Writings

HOLY SMOKE (1999)

A family living on a remote property in central Australia mounts an expensive operation to lure their daughter Ruth (Winslett), who has joined a spiritual community of devotees to the charismatic Baba, back from India so that she can be “de-culted”.  A “cult deprogrammer” named PJ (Keitel) from the United States is flown in and, under sufferance amounting to duress, Ruth agrees to spend three days with him alone.

Brilliant farcical tragedy or wasteful and incoherent bomb?  Many opinions surround this film which, while obviously independent, reached a relatively large audience on the basis of its major cast leads (Winslett, soon after her Titanic fame, and Keitel) and the reputation of its production team (Chapman and Jane Campion had worked with Jenet, Patterson and Keitel on The Piano six years earlier). 

The first thing that must be said about Holy Smoke is that it aims high, by attempting to chart the complexities of human emotional breakdown through its two lead characters.  It falls short of being totally convincing, but whether this is fatal to the film is debatable.  Certainly there's a certain depth that seems to be lacking - I don't have the sense that I'll remember the film in years to come – and part of this is no doubt due to the cluttered nature of the script, with its three or four sub-plots.

On the other hand, the performances of Winslett and Keitel go a long way toward papering over these script-flaws.  Winslett is immensely believable as a young, highly intelligent and semi-educated Australian woman who is convinced she’s found true spiritual enlightenment in India – and pleasingly, the film makes no final judgement of whether or not she really has.  Keitel is also convincing as a rather macho “deprogrammer” from the land of certainties, the United States, who through a combination of circumstance and his own frailties – including his ego-driven attraction to young women – finds the manipulative tables turned very early through Ruth’s use of her sexuality.  Circumstance (such as Keitel's wife being delayed two days) - and a deliberately-contrived plot - play a large part in the outcome.  If we can't believe the plot, we can accept it - it is only a film after all - because we can see the bits we don't like about ourselves in each character's fatal decisions.

There's little doubt Ruth knows the game she's playing, just as PJ sets out to consciously manipulate her.  But part of the tragedy is that Ruth doesn’t – and cannot – fully appreciate the power she has over PJ.  The scene before they inevitably fuck has Ruth in full submission to PJ's ego-power: vulnerable in her nakedness, she urinates in full view of him.  Intentionally or not, the tables have turned; PJ's consequent descent into existential crisis parallels her own and is perhaps comeuppance for his own sense of emotional superiority.  Thankfully, whether or not PJ’s fall is “just” is again left up to the viewer. 

Meanwhile, the film retains the “Australian look”: Ruth’s family (the Barrons) could well be a matriarchal version of The Castle’s Kerrigans, with Mum wonderfully played by Julie Hamilton from Sons and Daughters.  In their grounded and practical philosophical materialism, the Barrons cannot comprehend the possibility of Ruth’s conversion; they devise a very practical (and often very funny) means of undoing whatever has been done to their beautiful daughter. 

The final result, while stunningly photogenic, is perhaps not difficult to dislike: one might, not unfairly, recoil at the film’s schizophrenic lurches from farce to high drama to erotic sexuality and back again.  On the other hand, this may convince others of its near-brilliance: Jane Campion is clearly a storyteller who understands the synthetic relationship between sad and funny, tragedy and farce, drama and pornography.  At the very least she wants to explore these syntheses, and I for one appreciate her having a go.  The film probably doesn’t need the final “one year later” sequence, which seems to descend into a sentimentality that is until then admirably avoided.

East of Everything (2008) - ABC miniseries

Last night I finished watching East of Everything, the latest ABC 6-part drama.  I make it a point these days not to read reviews of TV shows and films before I see them, but I couldn't help hearing negative whispers about this show.  This morning, I note what seems to be an overwhelming thumbs-down.  Patrick Tangye of Adelaide's CitySearch website thought that the first episode "fails to deliver".  Jon Faine on Melbourne's 774 called it "boring".  Keith Austin in the Sydney Morning Herald wanted to like it, but on the basis that he couldn't find one character he'd "take home to meet your mum" he rejected it.  On the Internet Movie Database website, one reviewer called it "disappointing" and "trite", with "unlikeable" characters and a "yawn" of a story.  S/he didn't "much care what happens" to any of the characters.  Another called it "terrible".  Yet another thought it was a "total waste of my time and energy".

NIM'S ISLAND (2008)

Nim Rusoe (Breslin) lives on an otherwise uninhabited island ‘somewhere in the Pacific’ with her father Jack (Butler).  When Jack goes missing at sea during a massive storm, Nim finds an email from her fictional hero, Alex Rover, on Jack’s computer.  Nim needs a hero – but ‘Alex Rover’ is actually Alexandra (Foster), a neurotic writer who is afraid to leave her house in San Fransisco to go to the letterbox.  How will she save Nim?

White Fantasy stuff from the realm of picket fences and Enid Blyton sends the post-colonial clock into serious rewind.  Not only are Nim and Jack living out the coloniser’s dream – on an ‘uninhabited island’ where any ‘natives’ are assumed into non-existence (just as the British common law managed to declare the Australian continent ‘terra nullius’) – but it’s their island which must be defended from invaders!  Of course, this is how the coloniser likes to imagine her/his world: ‘unknown’ and ‘discoverable’.  In this upside-down world, the American child Nim’s fictional hero is one Alex Rover (also played by Butler), a Scottish Indiana Jones type who battles all manner of dark and savage people across the Middle East and Africa – all dreamed up by the writer from her wealthy-chic Frisco apartment.  Continuing the spirit of inversion is the evil cruise ship full of vulgar and gluttonous Australians who spread themselves all over the American ‘homeland’.  This caricature of cruise-goers is probably the closest thing the film has to a redemptive feature, though the irony that Americans are portrayed as the ‘victims’ of excessive consumption is too ridiculous to contemplate.  The film’s tagline (‘Be the hero of your own story’) does potentially de-emphasise the film’s other message – that ‘no man or woman is an island’ – but this is a minor matter.  Mr Percival from Colin Thiele’s Storm Boy makes an unexected CGI comeback as ‘Galileo’ in quite possibly only the second time in film history that a pelican emerges as the hero.  By and large, Nim’s Island is thoroughly offensive, and Breslin’s character retains far too much of the demanding narcissism of marketed children’s ‘culture’ to be watchable for long.  Thumbs down.

CANDY (2006)

Girl-next-door Candy (Cornish) falls in love with heroin addict Dan (Ledger), and the two spiral into drug-induced hell amid their perfect insular romance.

Luke Davies, with his mix of tragedy, anti-romance and eroticism, is often held up as Australia’s premier underground/drug-culture writer, and with good reason: his first novel, Candy, is a brilliant tour-de-force that chronicles expertly his characters’ descent into chaos.  As Davies has said, “in Candy I’ve tried to show that addiction is not a black and white world as portrayed in the mainstream media”.  And he certainly does that – throughout the book, and Armfield’s subsequent adaptation, there’s a romanticism for heroin, and for desire itself, that one cannot ignore. 

