‘It’s the vibe’: 25 years on, how The Castle became an Australian classic

The low-budget comedy has been quoted in the high court, made Bonnie Doon synonymous with ‘serenity’ and carved itself a unique space in the national imagination

Practically every Australian has a favourite line from The Castle. For some it is the serenity of Bonnie Doon, the daggy dad kitchen conversation (“what do you call that, darl?”) or the jousting sticks for sale on Trading Post (“tell him he’s dreamin’!”). For others, it is the classic exclamation: “This is going straight to the pool room!”

That Castle-speak remains pervasive today is just one indicator of the 1997 film’s enduring cultural resonance. The relatively low-budget local production has become one of the most beloved Australian movies of all time. Next month, the film will celebrate its 25th anniversary.

“When we first did a sit-down read, it was just a funny, lovely, humble, charming little film,” Tiriel Mora, who played suburban solicitor Dennis Denuto, tells Guardian Australia. “But very much a little film. We shot it in 10-and-a-half days, and that included a half day in Canberra for the high court stuff. We couldn’t possibly know that it would resonate like it did.” But resonate it has, at the time and ever since. “It just grew and grew and grew,” he adds.

Related: The Castle: rewatching classic Australian films

The Castle tells the story of the Kerrigan family’s battle to save their suburban Melbourne home, their castle, from compulsory acquisition as the airport bordering the property seeks to expand. Father Darryl Kerrigan persuades local solicitor Denuto (more familiar with defending petty criminals – including Kerrigan’s son – than the constitution) to challenge the acquisition. After Denuto loses the case, retired barrister Lawrence Hammill QC (played by Bud Tingwell) offers to appeal pro bono to the high court. Against all odds, they win.

For some, the most well-known and consequential of the numerous catchphrases of the film comes from the courtroom scene where Denuto flails haplessly for a legal authority to support his client’s case. “It’s the constitution, it’s Mabo, it’s justice, it’s law, it’s the vibe,” says Denuto.

“It is rare that popular culture and the high court intersect,” says George Williams, a law professor at the University of New South Wales. “Never have they done so more spectacularly than with The Castle. The movie places the high court at the centre of a David and Goliath battle that taps into deeply held Australian values around fairness and home.” Williams says that under the real law of section 51(xxxi) of the constitution (which prohibits the federal government compulsorily acquiring land other than “on just terms”), the Kerrigans would have lost. The opposite outcome however, he says, made for a better storyline.

One reason for the film’s cult status is that its producers, Working Dog, have left The Castle to a life of its own. They have largely refused to speak publicly about the film; executive producer Michael Hirsh declined an interview request from Guardian Australia. In an interview last year with Radio New Zealand while promoting the TV series Utopia, Hirsh’s Working Dog colleague Rob Sitch said, “I think in some ways the smartest thing we did was stay out of the way. It’s been a gift that keeps on giving for us.” The movie is often repeated on Channel Nine and is available to stream on Stan.

“What is so refreshing about The Castle is its profound Australianness,” says William MacNeil, an honorary professor at the University of Queensland and leading expert on law and culture. MacNeil says the film corrected the cultural cringe that had previously seen Australian audiences more familiar with US or British legal dramas. “Indeed, Denuto makes so much of its ‘vibe’ that the Australian constitution – hitherto unknown in terms of its dramatic possibilities – practically becomes a leading character in the film.”

In turn, the amorphous “vibe” has permeated the typically rarefied language of the legal world. The concept has found its way into many legal arguments, including in numerous hearings before the high court. Denuto’s famous submission was quoted in a NSW court judgment in 2010, while a Queensland lawyer sued for $250,000 in defamation damages after being described as “Dennis Denuto from Ipswich” (he lost).

Such is the movie’s resonance within the law that it was the only film to gain an entry in the Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia. In a rare break from his silence around the film, the entry was written by Sitch, who directed and co-wrote The Castle. “It is a sweeping saga that takes the harsh Australian outback, the rugged characters of the Anzac legend, the spirit of Banjo Paterson and ignores them in favour of a greyhound-racing tow truck driver who never meant to be a hero,” he jests.

In the written entry, Sitch also takes aim at the high court authorities, who refused to permit filming inside the brutalist court building in Canberra. Instead, the courtroom scenes were filmed in Melbourne, before a quick trip to Canberra to film outside the high court. Mora recalls the filming was done on a freezing Canberra Saturday, with local journalists press-ganged into being extras. “That added authenticity,” he chuckles.

But The Castle, released five years after the high court’s landmark decision in Mabo, also contained a more serious message. “The film was not just brilliant entertainment,” says Emeritus Professor Tony Blackshield from Macquarie Law School. “Its real social function was to communicate a deeper social understanding of the importance of Mabo.”

Blackshield suggests that the scene where Darryl Kerrigan exclaims that his predicament has helped him understand how Indigenous Australians feel about dispossession “is the central point of the film”. (In another scene, Denuto somewhat mischaracterises Mabo in a legal argument: “That’s your classic case of big business trying to take land … and they couldn’t.”)

The movie was released at a time of increasingly fractious national discourse, after Mabo and the Native Title Act had recognised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities had legal rights to land. “The film becomes this wonderful intervention, that flips this idea of home and country and land into a language that becomes identifiable [to mainstream Australian audiences],” says Professor Kieran Tranter, chair of law, technology and future at Queensland University of Technology. At a time when rightwing politicians and newspapers were arguing against native title, The Castle “sold a story to a nervous nation that was quite reassuring”, says Tranter.

Mora suggests The Castle’s political message was “pointed and yet subtle” (although he acknowledges, laughing, “that doesn’t make sense”). “The very powerful underlying theme of the film is about justice, and that’s justice for all, not just for some people,” continues the actor. By using an ordinary suburban family as the vehicle, Mora suggests, it made “bigger questions of injustice to first Australians more approachable”.

These remain live political issues (including before the high court). “[The Castle] touched on a very significant conversation that we are still having,” Mora adds. Whether it would be considered appropriate today to make a film indirectly addressing Indigenous issues with a largely white cast is questionable. “There are a lot of problems talking about [Indigenous] stories without having [Indigenous] representation,” admits Tranter.

Asmi Wood, a Torres Strait Islander and professor at the Australian National University College of Law, says The Castle has withstood the test of time. An expert on Indigenous legal issues, Wood often discusses the film with first-year law students and is full of praise for its subtle political message. “To make people understand that there is another group of people who might feel alienated, for different reasons and different circumstances, but to create that level of empathy, I think the film is absolutely brilliant,” he says.

But for all The Castle’s cultural commentary, legal legacy and political purpose, it remains popular because it guarantees a laugh. “I think it was very funny,” says Wood.