When it comes to outlining the plot or character traits of Jellyfish, the feature debut from West Aussie based filmmaker Giles Chan, it’s hard to escape critically applied terms such as ‘slacker’ or ‘masochist’ that are used to define Aidan Rynne’s lead character Henry, a depressive twenty-something guy living in Perth who solicits strangers to beat him up for cash.
The early scenes of Jellyfish brings the character of Henry into focus as a husk of a human who passively exists in life. Within his man-shaped outer shell, a perpetual hollow wind blows an eerily empty sound. Sure, he’s living, breathing, and occasionally eating and drinking, and sure, we might say that he’s engaging in some form of continued existence, but he is simply not there. On a basic level, he is as frictionless as the titular creature; a spiritless vessel floating through life as a valueless entity which society struggles to find meaning or purpose for.
Chan introduces us to Henry as he’s in the process of being dumped by one of his loyal ‘clients’. The client speaks with mate-like lingo as he gives Henry the flick, regretfully abandoning the golden opportunity to beat a bloke up with no repercussions. As the client takes off his absurdly considerate boxing gloves, a comical notion of softness and care, he says in a round about way, ‘see, I’ve got a proper job that means I just won’t have the time to meet up and knock you silly for ten seconds. But hey, I can let a mate know that you’re available.’ With a pat on the shoulder, and handing over the pittance of pay, the ‘client’ is on his way, leaving Henry to cradle his rapidly bruising belly.
I don’t need to tell you that being a human punching bag is not a real job. You can’t write a selection criteria for it, and you certainly can’t add it onto your CV for future jobs, hoping that your clients will agree to be referees for you. But it’s something that keeps Henry going, even as he gets no joy, comfort, or satisfaction from the momentary consensual maliciousness he submits himself to, with a meagre monetary reward being the only thing that keeps him housed, fed, and alive for another day.
After Henry’s faithful patron abandons him for a life of grinding out some kind of existence at some dead-end job, he agrees to meet a potential new source of income, Gray (Fred Hawkins), at a Chinese Restaurant. Henry outlines the rules of engagement before the two head into the alleyway behind the restaurant where Gray lays some heavy fists on him, leaving him in a collapsed, pained state. As the server, Maddy (Orly Beringer), shuts up shop, she notices Henry on the ground and tends to him, sparking a bond, of sorts, between the two.
Director Chan gently guides the audience through these initial moments of connection between Maddy and Henry. With input from Beringer, who helped pull Maddy away from her possible manic pixie dream girl roots, Chan’s considered script then breaks Maddy out of the ‘I can fix him’ mentality that many female characters are written as, with Beringer building Maddy into a superbly attentive character who recognises the vulnerability of Henry, while also acknowledging that his pain and sadness is not her responsibility to repair or fix. Maddy instead becomes a character who attempts to show Henry the possibilities of life via music, animals, or simply letting off steam, as if she’s guiding him into a better way of dealing with the shitfuckery of daily existence.
That notion bounces off Henry, who sits in his depressive state on their date having barely attempted to cover up the bruises on his face as the two chat about the kinds of animals they’d like to be. Henry struggles to land on a form, finally opting for a jellyfish, while Maddy opts for a mantis shrimp. Maddy’s choice of a propulsive and punchy creature that’s known for bashing their enclosures, shattering the glass tanks that entraps them, leans into her punk mindset. Director Chan thrusts us completely into Maddy’s daily existence with a late-night drive around the suburbs as she drowns out Henry’s internal maelstrom with her frenetic, harmony-free music that is more akin to a Jackson Pollock of noise, replete with snarling vocals backed up with howling, almost indistinguishable instruments. It is a form of creative expression, albeit not an entirely good one, but it is certainly one that’s akin to many of the music artists that I listen to to help drown out the noise in my own head.
Between these moments of potential affection, Henry continues his punching bag routine, sinking further into his inert state, unable to escape and bluntly unaware of the quiet, stilted depression that continues to envelope him. After a beating, Henry showers and tends to his wounds, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, poking, prodding, punching his bruises and blemishes. This is his version of a Maccas employee sampling the goods after they’ve clocked off; if the customer gets to inflict pain on his body, then why shouldn’t he?
Henry’s solo business venture doesn’t exist as a Fight Club inspired way of sticking it to the man or subverting a capitalist system, but rather as a skewed avenue of money making that has emerged as the warped natural outcome of the world that Gen Z and Alpha folks find themselves forced to live within. The factory line existence that they’re born into is one that shows no avenue of escape; you’re born into a burning world, siphoned into school, and then forced into menial jobs that fail to enrich the soul or society, all the while seeing the avenues for identity and creativity diminish due to the insidious reach of corporate behemoths that nobody voted for.