Desire, which is manifest in the drug and in the character of Candy herself, is displayed with all the ambiguity it deserves.  Film reviewers Jim Schembri and Jake Wilson (who was unable to finish Davies’ novel), both of the Age, judged the film for these ambiguities, for not presenting heroin addiction as blatantly and undeniably bad.  In doing so, they have allowed their own prejudices to influence their reaction: what Armfield and Davies have done with this film is allow audiences to make up their own minds.  Whether or not that is dangerous is a matter of personal opinion. 

Throughout both book and film, I viewed the relationship between “Dan” (who doesn’t have a name in the novel) and Candy as always destructive, when viewed from the outside, though I do appreciate that within the very insular relationship itself, each character had found what each believed to be perfection.  (The relationship then becomes a metaphor for drug addiction, and there is evidence that the characters’ co-dependency mirrored their addictions to heroin.)  Wilson makes the semi-perceptive point that Cornish’s character brings to the film a “quasi-pornographic” quality, as we watch her consistent degradation for much of the film’s length, though he judges it because of this, and fails to appreciate that the story has a pornographic theme at its centre. 

Yes, it’s been done before, so of course it is thematically unoriginal, though this should not prevent its being made; the problem, also unoriginal, continues to reinvent itself in wider society.  We should not be concerned with the film’s ambiguity; ambiguity is the hallmark of great art.  We should be more concerned with each individual’s response to that ambiguity, particularly if some people are influenced by its apparently romantic (actually pornographic) approach to addiction. 

On a more technical note, the performances are all brilliant – though after Somersault and now this, Cornish is in danger of being typecast.  She and Ledger are exceptional in their roles, and the support cast, notably Hazlehurst, Martin and Rush (whose character is massively expanded from his bit-role in the novel, due in no small part to his lifelong professional relationship with Armfield), provide the perfect backup.  The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2006. 

This was, tragically, Ledger’s final Australian role before being found dead in his New York apartment in January 2008; ironically, his death (and life) was drug-related.

FROG DREAMING (1986)

Cody Walpole (Thomas), a 14-year-old orphaned American boy living a rather unconstrained life with his father’s friend in Australia, becomes intrigued and then obsessed by the legend of the Donkejin – a bunyip that is said to live in the lake formed in a disused quarry mine.  After the death of a local hermit who had camped by the lake, his research into kadaitcha (synonymous with ‘Aboriginal magic’ in the film, but which in reality is an Arrernte word for the shoes worn by a ritual executioner which are woven of feathers and human hair and treated with blood – for more on the Kadaitcha Man, see: Yipirinya School Council and the Institute for Aboriginal Development, Arrernte ayaye = Arrernte Stories, 1986; David Brooks, The Arrernte Landscape, 1991; Sam Gill, Storytracking, 1998; John Godwin, Unsolved, 1976; Ronald Rose, Living Magic, 1956) makes him determined to confront the Donkejin once and for all.

Good old fashioned Aboriginal mysticism is the setting for this piece of Ozploitation cinema, featuring the child star of E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982).  A fun, local version of any number of similar US films at the time (think Not Quite Human and its sequels; Gremlins; The Goonies; etc; the genre has continued through to The Boy With the X-Ray Eyes and Agent Cody Banks), it casts teen spiritedness against suburban conformity, represented in the characters played by Miller, Manning and Ewart, and appropriates apparently generic Aboriginal mythology in the process.  Earns a star for its sense of fun, but has been largely forgotten along with most of the Ozploitation films of the late 1970s and 80s. 

As an aside, the Kadaitcha Man has made consistent appearances in film and literature of the past thirty years: see the horror film Kadaicha; ‘The Kadaitcha Man’ (a second series episode of the John Waters TV series Rush); and in literature: Sam Watson, The Kadaitcha Sung (1990); Peter Bulkeley, Kadaitcha: A Novel (1999); and Barbara Vernon’s radio serial Kadaitcha.  Not to be confused with the two-minute animated US short of the same name produced in 2002.

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (2005)

Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) retains nothing of the magic of Dahl's book, or the 1971 film.  Even the story's beginning – the search for the Golden Tickets – is flat and unexciting. In filling out the original story, Burton et al have managed retain only the moralism - something Hollywood simply can't do without - devoid totally of spirit.  Even the effects seem cheap (they're not!).  Potentially the best alteration to Dahl's original story - the derangement of the Willy Wonka character - is given a superficial and stereotyped treatment by the scriptwriters, and Depp (no Gene Wilder) fails to give it any more than an aesthetic value.

Contrary to those critics who suggest this update is truer to Dahl's book, where Wilder's (and Dahl's) Wonka - an essentially conservative creation - maintained a controlled rebellion against the commercialism and individualism of modern society, this Burton/Depp monster is a creepy Michael Jackson stereotype, childish and rudderless.  (It would be far too generous to suggest that Burton has intentionally created an ambiguous character as a commentary on postmodernity; the total lack of formal consistency in his Wonka suggests he was merely chasing big bucks, and gave his audience a child-psychopath with an oh-so-familiar personal history as in any number of serial killer genre productions this side of Silence of the Lambs.) 

In an apparent neo-liberal proof that labour is more expensive than technological capital, all 165 Oompa-Loompas are played by the one Kenyan-born distant descendant of India's Maharajah Vinepal, the dwarf Gordeep "Deep" Roy; made exclusively for ethnically Anglo children, this film's credibility depends partly upon its audience's acceptance that Roy's ethnically south Asian Oompa-Loompas came from a fictional (and, again, stereotypical, in the Anglo imagination) Amazonian jungle-nation. Burton's remake is disappointing, overlong, expensive and - fatally for such extravagance - boring.

BOMB.

COOL CHANGE (1986)

Steve Mitchell (Blake) is a coastal Park Ranger whose larrikinism and commonsense, consensus solutions incur the wrath of his stickler boss (Wright); wanting to transfer him, the Department gives him a choice between far north Queensland and the cattle country of the Snowy Mountains, where he grew up.  He arrives in the Mountains at a flashpoint: the Cain Labor government has been re-elected on a promise of reclaiming the country for conservation, and has just declared the whole region part of the Alpine National Park; applying pressure on the ground are Green groups and bushwalkers led by James Hardwicke (Bradshaw), a Bob Brown/Peter Garrett-styled coordinator of the (fictional) Alpine Conservation Movement (perhaps based upon the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA), an NGO formed in 1952 which since the early 1980s has been committed to removing cattle from the high country).  The cattle grazers, desperate to maintain their lifestyle and 150 years of tradition (it is of this country that Banjo Paterson wrote his iconic The Man From Snowy River), are organising their own protest league, the Mountain Cattlemens Association of Victoria (MCAV).  Steve reacquaints with his family and with Joanna Regan (Armytage), the adult daughter of father’s (Albiston) greatest rival, and tries to apply his unique consensus larrikinism to the situation.  Meanwhile, the Minister (Bruning) applies more heat through his competent advisor Lee (Furness).

