Strategically placed for an ANZAC DAY premiere, CANOPY is ostensibly a one man WWII show about an Australian flyer shot down over Singapore in 1942.

The airman’s parachute has landed him in the canopy of a jungle, a forest infested with fauna that could be fatal, not the least being the Japanese infantry patrolling the fecund jungle floor. Silence and camouflage is crucial to the pilot’s survival, but even in the dense canopy and cacophony, invisibility and stillness are hard to ensure.

A quest for sanctuary while simultaneously eluding an almost ephemeral enemy ensues until he encounters another fugitive in the forest, a Singaporean also desperately avoiding discovery by the invading Japanese.

Togetherness gives them some comfort but also creates a double jeopardy of capture.

CANOPY is the feature film debut of Aaron Wilson after a decade of short film production. It’s an ambitious project that never quite escapes its short film psyche. At 84 minutes it seems like a long short film.

CANOPY had its genesis in a short film of Aaron’s called WIND, where he met many Singaporean families still living with the legacy of WWII.

As the pilot parachuted into a perilous predicament, Khan Chittenden takes on the terror of external terrain and interior torment. He’s teamed with Taiwan talent, Tzu-Yi as the Singapore-Chinese resistance fighter, Seng. Neither actor’s understanding of the other’s native tongue serves the narrative well, as suspicion slowly segues into mutual succour as they attempt to salvage any semblance of survival.

Salvage in such a savage scenario is the best that one can do, it seems writer/director Wilson is saying, as salvation is far too elusive under the all pervading canopy of conflict.

Indeed, one of the most interesting and inventive aspects of CANOPY is the way Wilson envisages a canopy of coping for the aviator, a spirit shelter as it were, where the rain (and reign) of terror and atrocity is tempered, providing some respite from the insanity.

I am prompted to revisit Mark Dapin’s SPIRIT HOUSE, a novel about Changi survivors, published by Macmillan a few years ago. Now there’s a potentially great picture waiting to be produced.