How indeed does the script create a feeling of ordinariness, coupled with the unexpected and the entertaining, to make a serious point about human life and values; that we have a common need for 'true love and companionship' and that there are 'all sorts of true love without bias to age or gender'? (Tanskaya, Alissa: op cit.). The opposite condition, loneliness, as Tanskaya observes in the Cinema Papers review, and the film touchingly points out, 'functions without bias'.

A shot of kids playing football in a suburban backyard creates a very ordinary opening for the script. What is perhaps unexpected is that a grandmother is playing with them while a female friend watches from the verandah. In the following scenes, Jeff and Harry appear to be ordinary Australian blokes. They live in an apparently working class suburb with its pub and greyhounds. Their jobs are ordinary: a ferry captain and a plumber. Jeff plays football. Although they cook for each other, their culinary efforts are unpretentious, 'bangers and mash', frozen lasagne, and for a treat 'a nice roast'. They drink beer and argue about the taps in the shower. Even Harry's courting of Joyce begins through a computer dating agency, not some romantic meeting, and they go to dinner at the local Leagues Club. All this ordinariness lulls the reader/audience into a sense of normality, of acceptance, and allows the script to act as instructor, promoting certain values without the reader/audience being so acutely aware that this is being done.

It is easy to empathise with Harry as he seems so like someone we know. This empathy is increased by the use of the direct-to-camera device. Rather than alienating the audience by reminding them that they are not looking at 'real life', this technique creates a conspiratorial bond between the reader/audience and Harry. This device was also used in House of Cards, shown on ABC television. In this series, the main character—who was completely amoral—obtained some audience sympathy by his conspiratorial asides to them. It was also used to good effect in Alfie, a 1960s film dealing with morals and sexuality from the point of view of a young heterosexual male ( Alfie, film. dir.Lewis Gilbert, 1966). In The Sum of Us, this device allows us to look into the mind of a stroke victim, showing that the stroke has not changed Harry's personality—and Jeff's use of direct-to-camera device and voice-over during flashbacks very quickly has the audience's sympathy with him.

When, after reading the script, you view the film, you will see how the visual images in the film reinforce these ideas of ordinary life, with its views of the suburb of Balmain, supermarket scenes and those in the Botanic Gardens. The only time it seems to go a bit beyond the ordinary is in the final shot included in the script of the wide sweep of Sydney Harbour, but perhaps this too is part of the film's technique of enticing the audience to accept the film's message.

The Role of the Unexpected

Much has been made in reviews of The Sum of Us of the way it plays with the traditional Aussie male image. Reference is made to a 1975 film, Sunday Too Far Away , photographed by the co-director of The Sum of Us, Geoff Burton, and starring Jack Thompson as a shearer ( Sunday Too Far Away, film. dir. Ken Hannam, 1975). In this film, Thompson plays the part of Foley, a gun shearer who is involved in the shearer's strike of 1956. It deals with the camaraderie between the men and their loyalty to the union in the tradition of Australian mateship. Thompson and the actor John Ewart who played Ugly, stand at a communal washing tub clad in nothing but bath towels around their waists. As they wash their underthings their bodies wiggle to such an extent that the towels fall to the floor, revealing bare wiggling buttocks. In The Sum of Us, when Harry is mashing potatoes in a pot on the stove, 'his body wiggles as he stirs the pot' in just the same way as it did in the earlier film. This introduces the script/film's questioning of what is really meant by the 'Aussie male' today. Russell Crowe, as another icon of masculinity,  works with Thompson in the film to undermine our national masculine stereotype (see his role in the film Romper Stomper and interview in 'Metro', Sydney Morning Herald, 24 June, 1995). Both these actors only reinforce the unexpected in the film; the tenderness between them is already there in the script.

The Aussie male is not the only stereotype to fall to the unexpected, as seen in the revelations about Gran's football prowess and her loving relationship with Mary.