Accessible but over-sentimentalised (and at times propagandistic) treatment of an issue that remained topical throughout the following two decades: the Bracks Labor government in Victoria (through its then Environment Minister, future Deputy Premier John Thwaites) announced in 2005 that none of the 61 existing cattle grazing licenses would be renewed when they expired in August of that year; while its decision had the support of scientists, the CSIRO, environmental historians and the National Trust (and had been recommended as far back as 1957 by the Australian Academy of Science), the federal Howard government announced through its then Environment Minister Ian Campbell that it would overrule the Victorian decision.  The cattlemen, who claimed they were the real conservationists (‘if we don’t look after the mountain, it won’t look after us’) rallied on 9 June in Melbourne, just as they did in footage used in the film; they were supported by celebrities including Billy Brownless, Tim Watson, Josh Fraser, Brad Ottens (as AFL identities, the modern inheritors of the bushman myth) and Tom Burlinson, who played the title role in the 1982 film The Man from Snowy River, and who set up his own website (see below) in support of the cattlemen.  (For the record, other celebrities, including John Wood of the newly formed Alpine Alliance, weatherman Rob Gell and Ron Barassi, lined up in support of the Bracks government.)  The federal government did not have the power to demand that Victoria reissue the licences, and did not succeed in having cattle grazing in the area heritage listed before it lost office in November 2007; the mountain cattlemen in 2006 drove cattle through the Park in contravention of the new laws. 

An updating of The Man From Snowy River (by the same producer and director team), the film makes a concerted and populist attempt to present the situation from the point of view of the cattlemen, whose reasonableness is contrasted with the attitudes of the “Greenie” protestors and the Labor government; while a more considered presentation of those other views may have made for a less sentimentalised film, it is a rich account of the source of a major cultural hero in Australia – the ‘Man from Snowy River’, the larrikin bushman himself. 

Steve Mitchell is good-looking, quick-witted, sardonic, full of common sense, and good in a fight; his comfortable way with women has been included for modern and American audiences.  Set firmly within the Australian tradition, which by the 1980s was almost all kitsch, tradition is given an unproblematically ‘good’ value – especially in relation to modernity, as represented by the environmentalism and feminism of the Lee character (played by Furness), who is both home-wrecker and lifestyle-wrecker. 

Beautifully shot, though often with a midday-movie feel, and with another top score by Rowland, this is worth watching on a lazy winter afternoon; despite its relative popularity at the box office, it has now been almost completely forgotten. 

Most evident is the tragedy of Blake.  At just 28, his immensely promising career was cut short on 1 December 1986 when, driving home after the last day’s filming of The Lighthorsemen, he sustained massive brain injuries after colliding with another vehicle; the compensation he received for his confinement to near-vegetative state for the remainder of his life (a massive $32 million, reduced to $7m on appeal) was, one feels after seeing his performance in Cool Change, only a fraction of what he could have made in Hollywood. 

A lighter observation: Farnham, who co-wrote the title song, would ironically become the voice of Greenpeace in 1989 when he launched the NGO’s Rainbow Warriors album in Moscow with his song ‘You’re the Voice’ (and it should be noted that the Little River Band’s 1979 hit ‘Cool Change’ is completely unrelated to this film).  Wilde (then of Ol’55, Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons and Hey Hey It’s Saturday fame) makes an odd cameo performance as an ocker ranger-cum-saxophonist

CELIA (1988)

Melbourne, 1957: Celia (Smart) has just turned 9; her grandmother (Ricketts), a member of the Communist Party of Australia, has just died; a new family with three children – the Tanners – has just moved in next door.  Evan (Sharman), the Tanners’ father, works for the same organisation as her own dad, Ray (Eadie): the Postmaster-General’s Department or PMG (disaggregated into Telecom – now Telstra – and Australia Post in 1975) which, like many public service departments, was known to sack employees accused of communist membership or sympathies right up until the late 1960s. 

While Ray is stridently anti-communist, Evan and his wife Alice (Longley) are members of, respectively, the CPA and the Australian Peace Council, a Front organisation.  Celia makes friends with the new neighbours, and inevitably becomes embroiled in the culture war between the two ideologies; Ray eventually forbids Celia from playing with the Tanner children, and tries to buy her off with the rabbit she’s always wanted – against his own hostility toward rabbits, then the focus of a major Myxomatosis campaign by the state government (then led by the Liberal Party’s Henry Bolte, who in 1968 would become notorious as the last Premier to execute a citizen by hanging – this is the subject of the telemovie The Last of the Ryans).  Before long, the government declares the keeping of all rabbits – including pet rabbits – illegal, and Bolte becomes a figure of hate for Celia; in this way Ray begins to critique his own political views. 

By this time, Evan has lost his job – presumably due to Ray’s patriotic diligence in reporting him to the PMG.  Meanwhile, Celia’s overactive imagination – with which she imagines she’s forever being attacked by terrifying alien creatures – leads her to commit an horrific crime of her owN.

Highly complex and interpretive first film by Turner, who later directed Hammers Over the Anvil and Dallas Doll before returning to the thriller genre with Irresistible.  All of her films are set against intensely political backgrounds – Hammers presents the childhood of Alan Marshall, who became a well-known left-wing writer after the 1939-45 war; Dallas Doll and Irresistible present critiques of suburban life; and Turtle Beach, for which Turner wrote the screenplay, is journalist (and Bob Hawke’s biographer and then second wife) Blanche D’Alpuget’s story of a reporter who leaves her family to cover the story of Vietnamese asylum seekers in Malaysia. 

The marketing of the film is as misleading as it is fascinating, and seems to want to avoid the political story at all costs.  “Surrendering to her exaggerated fears and fantasies,” reads the 1989 Hoyts VHS jacket blurb, “Celia’s vivid imagination takes hold as she crashes across the boundary of innocent game playing into violent reality.”  Not even Tony Harrison makes mention of any complexity beyond the thriller component in his short synopsis for his Australian Film & TV Companion; US distributors even subtitled the film Child of Terror!  

But the political story – the McCarthyist conformism (as in the classroom scenes), the ideological battles played out in suburban streets, the post-1956 communist disillusionment, the complex role of the police in mid-twentieth century Australia – is central to this film; Celia’s imagination and culminatory crime are complex metaphors for the insanity of the political climate during the postwar years.  (The final hanging scene is, no doubt, a cute reference to Bolte’s terrible legacy.) 

Like Hammers and, say, Careful, He Might Hear You, this complex adult world is depicted through the eyes of children; the film thus rests upon the performance of the exceptional Smart, who in the same year won hearts with her portrayal of Buster in the miniseries remake of The Shiralee; as such, the complexity of that world is often exposed as foolish and even shameful, as in the married anti-communist Ray’s pursuit of the married pro-communist Alice. 

