a reasonably located house.
Jobs for life are gone, education costs are rising, house price growth has outstripped wages and property prices are so far out of reach for most people without access to parental help, that homeownership has emerged as a topic for the arts.
Enter Birthright, to be released this month, the first feature film by award-winning Australian writer and director Zoe Pepper, who has come to filmmaking after a long theatre career.
Like the South Korean, genre-bending dark comedy Parasite, Birthright seamlessly shifts from a lighthearted generational clash over who has it tougher to an increasingly menacing thriller, culminating in horror.
“The idea [to write the film] came from seeing a lot of friends my own age, mainly during the pandemic years, being forced into moving back in with their Baby Boomer parents,” says Pepper.
“The intention was always [to stay] just for a little while things get sorted, but then that stay extends and extends. Watching that tussle and the tension of different friends finding themselves in that situation … the more I thought it was just a great microcosm for what was happening in Australia … in terms of the housing crisis.”
Corey and Jasmine – played by Travis Jeffery and Maria Angelico - while at times petulant and entitled, are the more sympathetic pair compared to the mean-spirited parents, played by Michael Hurst and Linda Cropper.
Pepper, a Millennial, wanted to create characters that encapsulate the precariousness of a generation.
“Not just in housing, but also in work, like the contract work and those nitpicky laws that stop people from becoming permanent,” he says.
“[Millennials] are getting shafted from many different angles in a way that their Baby Boomer parents don’t understand.”
She cites a lecture by Australian banker Satyajit Das as inspiration for the macabre tone of the film.
“He made this analogy that Baby Boomers are a bit like Saturn in the Goya painting, Saturn Devouring His Son,” Pepper says. “Saturn had the prophecy that he would be overthrown by one of his children, so he ate each of them at birth to avoid the prophecy coming true.
“I thought that was just such a visceral, brutal lens to think about the Australian economy — that Baby Boomers are holding on to wealth with such an iron grip that it’s crippling the economy.”
Birthright, like Fiona Wright’s satirical first novel Kill Your Boomers, is an example of how the Boomer-Millennial generational tussle is breaking into the arts scene.
Actors Jeffery and Angelico didn’t have to reach far into their souls. Neither is a homeowner, and despite successful careers in the arts, they’re not exactly rolling in money.
“Before shooting this film my partner and I bought a house off-the-plan, and it all went sideways because of the cost-of-living prices,” Jeffery, who is based in Sydney, says. “We got our money back, but I haven’t been able to buy a house since, so in terms of how to navigate this time, I resonate with Corey a lot.”
Melbourne-based Angelico is looking to buy, but was recently outbid by an investor. “It’s just ridiculous – I don’t have family support, so we’ve been saving up our deposit,” she said. “We looked at the history of a house we liked and 30 years ago it sold for $80,000. Now it’s way over a million. It’s unfathomable.”
Both believe tackling the housing crisis through film is a novel approach to an issue that has become politically front-and-centre, with federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers to overhaul the capital gains tax concession and negative gearing to tackle “intergenerational equity” in the May 12 budget.
“The housing crisis has a ripple effect – it affects lifestyle, lowering birth rates and people working multiple jobs,” Angelico says. “Especially for artists, you need time and space to create art, but if you’re working two other jobs it’s hard to write your book.”
BIRTHRIGHT is in cinemas May 21
