This 1977 Australian film is set in a small town during the closing years of World War I. Jamie Carr (Christopher Pate), who is in his last year of high school, lives with his grandmother (Geraldine Fitzgerald) in her large house. She is both mother and father to him, helping the young man cope with an identity crisis, a discipline problem at school, the mysteries of sex and several encounters with death.
Kevin Dobson directs The Mango Tree with a slow hand, allowing us to savor the environment and Jamie's coming-of-age as he defends a friend at school who is being savagely beaten, joins a manhunt for a crazed preacher who has just shot the sheriff and spends an evening with his lonely French teacher.
The story is as much about Grandma Carr as it is about Jaime. She takes in "the professor," a drunk, and reforms him. She knows how to wield power, as when she gets her grandson reinstated after he is expelled from school. And she is the pillar of the community, marshalling them to work together during an epidemic.
Geraldine Fitzgerald's moving character portrait in The Mango Tree won her the Australian equivalent of an Oscar. In this film she gives us a sense of everything a good grandmother should be — a family historian, mentor, role model, wizard, and nurturer. Don't miss this performance!