This is the most uncontroversial reading of the film – to ask anything of its makers’ political sympathies is to ask questions that can only mislead: while it could be suggested that the film is harsh on Ray, who has his anti-communism somewhat challenged, it is equally as harsh on Alice, whose disillusionment is obvious; if communism breaks up families (which could be implied from Celia’s hatred of her father’s authoritarianism), so do conservatives (Ray makes passes at Alice). 

The quarry area around which the film was photographed had been used in Frog Dreaming two years earlier.

CHAK DE! INDIA (2007)

As captain of India’s national men’s hockey team, Kabir Khan (Shahrukh) elects to take a penalty shot to tie the world championship final – and misses.  India loses to Pakistan; ostracised, disgraced and accused of deliberately throwing the match, Kabir disappears for seven years.  He returns to coach the national women’s team, which is treated as a circus act by the sport’s administration.  Without resources, the team works toward competing in the world championships in Sydney.

Extremely popular Bollywood movie starring the ‘King of Bollywood’ himself, Shahrukh Khan, follows a plot similar to Champions: The Mighty Ducks, and based upon India’s real-life win in the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.  This is the ultimate in Hollywood/Bollywood formalism: a disgraced individual takes a team of misfits and converts them into world champions against the odds.  On that synopsis, it should be a two-and-a-half-hour yawn. 

But it’s not.  It’s a thoroughly entertaining journey that brings the audience along despite (or perhaps because of) its shameless exploitation of nationalist sentiment.  Shimit Amin knows how to press populist buttons! 

Beyond just a hockey film, Chak De! India is a promotional film for India’s ‘new nationalism’, and there are a number of ways of seeing this.  As an attempt to draw together almost 2 billion people from varying cultures and regions into one (potentially all-powerful) nation, it is frighteningly admirable.  This ‘new nationalism’ is against regionalism, racism and gender inequality, and these arguments are presented in unambiguous form throughout the film.  On the other hand, however, this ‘new nationalism’ – to the extent that it’s a modernising force – could be accused of denying traditional Indian cultures (Hindu, Jain, Buddhism, Sikh, Islam) in favour of a globalised and marketable ‘Indianism’.  A number of scenes have Kabir emphatically denying regional differences: this could be read as an attempt to subvert cultural difference in favour of an all-encompassing ‘national identity’ – which certainly seems positive to the extent that it denies the validity of racism.  A scene near the end of the film shows the Indian players in traditional dress, but asking each other why they had to wear them: the commentary is obvious.  On this level, the film presents a western (or westernised) modern nationalism - a nationalism which may manifest itself in future geopolitical consequences.

WOLF CREEK (2005)

Aussie Ben Mitchell (Phillips) and two English backbackers Liz (Magrath) and Kristy (Morassi) pile in a car for a 3-week road-trip from Broome to Cairns.  But they’re in for nothing but total horror when they meet Mick Taylor (Jarratt) in Wolf Creek.

This film contained enough similarities to events alleged in the trial of Bradley Murdoch, the man charged with the murder of British tourist Peter Falconio, to prompt the Northern Territory’s DPP to ask Roadshow (the film’s distributors) to delay its release in that Territory until after Murdoch’s trial.  Roadshow agreed, but Lightfood was apparently mystified: while the film is marketed as “based on true events”, it has never been officially linked to any specific events (though the Ivan Milat murders between 1989 and 1992 in Queensland are often cited in media reports). 

Still, it’s easy to see how the film would be prejudicial to Murdoch’s case if viewed by a member of the jury: the film’s politics are those of victimhood.  It uses brilliant technical effects to create real terror for audiences, and constructs Jarratt’s character as pure, unadulterated evil with no redeeming features. 

The first half of the film, during which the audience gets to know the characters (who are, and this is one of many intended clichés in the film’s narrative, “young and carefree”), does not prepare the audience for the second half, in which Mick Dundee’s Evil Twin gets off on torturing, debasing and murdering them. 

All performances are top-notch; as a side-note it’s pleasing to see Magrath (best known to fans of SeaChange) return for her first major screen role (apart from a couple of Blue Heelers episodes) since the unsuccessful pay-TV series Shock Jock in 2001.  This was Phillips’ breakthrough film, which launched his American career. 

That the film, shot for approximately $1m (and as such invoking memories of 2004’s Saw, also written and directed by Australians), is technically brilliant is beyond dispute; what is confusing is just what the film means.  Is this entertainment?  The sheer on-screen violence is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before – it is more real.  Scarier: it’s possible to see how it can go further.  Is this what we need to be entertained now?  Along with Saw, it heralded a new era for horror cinema (which has since seen the Saw sequels and Hostel). 

Some reviews are claiming this’ll do for the outback what Jaws did for the beach and The Blair Witch Project did for dark forests.  Certainly an immediate “fear factor” increase is probably inevitable for everyone who sees it; what is more worrying is the way the film fits neatly into the heterotopia that constructs all criminals as “evil”, and promotes the fear of The Outback: certainly the Labor State Premiers around Australia at the time of the film’s release will not feel that it in any way detracts from their “Tough on Crime” message.  The political consequences of a film that promotes extreme victimology (to the point of creating a totally evil bad guy) against a clichéd (and hence familiar) horror script (complete with script holes, a return-from-the-dead protagonist and a sole survivor) may be dire, in a climate already driven by ever-increasing (and –promoted) fear. 

(Note: the crater at the film’s turning point does exist – and it’s at Wolfe Creek, in WA, not NT.)  McLean followed this with the less grisly (!!) Rogue in 2007.  For the record, Murdoch was found guilty of Falconio’s murder.

THEY'RE A WEIRD MOB (1966)

Nino Culotta (Chiari), a writer, arrives in Australia from Italy to discover his cousin, a magazine editor, has fled, leaving Nino with a huge debt to Kay Kelly (Dunne), daughter of a building industry magnate (Rafferty).  But Nino’s happy-go-lucky attitude soon finds favour with the locals, as he takes a job as a builder’s labourer.  His jovial nature makes him popular with everyone, bosses and brickies alike.  Before long, he also finds love – but not where he expected!

One of the few Australian films to be made during the Liberal Party-dominated 1950s and 1960s still retained a major British influence: that of acclaimed director-producer Powell, whose filmmaking status was already assured after such classics as The Battle of the River Plate, The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, Stairway to Heaven, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.  (Powell hung around in Australia to adapt Norman Lindsay’s Age of Consent, fulfilling a promise made during the shooting of Weird Mob to attempt to re-create an Australian film industry.) 

A budget of $600,000 was available for Weird Mob, and Powell’s influence was enormous: he had the prolific Chiari brought from Italy, he had a house specially built on Sydney Harbour, and he shot beach scenes at Bondi using army equipment.  Chiari is absolutely brilliant in the lead role; it appears at times that he must have provided the inspiration for O’Grady’s original character! 

At the time the film was shot, O’Grady’s book had been a highly popular novel following its publication in 1958; adapting it would have been a challenge, given the impression the book had made on the public consciousness.  But Powell and Pressburger rose to that challenge, and the result, while sometimes perhaps resembling a propagandistic (and assimilationist) pro-immigration piece, is nonetheless superbly crafted. 

