Review: The Sacrifice

Compared with the political opportunism, questionable legality and moral ambiguities that underscore the present-day ‘war on terror’, it is tempting to look back, almost nostalgically, at the Second World War as ‘the good war’. With the Allied Powers rallied against the fascist ideology of Nazi Germany, the war of 1939-45 can be looked upon as a clearly delineated moral struggle, with the free world’s ‘coalition of the willing; standing united against a true ‘axis of evil’.

Yet to say that the war did not ignite heated debates, both private and public, over such issues as political conviction, national duty and personal morality, is not only a gross simplification of a complex, sprawling conflict, but also diminishes the impact it had on untold millions of lives.

These same contentious issues lay at the heart of The Sacrifice, a new graphic novel by Melbourne author and illustrator, Bruce Mutard.

The first volume in a planned trilogy, The Sacrifice follows the difficult moral journey taken by its central character, Robert Wells, an emblematic member of Melbourne’s middle class, whose espousal of socialist ideology and pacifist beliefs, is gradually eroded by the worsening war in Europe and Asia.

The city of Melbourne itself is as much a part of the story as the characters which populate it streets. The Sacrifice is a compelling visual record of a town, then regarded as the puritanical, ‘wowser’ capital of Australia, as it’s transformed from a sleepy, complacent metropolis, to a vital epicentre of wartime administration, munitions’ production and military training. This transformation was partly attributable to the influx of thousands of American service personnel, whose comparative affluence, mannerisms and attitudes had a galvanising effect on the daily life of the city and its inhabitants.

Despite being miles away from the fighting, the war does not leave Robert and his circle of friends untouched. His fiancée, Elsa, a shopkeeper’s daughter and Communist Party member experiences true solidarity with “the working classes” on the factory floor; his friend, John, a doctor, takes to drink, overwhelmed by the battlefield casualties he treats daily; and his journalist mate, David, sick of reporting censored stories and regurgitating government propaganda, eventually chooses to join the army to fight a real war, rather than report a ‘phoney’ one.

Robert’s mother, like many women of her generation, bears the true, unspoken cost of war. Left widowed after her husband was killed in the last ‘war to end all wars’, her worst fears are realised when her eldest son, Artie, is killed in action during the Crete campaign. The ‘black dog’ of depression takes hold, leaving her a bed-ridden recluse, close to death herself.

In his own way, Robert is forced to follow in his brother’s footsteps, firstly by following the path laid out for Artie by their father and, ultimately, the destiny that Artie eventually chose for himself. When the rebellious Artie turned his back on a career with the family’s engineering business, Robert became his domineering uncle’s protégé, gaining a university degree and eventually making his way up the corporate ladder to become a junior executive in the firm. But Artie’s death forces Robert to question his pacifist beliefs, and reevaluate his own contribution to the war effort. In the end, Robert emulates his brother’s decision to enlist in the army where, to his surprise, he becomes an effective soldier with leadership potential, admired by his superior officer and comrades alike.

Even a cursory glance through its pages shows The Sacrifice to be a meticulously researched work. Yet, unlike so many ‘period dramas’ seen on film and television, the story does not creak beneath the weight of its historical trappings. The architectural character of wartime Melbourne is not laid out like a map, but glimpsed in passing from a bus window, beneath a shop awning, or its skyline seen from a distance. This is the Melbourne of my own parents’ childhood, growing up in the daily shadow of war; a Melbourne which, in some places, can still be glimpsed today.

Mutard’s story touches on some of the iconic literary and artistic works that were a product of this troubling, turbulent time in Australian history. Robert’s early hours’ stroll through the blacked-out streets of St. Kilda, as he threads his way between brawling soldiers, urinating drunks and blowsy prostitutes, recalls the disdain felt by the expressionist Australian painter, Albert Tucker, whose encounters with the thrill-seeking, raucous ‘victory girls’ of wartime Melbourne, inspired his disturbing Images of Modern Evil paintings. There is even a sly visual reference to John Brack’s iconic 1955 painting, Collins Street, 5p.m.

Robert’s sometimes fraught, argumentative relationship with his older brother, Artie, evokes the similarly complex bond between the bookish, intellectual David Meredith and his coarse, womanizing brother Jack, which formed the centrepiece of George Johnston’s semi-autobiographical novel, My Brother Jack.

Mutard’s graphic novel also gives lie to the modern-day misconception that pre-war Australia was an Anglo-Celtic monoculture. The relocation of refugees from war-torn Europe to far-flung Australia not only changed the ethnic composition of the nation, but also challenged the popular prejudices held towards migrants – both then and now.