Chan pointedly showcases a world that smothers any sense of creative possibility or self-expression. When Henry and Maddy visit a garage sale, they linger over the instruments for sale, asking the seller if they’re a musician. She responds by saying ‘Musicians don’t pay the rent, and I need to pay the rent.’ Jellyfish exposes the rigid society that we live within, forcing us into the mould of being modern definitions of ‘slackers’.
These aren’t slackers, instead they’re a generation of out purposed beings: waiters replaced by QR codes and robots, warehouses hum in the night with the drone of devices that have been given human names, artists work consumed by corporations who care little for their value. Right wing wankerpanzers espouse the ‘sin of empathy’, demanding we become a civilisation driven careless human beings; Jellyfish is a defiant refute of their attempts.
By applying a term like ‘slacker’ or ‘masochist’ onto an objectively depressed person like Henry, it then invites engaging in an outdated societal mindset that says that depressed folks are simply lazy people who need to buck up and ‘just get over it’. When it comes to depressed people, there’s a notion that they need to want to engage in bettering themselves or to seek some form of improvement, but often, like in the case of Henry, the depth of depression is such a blinding force that you are either unaware that you’re depressed, or you can’t fathom trying to swim to the surface for support, or even worse, that you're not worthy of having a calm mind. It’s not just the fists to the face or the boots to the belly that are beating Henry up, it’s the numbing resonance of depressive thoughts ringing in his mind that stifle any feelings of self-worth.
Henry’s inability to feel good about himself hampers him when it matters the most: in a job interview for a banal, entry level office job which sees the manager grill Henry about his personal experience, all the while questioning the bruises on his face. In these moments of questioning from potential employers to potential partners, Henry keeps his internal bruises hidden, with their presence only becoming evident after a beating from Gray that goes too far, leading both Gray and Maddy to voice concern about his well-being.
Needing to validate your own worth in a job interview is difficult enough, but for a depressive person, the act of chatting online and fronting a different emotional state than what you’re trapped in is a difficult one. Jellyfish is peppered with humour that momentarily breaks through the leaden darkness. As Henry and Maddy chat via text, he tries to figure out what tone to set: HaHa is too harsh, but haha! feels forced, so he settles on LOL, which in itself is old, heavy, and a bit trite. His mood is defiantly not HaHa or haha!, and it certainly isn’t LOL, but these are the expected societal reactions of someone trying to make new connections and hide their true emotional state of mind.
While Henry does appear to engage in masochistic acts, the violence that he invites upon himself neither gratifies or frees him from the guilt of his depressive state. In many ways, Jellyfish then actively dismantles the notion of masochistic personality disorder, a term which was once listed in the DSM-III-R, but then deleted from DSM-IV-TR given its presence included reference to ‘wallowing in misery’ or ‘self-derogation’. These terms infer that the person wearing the depressive state is to blame, and that they have the ability to just ‘shrug it off’ and walk out of the mindset that they live with. Again, for each time Henry looks in the mirror to inspect his bruises, he too can’t see the depression he’s in.
Pulling someone out of their depressive state is a difficult and frustrating endeavour; I write that as someone who has been open about my own journey with depression. I know how complicated and frustrating it is to pull myself out of a depressive state, especially when it's one that's inflicted and influenced by the society we live in. Environmental depression is a state of being that is hard to pull oneself out of; if I had more money, if I had a better job, if I didn't live so far away from work, all of these things have clear solutions, but achieving those solutions while depressed? Good luck.
It's should then be no surprise that Henry can’t pull himself out of this toxic mindset, finding an absurd sense of safety as he continues engaging in activities that undermine his existence and stifle any chance of clear headedness.
But, for some, it is a surprise.
Presenting depression on screen is a difficult thing, especially for a character who is keenly unaware or disengaged from their depressed state. After all, you’re often presenting an inert, frictionless character who simply exists, often without any form of agency. It is, by its very nature, an undramatic thing.
Yet, in a bid for compelling viewing, cinematic presentations of depression often skew towards the dramatic, shifting away from the crippling state it leaves people in. If you’re not acting out, leaning on alcohol, punching walls, or crying uncontrollably, then are you really depressed?