Much of the film’s charm, of course, is false: in presenting (white) Australians as a largely tolerant and politically progressive group regarding non-Anglo immigration, the film ignores the xenophobia which has always defined the Australian mainstream.  It’s arguable that such a glossy, tolerant exterior was intended as an ironic challenge to the much harsher reality, though such a reading is perhaps far too subtle, particularly considering the film’s audience. 

More probable (and less tenable) is that the film’s politics are assimilationist – it’s very likely that, given much of white Australia’s ignorance of any alternative policy, the filmmakers themselves didn’t even realise they were arguing for assimilation.  But in having the “new Australian”, Nino, continually subjected to ‘tests’ of his “Australianness” as determined by the dominant (indeed homogenous) Anglo-Australian population, and having him continually “pass”, the film presents Anglo-Australian cultural values as “normal”, against which all other values must be defined – and eliminated.  A small number of Italian “new Australians” besides Nino are depicted, other non-Anglo ethnic groups are at best merely referred to – and Aboriginal people are conspicuously and totally absent. 

If the film is at all “multicultural”, it is John Howard’s multiculturalism: that is, ethnic and cultural “difference” [as defined in relation to the “norm” of Anglo-Australianness] is tolerated so long as that “difference” does not encroach upon the fundamentals of (white) “Australianness”, and that the “new Australian” is making a proper effort to assimilate.  Such a political reading should render the film’s politics quaint in the 21^st century; of course, the 21^st century’s political climate renders the film far from quaint.  Some would argue that the film even presents politics to which we should aspire, inferring that it presents an Australia which, while far from perfect, is a damn sight more reasonable than the present atmosphere of fear and suspicion. 

Chiari returned to Australia in 1970 to make Squeeze a Flower.  See also Dennis Hill’s TV documentary on the making of the film, included on the DVD edition.

AYA (1990)

Aya (Ishida) is a young Japanese woman who has married an Australian man, Frank (Eadie), and moved to Melbourne during the 1950s despite the wishes of her family.  Her life in Melbourne is difficult and lonely as she raises their child, while her relationship with Frank sours gradually.  Her only friend seems to be Frank’s friend Mac (Haywood), who speaks fluent Japanese and was the original translator of letters between Aya and Frank while she waited for a visa.  Despite her difficulties, she sends frequent letters to her family in which she portrays her life as idyllic.  Paradoxically, as her marriage falls apart her relationship with Frank’s dying mother strengthens and Aya’s quality of life appears to improve.

Unassuming independent film by Norwegian-born writer, director and artist Hoaas appears, in retrospect, to have heralded the multiculturalisation of Australian cinema in the 1990s, after the subject of contemporary immigration experiences was dealt with only occasionally in films like They’re a Weird Mob and Silver City.  Aya’s experiences are treated sensitively and evenly by Hoaas, who refrains from making overt statements, preferring to focus on the insular nature of a Melbourne just graduating from its ‘white Australian’ slumber and the requisite isolation of the so-called “new Australians”.  Haywood and Japanese actor Ishida deliver enjoyable and memorable performances. 

Hoaas has made a number of documentaries, including Sacred Vandals (1983), set on Hatoma Island; Green Tea and Cherry Ripe (1989), which tells the story of six Japanese women who married Australian servicemen after World War 2 and which inspired Aya; Pyongyang Diaries (1997); and in 2001 Rushing to Sunshine: Seoul Diaries, in which she interviewed South Koreans over their opinions regarding reunification.  She has also made a number of shorter films and documentaries.  In 2004 she received funding from the Victorian Minister for Aged Care for a screenplay, The Waitress and the Watchmaker, about an older Asian-Australian who finds a ‘family’ in young neighbours and fights for the right to his own history.  Hoaas has contributed short stories to various publications including Quality Women’s Fiction, and has also translated many of the works by the Norwegian writer Jens Bjørneboe. 

Some trivia: Aya was only the second feature film produced in Australia to cast an Asian woman in a leading role.  (Who can guess the first?)

ANZACS (1985) (Miniseries)

The Great Adventure tells the story of the Anzacs at Gallipoli in 1914.  The Great Push follows the Anzacs through the Battle of the Somme in 1916.  In The Devil’s Arithmetic, the Anzacs must confront the German’s Siegfried Line (called the Hindenberg Line by the British) during the winter of 1916-1917.  Fields of Fire tells the story of the Third Battle of Ypres during the second half of 1917, during which Allied forces recaptured the Passchendaele ridge at terrible cost.

Less an historical drama than an episodic and comedic vehicle for Clarke (who would later achieve fame opposite Guy Pearce in the Man from Snowy River TV series) and particularly Hogan, with constant one-liners and even one or two standup routines.  From an historical and critical viewpoint, it’s a rather uninspired retelling of the story of Australian involvement in the ‘Great War’ of 1914-1918, when the Anzac myth was born.  On this level, it’s inferior in almost every way to 1915, which screened three years previously on the ABC, and to the cinematic releases Gallipoli and The Lighthorsemen.  While falling short of glorifying the war, it certainly presents the glorified larrikin nationalism of the Hawke era, which would morph rather easily into the military nationalism of the Howard years.  As such, it’s little more than one long polemic from the mythic viewpoint of the Anzac soldiers against the portrayed ignorance and ineptness of British officers and Australian politicians.  It builds upon the much-celebrated mateship myth whose origins have been appropriated to the battlefields of Europe and the Middle East during World War I.  (While this may have been one aspect of the war, there were many others that could have been explored by the series.) 

However, purely as a piece of comedic entertainment (in the mould of M*A*S*H, for example), it’s watchable.  It becomes darker through Episode 3 as Hogan fades into a bit-part role.  This was Hogan’s first dramatic role (not counting his part as “third delivery man” in Fatty Finn), though of course he played himself, as he would the following year when his privately-financed Crocodile Dundee would become the western world’s super-hit. 

If you can handle seeing history abused to become a mere tool for the mythic Australian nation, by presenting Hogan and Clarke as heroic larrikins who’ll breeze unscathed through any sticky situation on the basis of their charm, humour and good Aussie spirit, then this one’s for you.  Could be renamed “Hogan’s Heroes” (in more than one sense) without too much difficulty! 

An accompanying behind-the-scenes documentary, Anzacs: History in the Making, is included on the DVD version; narrated by Bud Tingwell, it confirms the agendas of Dixon and Burrowes in particular – to address what they saw as the lack of attention paid by contemporary Australians to the Anzacs’ story, and to rebut the “fashionable intellectual” view that their losses were in vain.

SUPERMAN RETURNS (2006)

Superman (Routh) returns to Earth after five years, only to find Lex Luther (Spacey) out of jail, and Lois Lane (Bosworth) effectively married and with child.