These issues are seen through the plight of the Krautshammer family, displaced Austrian Catholics who play a significant part in Robert’s own life. Otto, the father, is an insufferably proud former finance minister who fought for Germany in the Great War, but his gruff, imperious manner and unapologetic anti-Semitism rankles with those who want to help him readjust to his new life in Australia. His bitterness is shared by his wife and daughter, Mata, who resent having to seek refugee status as Jews (despite their Jewish ancestry, the Krautshammers are baptised Catholics) and haughtily dismiss the other occupants of their refugee hostel as ‘Juden’.

But it is Robert’s awkward infatuation with their young daughter, Mata, which generates an unspoken sexual undercurrent throughout the book. When we first meet Mata, we see her as Robert does – a disarmingly pretty, wide-eyed innocent, who looks for all the world like Alice in Wonderland, in her smock dress and headband.

As the war takes hold of the city, Mata grows up all too quickly. She becomes an impressionable, reckless adolescent, intoxicated by the permissive air of wartime Melbourne. She spurns her mother’s strict rules and rejects her parents’ dreams of a classical singing career for their daughter, preferring instead the cheap glamour of show tunes and the extravagant promises of the American servicemen whose company she increasingly seeks.

Despite his love for Elsa, and plans for marrying her, Robert cannot shake the hold that Mata still exerts over him, even though she rejects him for siding with her mother. It is an obsession that almost proves fatal for Robert, when he attempts to stop an American sailor from raping her.

The Sacrifice had its beginnings as a short, self-contained comic strip, ‘Death and the Maiden’, about a soldier’s last night on leave before being shipped off to New Guinea, which Mutard created for Tango, the eclectic romance comic anthology edited by Bernard Caleo. Mutard initially decided to expand this comic strip vignette into a full-length prose novel, and these literary roots are clearly evident throughout The Sacrifice, especially in the numerous sequences where the story’s central characters are engaged in earnest political debate, gathered around a café table, or in each other’s living rooms. It is only in these passages where the story’s visual flow is occasionally slowed down by the characters’ verbose arguments.

But this is a minor cavil, especially when one considers how rarely such debates occur within the pages of most contemporary Australian comics. Mutard, to his credit, punctuates these wordy sequences with telling moments of complete stillness, forcing the reader to pull away from the characters, by placing them in isolation against their deceptively peaceful suburban environment.

Tempting as it might be for some critics to review this work in the same manner as a literary novel, the visual grammar of the ‘graphic’ novel requires us to look at The Sacrifice in slightly different ways, to apply (perhaps, more helpfully) the terminology used in film criticism to evaluate what is, overwhelmingly, a visual medium. For instance, where ‘traditional’ literary criticism might analyse an author’s use of language to depict their characters or convey their themes and ideas, any critique of a graphic novel must look at, not just written story (as set down by the author in captions and dialogue ‘balloons’), but also the storytelling technique – the integration (or juxtaposition) of words and images, the visual ‘pacing’ of the story and illustrative style of the artwork itself.

It is in this context that Mutard’s accomplishment as a graphic storyteller is evident on nearly every page of The Sacrifice. The drama of this tale is told quietly, through the physical expressiveness of its characters. Whether they’re gathered together in a room or simply walking through a park, Mutard’s characters are animated through their subtle gestures, awkward expressions or slack postures. Their faces are pinched or anxious; their clothes are shapeless and ill-fitting; their physical actions are graceless and untidy. They are, in short, all too real.

Some critics have mistakenly compared Mutard’s clean, uncluttered illustrations to the work of Herge, the Belgian creator of Tintin whose ‘clear line’ technique has had a profound influence on European comic art for decades. But whereas Herge’s work was characterised by a richly coloured and expressively ‘cartoony’ style, Mutard’s artwork is starkly naturalistic, awash with gray tones that perfectly complement the story’s sombre atmosphere.

The Sacrifice is by no means the first ‘graphic novel’ (itself a contentious term amongst some comics’ practitioners) to be published in Australia, but it is arguably the first one of recent vintage that is unafraid to tackle the complex political and social themes that have been the traditional preserve of mainstream novelists. One can only hope that, just as Art Spiegelman’s prize-winning graphic novel Maus forced readers and critics alike to reevaluate comics as a legitimate art form, Bruce Mutard’s The Sacrifice will have a similarly galvanising effect on Australian audiences as well.

The Sacrifice, by Bruce Mutard, is published by Allen & Unwin (ISBN: 9781741751178/$35.00rrp).