Interesting woman,fascinating story, lousy production.

I read Lindy's autobiography not long ago, and I was amazed at how much this woman has been so misunderstood down the years, by so many people.
She really is NOT weird, or anything even approaching a religious nut. She is for example, very broad~minded and liberal - in fact, quite a lot of so~called Christians and right~wingies would be appalled at her tolerance for gays and lesbians, her empathy and solidarity with convicted criminals, her frequent use (in the book) of the 'f' word and so on. She's not some traditional, ultra~conservative woman at all. Others might find her sense of humour pretty disconcerting. (She makes jokes like that if she HAD murdered Azaria, she could have "done a better job of it" rather than "the stuff up" she was accused of.)

I wasn't around in the early 80's either, but I've seen a lot of old interviews and news footage of Lindy Chamberlain. Up until she was sentenced to "life inprisonment with hard labour", she looked much younger and prettier - her appearance should of course have been irrelevant to the case. My point is, would the media have obsessed over how she looked, what she wore, what she did and said if she'd looked as frumpish as Meryl Streep did in "A Cry In The Night/Evil Angels"? I doubt it. Where the media at the time were concerned, this was probably the most ridiculous aspect to the coverage: almost NONE of it had anything to do with what happened to that poor little girl, Azaria - it was all about Lindy. ("Ooh, look what she's wearing now ... ", "She's so hard~faced ... Why doesn't she cry more?")

However, I digress ... Miranda Otto was a great choice for the part. I liked her performance but wasn't too impressed with much else in this production. Every-time a scene started getting interesting, it cut to something else, often something completely unrelated to what the viewer had just taken in.

I was glad however that the film showed not only the Chamberlains but the other eye~witnesses being badgered and interrogated by police too. Ie, the scenes showing that heavily pregnant woman sitting on a hard chair being interrogated for hours on end about the night Azaria disappeared ~ whether she'd really heard Azaria crying AFTER they (the cops) believed Lindy had murdered her.
I was also pleasantly surprised to see that in the court~room scenes, they included more of Lindy's angry, sarcastic replies to that annoying Crown Prosecutor, like what she told him:

"I don't like you, Mr Barker, I never have liked you. If you expect me to be polite to you, don't. I don't like your form of law and I don't adhere to it. It's the reason these courts in Australia are in such a mess."

All up though, I couldn't say this "docu~drama" was particularly memorable. It was okay here and there, but it was one of those things you watch and keep thinking, "Ugh ... this scene or this bit is annoying and distracting and stupid. I could have done it better myself."