Batman Begins was released in 2005 to renew that superhero franchise, consigning the increasingly silly 1989-1998 quartet to the cinematic graveyard.  In contrast, that other increasingly silly superhero quartet, the Superman franchise (1978-1987), has been revived in this fourth sequel 19 years on.  That presents its own unique challenge: while Batman’s cowl was filled by three actors, the role of Superman belonged to the late Christopher Reeve.  Reeve’s lateness made it obligatory for the filmmakers to nod his way, and while Routh does a credible Superman, he plays Reeve himself with distinction (his imitation of Reeve’s Clark Kent is uncanny).  Casting a 22-year-old Bosworth as Lane, who by now has a five-year-old child, was unfortunate, but then Routh himself was only 25: while this means that the film often resembles an episode of The OC, perhaps it also means that the franchise can continue with the same key actors for a while.  (Though one thing’s for certain: Bosworth and Margot Kidder have very little in common!) 

The film itself lacks any real substance beyond the obvious Christian dog-whistle stuff, which becomes offensive very quickly.  The Christian motif makes it impossible for Superman, who has returned after five years of searching for remnants of his home planet Krypton, to play homewrecker with Lois Lane’s new family, so we see the strange (for Hollywood film) subjugation of romantic emotion, instead privileging an ethic of love and advocating the Christo-rational control of self.  Superman, who of course always was a Christ-like saviour figure, becomes much more the saviour of humanity than merely of America: it’s “truth, justice and all that” now.  (Notably, the film was shot in Sydney.)  But the Christian “sub”-text is all too obvious here, as we see a drawing by Lois’s son depicting his family below “Superman”, Superman assume a crucifixial pose, and Superman sacrifice himself to save humanity.  Indeed, he even dies at one point, after which he disappears from his hospital bed to rise to the heavens (this is also the point at which any relationship with Lois becomes impossible, despite it being hinted at prior to his “death”). 

The Luthor scenes are often plain silly, and the script itself, attempting to play with the litany of cultural references at the writers’ disposal, is mostly mundane and uninteresting.  So this film, like too many others, ends up relying solely upon music and special effects to “wow” audiences who, it seems, want only to be entertained. 

With Singer already at work on a predictable sequel (having created the potentially large problem of a son for Superman), let’s hope that Routh and Bosworth don’t succumb to what is becoming known in Hollywood as a “Superman curse”, that has befallen, most notably, George Reeves (suicided in 1959), Christopher Reeve (paralysed after a horse-riding accident in 1995 left his neck broken; eventually died of a heart attack in 2004), Richard Pryor (attempted suicide in the early 1980s, having been molested at age 6 by a neighbour), Richard Lester (gave up directing in 1989 after the death of a friend), Marlon Brando (his daughter Cheyenne committed suicide in 1995, aged 25), Margot Kidder (involved in a serious car accident in 1990 and consequently could not work for two years, during which time she went bankrupt; she then suffered delusionary paranoia for some time after 1996, during which she became convinced that her first husband was trying to kill her, and faked her own death; in 2002 she was in another car accident in which she broke her pelvis), Lane Smith (suffered and eventually died from Lou Gehrig’s disease) and Dana Reeve (Christopher’s wife and primary caregiver died in 2006 from lung cancer aged 44, never having smoked; Superman Returns is dedicated to her memory).

RAN: REMOTE AREA NURSE (2006) (Miniseries)

Helen Tremain (Porter) is a white nurse from Cairns who is stationed temporarily on Masig (otherwise known to mainlanders as Yorke Island), a coral cay in the west-central Torres Strait.  As she integrates herself into the community, run with a heavy hand but a (mostly) good heart by its Chairman, Russ Gaibui (Passi), she must tread a fine line between caring/treating and interfering.  It’s an election year on Masig, whose population must vote for its Chairman, and Gaibui is facing tough opposition from his estranged son Eddie (Fa’aoso).

Superb, warm series from Chapman, whose previous series Cooks  (a spinoff of Temptation) suffered terrible mismanagement by the Ten Network (Chapman brought Pankhurst, Addison, Smith and Alsop along from that franchise to work on RAN).  The series was sparked by a conversation at the time that Chapman had just left the ABC as its head of TV drama between Chapman and her neice, whose mother (Chapman’s sister) had worked as a remote area nurse on Masig. 

Obviously made for a southern city audience, it retains a commendable authenticity that has ensured that those working on the series have given it very positive reviews: shot on Masig over a three-month period, the visiting cast and crew (reportedly at least) gave up alcohol due to the island’s dry status, most of the Islander roles were played by non-actor locals, and consultants George Mye (a Mer Island Councillor for 25 years and the inaugural ATSIC Commissioner for the Torres Strait) and Robyn White (an RAN in the Torres Strait since 1992, and currently on Masig) contributed valuable knowledge. 

Charles Passi was not casting director Greg Apps’ first choice; Apps was in the office of Pastor Pedro Stephen, then TSRA Chairman, trying to convince him to try out for the role, but Stephen couldn’t take three months’ leave from his position.  Passi, a singer/songwriter in the band ‘The Harmonics’ (with Norah Bagiri) and a twenty-year veteran of Indigenous politics, was in Stephen’s office at the time, and reluctantly accepted Apps’ request to audition. 

Jones’ cinematography is stunning: his previous credits include Queen of the Damned, Rabbit-Proof Fence (as arial photographer), Human Touch, Alexandra’s Project and The Tracker, and on this project his genius was combined with that of Caesar and McKenzie, who had recently worked together on the brilliant but short-lived ABC series Fireflies.  Porter is, as always, superb. 

The non-professional Islander cast includes: Whaleboat, a poet who, at the time the series went to air in early 2006, was studying a double degree in Education and Arts at Deakin University (Geelong); Gela, who wants to pursue acting as a career; traditional TSI dancer Fa’aoso; Zaro, an immigration officer and choir member; Lui, a marine engineer and guitarist; Taylor, a public servant; Rodgers, a community education counsellor based in Brisbane; Masig local Kaddy, a fisherman; Passi’s fellow ‘Harmonics’ member Bagiri; ten-year-old Kebisu; former Torres Strait Radio broadcaster Ingui; Masig Elder Mosby; Elsie Passi, a school officer on Waiben; and Gail Mabo, daughter of the infamous Koiki “Eddie” Mabo who became a household name after the 1992 High Court decision which recognised Native Title.

KOKODA (2006)

A group of Australian “chocolate soldiers” from the 39^th Battalion must survive on the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea for three days during 1942, when sustained attack by the invading Japanese cuts off their supply lines and forces them to defend to the end, awaiting the arrival of the professional army units.

The technical filmmaking genius of this team of 2004 AFTRS graduates cannot hide the fact that this film is, disappointingly, mythically nationalistic.  While comparisons to Chauvel’s Forty Thousand Horsemen are probably unfair, the politically provocative decision to tell the Kokoda story solely from the point of view of the Australian soldiers feeds deliberately into the militaristic nationalism that had been promoted so doggedly and unashamedly by Prime Minister John Howard since 1996.  Good cinema does not reflect uncritical mainstream bias; it questions it, subverts it, and hopes to break it open. 