On a Hollywood level, Bill Hader’s turn in The Skeleton Twins presents the fluctuating nature of depressive states, where in one moment you’re giddy and in the next you’re in bouts of suicidality. Locally, the WA-shot Paper Planes presented a level of relatable depression, with Sam Worthington’s father character cemented into the couch, a blank stare on his visage as he watched the wall through his TV screen.
But if these depictions of depression aren’t enough, then no doubt the forest of blue trees that have crept from the regions to the suburbs should help build awareness of depression? Or the annual cupcake bake sale day collectively known as R U OK day should do the trick, no? Or the news articles about the loneliness epidemic that is running through this nation and creeping across the globe?
Or, maybe the fact that Western Australia has the third highest rate of suicide, coming behind Northern Territory and Tasmania, states with lower populace than the home of the sandgroper. Alarmingly, Western Australia’s suicide rate sits at 14.3%, higher than the national average of 11.8%.
This notion of suicide being a defining trait for those who succumb to it is one that lingers throughout Jellyfish, with director Chan actively exploring the reality of a society that breeds and influences depressive states of minds and offers platitudes in response to a mental health crisis partially fuelled by a loneliness epidemic. Some have the will and ability to push back at those dark thoughts like a mantis shrimp, while others struggle to navigate the path out of their depressive state of mind and existence, like a jellyfish trapped in a square tank.
There’s a reason why I haven’t added trigger warnings to this article, a piece which talks about suicide, depression, and self-harm. Sure, there’s evidence that trigger warnings have little effect for reducing the risk of trauma exposure, but the real reason to not include a trigger warning here is to encourage that exposure and understanding of what a lived-in experience of depression and suicidality looks like.
Chan pulls from his own experience of depression and anxiety, conjuring a film that feels lived-in and grounded in a form of reality that he is all too familiar with. He’s not alone, with fellow emerging low budget Aussie filmmakers also delving in the darkness of depression for their cinematic outings. Molly Haddon’s The Longest Weekend engaged in an millennial understanding of mental illness, while Mark Leonard Winter’s The Rooster explored the impact of loneliness, depression, and trauma on men, and Andy Burkitt’s The Organist tabled a slightly misguided, but no less darkly comedic spin on suicide ideation.
Closer to home for this writer, Chan’s Jellyfish acts in unison with Taylor Broadley’s exceptional WA made Stubbornly Here, with both films conversing about the shattered minds of the modern sandgroper. Both films present characters who find themselves stuck in the stifling state of Western Australia, yearning for some kind of escape. For Broadley’s crew, they aim to abandon Perth for Sydney, while Chan’s Henry opts for a long walk into the ocean. Art exists as a vessel for creative forces to explore and exorcise what’s on their mind, and if Jellyfish and Stubbornly Here are evidence enough, then it’s clear that the kids are not all right. Not to go all ‘elder statesmen’ on these younger creatives, but it concerns me greatly that these films stand as evidence of an emerging depression in younger generations.
Furthermore, as a film critic, I’m used to the experience of immersing myself in the mindset of characters whose world view or life journey is vastly different than mine, and in that process, I then get to see the world from a new perspective, furthering my empathetic worldview. Yet, when it comes to the character of Henry, I found myself slipping into an uncomfortable level of synchronicity with his daily existence, and through Aidan Rynne’s grounded performance I started to see a version of myself projected on screen.
I’ve been open about my personal experiences with depression and suicide, and I’ve seen enough films with depressed characters living depressed lives doing depressed things, sometimes ending in a suicidal state. Yet, I’d not seen a film like Jellyfish before, one that reflected a form of Perth-based suicidality and depression that was, at times, akin to a documentary experience.
Yet, I’m able to pull myself away long enough from the mirror that is Jellyfish to recognise the immense talent that resides within Giles Chan. Here is a young filmmaker who has written, directed, scored, shot, and edited his debut flick, all the while confidently tapping into the human experience to craft a compelling and powerful slice of Aussie indie cinema.
But, if I return to the mirror momentarily, I can see that Jellyfish has become part of me in a way that few films do. I can see its kind reminder to gently tend to your bruises, rather than add another shade of purple to your growing mental haze. I can see Chan saying to his audience, go carefully, be considerate, and most importantly, understand the guise of a depressive figure and be kind to those in need.
Director: Giles Chan
Cast: Aidan Rynne, Orly Beringer, Fred Hawkins
Writer: Giles Chan
Producer: Giles Chan
Music: Giles Chan, Christian Colgan, Flynn Leveridge
Cinematography: Giles Chan
Editor: Giles Chan
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