When you're fighting for freedom and you fall in love, does freedom become the price instead of the prize?

SYNOPSIS:

Poet and Writer, British soldier and Fenian freedom fighter, John Boyle O'Reilly is arrested on a charge of treason, court martialled and sentenced to death. But fate intervenes and his sentence is commuted to life imprisonment '...in an English jail'. Frustrated and infuriated by his constant escape attempts - the last of which almost kills him - the authorities banish him to the convict colony of Western Australia on the last ever prison transport ship from Britain. Onboard he meets some 200 of his fellow Irish rebels, and there develops a mutual respect between himself and William Woodman, Controller of Convicts, travelling to take up his post in the new British colony. After disembarkation in Fremantle, most of the Fenians are given positions of minor responsibility in the jail; O'Reilly was made assistant to the chaplain and took to running the library. He used this position to engineer for himself a transfer from the relatively comfortable life of the jail to the hell of working with the road gangs further south. He finds himself cast into a cauldron of physical and emotional abuse presided over by Ridley, a man, a psychopath, he has already had a run in with before leaving England. He takes it all with characteristic defiance. But he reaches his nadir when a letter that he knows brings news of his mother's death is cynically withheld from him by Ridley as punishment for insubordination. Welcome to Australia, the lucky country. He attempts suicide, but is rescued, bleeding heavily and unconscious, by his fellow prisoners and is taken to the Woodman homestead to be nursed back to health. Woodman, on hearing the tales of the road gang, immediately dismisses Ridley and the other guards and takes direct control of day to day affairs himself. He also promotes O'Reilly to Convict Constable, a post that comes with a horse and considerable freedom as he acts as Woodman's messenger. As Woodman points out the privileges of the position, O'Reilly stops him. 'I don't want the cheese, Mr Woodman... I want out of the trap.' After a moiment Woodman responds, 'A word of warning, Mr O'Reilly... If you're caught, understand, I can do nothing for you.' O'Reilly uses his new found freedom to make contact with free Irish settlers who are sympathetic to the cause of Irish independence from colonial rule and together they plan his escape. Together with the help of Father McGuire, they arrange for O'Reilly to be spirited away on an American whaler, but it costs O'Reilly everything he has for the Captain's bribe. But he has also fallen in love with Jessica, Woodman's daughter, and they soon find themselves in a whirlwind of passions as they live every day as if it were their last. They break all the social conventions of the time, but it does not go unnoticed by Jessica's mother. During a conversation between Jessica and her mother on a trip into town, Jessica says '... you've taken a bit of a shine to our Mr O'Reilly, mother.'. She replies, 'I know you have... Charming men are always dangerous, trust me.' Eventually the time draws near for O'Reilly's escape and he implores Jessica to join him. She, knowing this was coming, but in a maelstrom of conflicting emotions and conflicted loyalties tries to gently show him the impossibilities; and she leaves him with the impression that there might be a child whose future she must consider. O'Reilly tumbles into a pit of anger and despair as he contemplates the loss of the only woman he has ever truly loved. He now is dogged by doubt of his own about which way to turn - freedom and the likelihood of a violent end, or Jessica and a new life as a free man in a land that is not his own. In the end it is his friend, Father McGuire, who shows him that he has only one chance of escape. The day of his escape arrives; O'Reilly quietly steals away from camp and makes his way to the Collie River where a boatman is waiting to take him downstream to the Port of Bunbury. As they ghost past a police post there is absolute silence, but they all feel very exposed. O'Reilly sums it up by remarking in a whisper, 'Jesus, we might as well be galloping by on a white horse and blowing a bugle while we're at it.'. With a slight mist rising from the river they approach the harbour only in time to see that the whaleboat has double crossed them and O'Reilly's hopes of freedom is sailing away towards the western horizon. Frantically new plans are made. O'Reilly is taken north along the coast and makes camp among the sand dunes whilst another ship is desperately sought for him. For two weeks he evades recapture as an 'alive or dead' manhunt crisscrosses miles of bushland, coast and swamp in search of him. At one point he escapes by the skin of his teeth, but only with the help of an Aboriginal hunter he has never met before. Eventually a new ship is found and O'Reilly waits anxiously in the early morning light for a sight of it as the net draws in around him. Finally the ship arrives and stays offshore, sending a longboat to the beach to take him off. He sprints across the sand toward the water; bullets from a police rifle pepper the sand around him and send up spouts of water beside him as he swims for the boat. But then he's onboard and the men on the oars are pulling away from the beach strongly and soon he's aboard the whaler shaking the Captain's hand. The Captain welcomes him aboard and assures him he's safe from any pusuing Royal Navy ships. Then he hands him a letter - O'Reilly recognises the handwriting instantly. Later, as Australia disappears into the distance, O'Reilly stands at the stern rail; he gazes at the receding coastline and at Jessica's letter and blinks tears as he imagines what she has written and what they might have lost and may never know. NOTE: This screenplay won First Prize in October 2010 in the WriteMovies screenwrting contest; it was particularly commended for the dialogue.

CRY OF THE DREAMER