First-time director Grierson’s film certainly does not ‘glorify war’, as Triple J film reviewer Megan Spencer erroneously opined; it does, however, glorify the imagined military nationalist sentiment that holds that the Australian soldiers at Kokoda both saved the Australian nation, and somehow embedded themselves in a national subconscious, so that “we” may all believe we share the ‘Kokoda spirit’. 

I do not mean to detract from the hellish experiences of those soldiers; their feats of endurance were truly the stuff of remarkable heroics.  However, to suggest that their ‘Australianness’ gave them their heroic abilities is to cheapen nationalism, to lower it to a gutter level of “my patriotism’s better than yours”, and to, albeit indirectly, encourage the tendency to war.  Worse still, to worship them as ‘Heroes’ itself encourages an undemocratic passivity that leads to jingoism via quasi-religious ideology. 

Age reviewer Jim Schembri effectively reinforces my point.  “Australia’s proud military history has been poorly served by our film industry”, he claims, as if he wants art to be a tool for military and political propaganda.  He calls the film’s detail “physically, emotionally and psychologically authentic”, as if he would know, though such a statement only goes to show the mythic qualities of the film.  “The enemy is everywhere but hard to spot, appearing like ghosts of light in the dank undergrowth.”  Indeed, we never see a Japanese face, and in its portrayal of “the enemy”, the film is closer to Schwarzenegger’s Predator than a serious historical account of war.  “The film does not apologise for this [allowing us to empathise with the Australian characters while dehumanising the Japanese and displaying their gruesome sadism], nor does it indulge any ill-conceived notion of ‘balance’.  We see the story entirely from the Australian point of view, a controversial move, but thankfully...Grierson and…Lonie resisted any impulse to infect the film with politically correct cliches.”  Here, Schembri must realise he sounds more like Alan Jones than a serious film reviewer.  The fact that we do see the story only from the “Australian” point of view reinforces the old stereotypes: that the Japanese were “evil”, “shadowy”, “barbaric” and untrustworthy.  It’s only by opening up different points of view, by questioning dogmatic notions of simplistic nationalism, can we hope to ever defeat the fundamentalism that drives nations to war in the first place.  Schembri completely fails to note that a “patriotic film with broad-based appeal about an important historical story released opportunistically on Anzac Day weekend” is playing into the hands of the warmongers and blind nationalists. 

Visually, the film is brilliant, containing probably the greatest war footage ever created for a fictional feature, certainly in Australia; however, the soppy, patriotic monologues by Bourne and McInnes which bracket the war action is completely unnecessary.  Apparently this is the first film Howard saw at a cinema since 1994’s Four Weddings and a Funeral.

BODYLINE (1984) (Miniseries)

The story of the tumultuous 1932-33 Ashes cricket series in Australia, when Douglas Jardine (Weaving), son of the Raj, captained England to a 4-1 victory by using a controversial and unsportsmanlike adaptation of “leg theory” that became universally known within cricketing circles as “bodyline” in order to neutralise the effectiveness of the home team’s batting prodigy, the young Don Bradman (Sweet).

Nice, entertaining if fluffy dramatisation of the infamous Bodyline series is okay viewing for what it is, though from a technical point of view it probably utilises far too many on-field scenes (particularly slow-motion shots of players’ feet, and close-up scenes of players’ heads).  It certainly annoys with an occasional grating commentary provided by Mitchell, who plays Jardine’s love interest. 

However, its main problem lies in its factual inaccuracies and unforgivable narrative constructions at the expense of historical honesty.  Jardine is constructed as the ultimate aristocrat, at times laughably despotic against the mythical egalitarianism of the Australians.  Bradman, a reserved, precise and prickly individual, is portrayed by the larrikin actor Sweet – an interesting choice (but perhaps one made out of necessity, given Sweet’s unique [among actors] history of sporting success at high school level).  Other, smaller factual errors combine to delegitimise the end product: a scene on a ship, in which Jardine informs his fast bowlers (including Harold Larwood, played by Holt) of his tactics for the first time, appears to directly contradict the evidence that Larwood was involved in the formulation of Bodyline from the beginning.  Given that Larwood and fellow England fast bowler Bill Voce (Carter) had deployed Bodyline in English country cricket during the 1931 and 1932 seasons, the scene on the ship appears to be totally fabricated. 

On the other hand, the series does address the vitriol that had been directed at Larwood over the tactic, and portrays the Nottingham pace bowler as “simply following orders” from his upper-class captain (although after the series was played on Channel 10 in 1984, Larwood, then living in Australia, apparently received several threats).  The scene depicting a British flag being burned by two angry Australian fans has never actually been documented, and appears to be artistic license.  

After all’s been said and done, it’s little more than an exercise in national myth-making – which for Australians who choose to identify can be nice in a warm-fuzzy way, but which adds little to the extensive body of literature regarding the Bodyline series and the personalities that participated.  See also the 2002 documentary, Bodyline: It’s Just Not Cricket.

MUNICH (2005)

This is my main criticism of the film: its formulaic nature, its predictability, its claimed universality.  I should expect nothing else from Spielberg, a celebrated filmmaker whose unparalleled successes come from his ability to tell familiar stories, repackaged.  He embodies modernity's catchcry, "make it new!", and he does it well. 

Such simple and universalist narratives have existed far longer than film has.  A story has much greater popularity when it follows such familiar narrative sequences, not least because of its familiarity. 

But what happens when we begin to think of life in the terms of a genre-movie plot?  What happens when, in assessing a film's quality as a piece of cinematic art, we confuse the art-form with the story being told, and accept that story (along with its assumptions) as "fact", or, at the very least, as they way we "should" think?  It has long been recognised that television and film, with their abilities to combine sound, colour and emotion, are the most influential of all media forms.  If I see a film that addresses a particular issue, and I know very little of that issue beforehand, my capacity to be influenced by the filmmaker's argument is great, despite any natural scepticism I may hold.  And if that film conforms to a familiar narrative sequence, my capacity to be influenced is further augmented. 

This process is not necessarily "good", or "bad"...it just "is".  But in MUNICH, whose central "issues" are very "real" ones (to the extent that people die and kill because of them), high scepticism is surely a huge asset. 

In MUNICH, Spielberg pushes his own moral cause with an expert hand (I say "expert", though I do not think this is a great film, or even a particularly good one).  His moral view is that both Palestinians and Israelis should stop destroying each other for the sake of their respective causes.  It is one that, when pressed, I would agree with, but therein lies the catch: I have lived in suburban Australia my entire life and do not feel qualified to make such a judgement.  It is not that I cannot have an *opinion*; opinions must be fostered, as well as continually revised.  But we must exercise restraint in acting in judgement upon those opinions, particularly when, despite the apparently self-evident nature of our righteousness, we have no lived experience of that upon which we pass judgement. 

