on Lantana and misinformation

on this and that, #3 Mar 2026

I’ve been meaning to write this article for a long time, but I kept putting it off. It felt a little like, yes, misinformation is rife... and? But when my fav daily podcast (**not sponsored**) covered how broad and all-encompassing the issue of living in a "Post-Truth World" really is, I figured there was some merit to writing about it, and what beloved Australian film better to explore themes of mistrust and dishonesty than Ray Lawrence's 2001 film, Lantana.  

With social media came the democratisation of content making, meaning that almost everyone with access to a device can speak their (key word their) subjective (key word subjective) truth into existence and publish it online.  Where before, things required extensive editing and fact-checking to be published, now, that job has been placed in the hands of the consumer. Not only are we overwhelmed with information, but it is up to us to decide what is fact or fiction. Terrifying, considering a study in 2023 revealed 46% of Australians aged 18-24 use social media as their primary news source. If the overwhelming amount of content made by actual humans wasn’t enough of a shift for our ol’ noggins, we now have the addition of (o m g you guessed it...) AI. So now not only do we have to shuffle through the shit of the internet and fact check what we see (which we all definitely do every. single. time. DON’T WE), we now must figure out how much of what or more importantly who we are seeing is even real or artificially generated. Although you might think it’s fairly obvious that Trump isn’t twerking to Tyla in the White House, some AI-generated content is less easy to spot, with studies also revealing that the more confident you believe yourself to be in spotting AI, the worse you actually are. Clown emoji, if I ever saw it. 

If we truly are living in a ‘Post Truth’ World, what threat does this pose to our functioning democratic society? Specifically, what happens to our ability to solve problems if we can’t agree on a set of facts to begin with? And how does this even relate to the film? Well, if I know 11 people with staggeringly different subjective truths (aside from those in my real life XD), and many problems that arose as a result, I need look no further than the 11 lead characters of Lantana.

The beloved 2001 classic, based on Andrew Bovell's play Speaking in Tongues, is an intimate look at Australian relationships and the impact of mistrust and betrayal on their breakdown. The film opens with an almost sensual pan of a woman’s body, dead, lying face down amongst an overgrown lantana bush. This, alongside the title, paints a clear picture to me, one that screams: nature! (joke, sort of) This story is a portrait of 11 individuals at war with what they perceive to be true, their natural understanding of events, if you will, vs the objective facts of what has actually unfolded. Not to get too English teacher with it, but I think the overgrown lantana bush is a metaphor for how overgrown and wild our subjective truths can feel; they can become almost all-encompassing, and when they do, how can we agree with anything that opposes that? (It could also just be a bush, but nothing's ever 'just a bush' in ✋cinema🤚).

I will now proceed to spoil the film. 

The most interesting character for me is our diva, Dr Valerie Somers, played by Barbara Hershey, who does indeed end up dead in a lantana bush. A clinical psychiatrist and celebrated author, Dr Somers found her fame after publishing a book about grieving the murder of her 11-year-old daughter 18 months prior. Safe to say, as a result, she has a deep mistrust of the world around her. Not only is she characterised by the haunting of this event, but as is her marriage to John Knox, played by Geoffrey Rush. Lantana unfolds as a very subjective viewpoint; it leaves little room for interpretation and lures you into a false sense of understanding by limiting you to a very small ‘set of truths’. In doing this, the narration of the story becomes unreliable, arguably lying by omitting certain facts. You only ever know as much as each of the characters at any given time, and this extends to the style and tone of the entire film (it’s fucking eerie, I’ll say that much). 

When I finished this film, I was satisfyingly dissatisfied.

On one hand, I was frustrated because I wanted to blame someone for what had unfolded, but on the other hand, I knew that this was the only way forward; it made complete sense. Valerie dies at the hands of her own mistrust, and as a fellow woman, I can’t say I’d have done anything different (maybe the scariest truth of the film). After crashing her car, Valerie is stranded at a phone booth, but a passerby, Nik, offers her a lift home. He takes a detour, turning off the main road to shorten the journey. Valerie, contextualised by her deep suspicion of the world following her daughter’s murder, immediately jumps out of the car and runs into the lantana bushes to hide. Nik tries to get her to come back and explain, but it’s too late; she eventually trips and falls into a ravine, ending her own life. 

What precedes this reveal, however, is a melting pot of blame, distrust and suspicion. No one can agree on a set of facts, and the more we learn as an audience, the more we are confused (almost like being overwhelmed by information on social media). Everyone thinks they know what happened, everyone wants to look externally for a cause to blame, but no one is willing to admit the role they play in the erosion of trust within their own lives. Every character in this film is attempting to survive as a symptom of a world where betrayal and trust are standard, and honesty and communication are not. Which, at the risk of sounding sensationalist, sounds to me eerily similar to the world we live in today. 

Despite being made 25 years ago, Lantana raises similar themes of disinformation and its effects.

It not only questioned subjective truths but also exposed you, as an audience member, to the harsh realities of their impact by presenting you with exclusively unreliable one-sided narration at any given time. Where Lantana differs from today’s day and age, however, is that it offers a light at the end of the tunnel. An objective truth we can all agree on: Valerie died because she tripped and fell, allowing for a healthy discussion and debate as to the external factors leading to her eventual demise. 

My fear, however, is this: if Lantana were made today, to reflect how we consume media as facts, it would be conveyed in such a way that the discussion would be IF she died and HOW. And if we can’t agree on whether she died or how, then not only are we in for one hell of an argument, but we have no time or capacity to have healthy debate as to WHY.

references

Australian Communications and Media Authority. (2024, February 21). ACMA research reveals Australian news consumption trends. Australian Communications and Media Authority. https://www.acma.gov.au/articles/2024-02/acma-research-reveals-australian-news-consumption-trends