Why?  For the very reason of the apparently self-evident nature of our righteousness.  When our righteousness appears to be self-evident, that is when we *must* cease to act, and begin a process of deep introspection.  The excuse/justification that "one's heart is in the right place" is nothing more than that, and has attempted to excuse or justify such horrors as the stealing of Indigenous children from their parents in Australia, and the colonisation of entire peoples. 

Spielberg, in attempting to pre-empt this criticism (as well, no doubt, as the inevitable criticism from far-right Zionists who will accuse him of being sympathetic to "terrorists"), has continued to assert that the film is "fiction", merely "inspired" by real events.  He has reminded us of his Jewishness, and of his opinion that Israel should continue to exist. 

But such pre-emption is sophistry, if perhaps unintentional.  Spielberg, while Jewish, is also American, and very wealthy.  His point of view is hardly likely to coincide with that of the Palestinian proletariat, or the Zionist nationalist on the ground in Tel Aviv.  Of course Spielberg is entitled to have his opinion, as we all are - but it is an act of mass self-delusion if we reassure ourselves that MUNICH is merely Spielberg's opinion.  It is a judgement, a $75 million judgement, made not only by Spielberg but by his audience, which is both influenced and influential. 

An individual influenced by a particular style of market fundamentalism might attempt to answer my above criticism of the way in which familiar narrative is used in popular cinema by shrugging her shoulders and asking me where exactly the problem lay.  The audience wants a particular film made; the film is made, and the audience likes it.  Supply, demand.  The market decides. 

Of course, the so-called "laws" of supply and demand have long subverted the processes of democracy.  They don't have to, but our collective inability to recognise that information is neither perfect nor perfectly shared has meant that capitalism and democracy have always had a problem with one another. 

As we, the cinema-going audiences in Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, as well as other places that are influenced by the seductions of the universalist narrative (i.e., pretty much everywhere), watch Spielberg's MUNICH, do we recognise that its moral argument is not universalist, no matter how much it might appear to us?  Coral Bell, author of "A World Out of Balance: American Ascendancy and INternational Politics in the 21st Century", argues that peace itself is a value that is not always prioritised highest by everyone.  We believe that it "should" be the highest priority, but that must remain merely an opinion, and not a judgement.

HATING ALISON ASHLEY (2005)

After seeing the newest local cinema-released movie, I came to the conclusion that what is wrong with the Australian film industry is Hating Alison Ashley.

Perhaps that’s harsh.  But Alison Ashley is, at best, an ordinary feature film.  Sure, it has some amusing cameos (from Jean Kittson and Craig McLachlan, for vastly different reasons), great energy (especially in Saskia Burmeister’s performance), and one or two funny lines (I can’t think of any off the top of my head).  But, as a major adaptation of one of the favourite childhood books of the under-30 generation, it flops.  Badly.

I didn’t want to write this kind of review.  I wanted to like this film.  I don’t pretend to appreciate the difficulties of actually getting a feature film made, and I hate being critical of someone else’s creative efforts.  So, instead of picking apart Hating Alison Ashley scene by scene, criticising Delta Goodrem’s Ramsay Street performance, asking what the hell director Geoff Bennett thought he was doing, and wondering what Robin Klein *really* thinks of the finished product, I’m going to use the film to jump on the bandwagon and critique the industry.

But first, I’d like to respond to those who’ve criticised the critics, who’ve almost universally panned the film.  One common response has been ‘it’s a kids’ film’, as if children’s cinema should for some reason be subject to a lower bar than films made for adults.  Such an argument, which assumes that ‘childhood’ and ‘adulthood’ are mutually exclusive spheres, is blatant condescension.  It is one that belongs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with Locke and Rousseau (and in the twenty-first, it seems, with Amanda Vanstone, although she was merely attempting to censure Morris Gleitzman’s Boy Overboard and Girl Underground).  Hopefully, most of us now recognise that ‘children’ and ‘adults’ (merely descriptive labels) live in the same world, and are exposed to the same stimuli.

Yolngu Boy is a kids’ film.  So were Looking for Alibrandi, Selkie, Babe (and sequel), The Magic Riddle, The River Kings, Sun on the Stubble, Playing Beatie Bow, and ET, Back to the Future and Finding Nemo.  But they were also good films, and hence had broad appeal.

No longer, I argue, are writers and directors given the free reign to create their own films.  Pay-TV and, increasingly, major US studios, are using their provision of finance as a sneaky way to import their own commercial values (including ‘market-based research’) and meddle with the creative process.   Most Australian features this century have been partly-financed by Pay-TV, through either the Premium Movie Partnership for Showtime, or the Movie Network.  Chasing that elusive runaway success of The Castle, Alibrandi and Lantana, many of these films have been compromised by financiers and production companies insisting that the film have the broadest possible appeal with reference to market research.  Invariably and ironically, the resulting films appeal to nobody.  Those films that have worked, critically and/or commercially, have consistently been those whose creative team was allowed to be just that: creative.  Paul Cox’s The Human Touch springs readily to mind.

The Eucalyptus saga illustrates this problem perfectly.  Fox Searchlight (the ‘indie’ arm of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Studios) insisted that Crowe be cast for the film, which immediately created issues for director Jocelyn Moorhouse, who had worked with him in 1991’s Proof.  When Crowe, who managed to score a role as ‘executive producer’, began meddling with the script, the production began to fall apart as actors, kept waiting for weeks, had pressing commitments elsewhere.  No resolution was agreed upon by the various parties.

I haven’t had the opportunity to research the matter, but the casting of Delta Goodrem as Alison Ashley smells suspiciously like a funding decision rather than a creative one.  I have no proof as yet, but you can imagine the boardroom thinking… ‘Okay, Hating Alison Ashley…much-loved kids’ novel…alright, it’s about a bunch of eleven-year-olds…I wonder…you know, if we got Delta, we’d have a guaranteed fan base…they’d have to modify the plot a little, obviously…though Delta could be fourteen, couldn’t she?...’

Whatever the reason for Delta’s casting, the end result is that, on the first Tuesday evening of the film’s national release, during the commercial cinemas’ $5 March madness, there were 6 people in the entire theatre, one of whom I dragged there because I was afraid of how other cinema goers would judge my masculinity.  I saw an uneven example of cinema typified by wooden Neighbours ‘acting’ from the show’s star, aimed ostensibly at the lucrative post-pubescent market but with a little bit for everyone (read: not a lot for anyone).

I contend that there is no problem with the creative talent in this country.  The much-publicised ‘problem’ with the Australian film industry is, in fact, with its commercial backers.  And the problem will only get worse, under a federal government that (1) thinks funding cultural pursuits that don’t involve the word “Anzac” is a waste of tax dollars, and (2) has signed an Intellectual Property Agreement (I refuse to partake in the lie that it has anything to do with “free trade”) with the United States that will see local industries swamped by the big players from across the Pacific.

Oh – and for any Politics of the Media students and fans of Laura Mulvey’s work, Hating Alison Ashley, with its scenes set inside teenage female changerooms, provides a worthy essay topic all by itself.  As to why Delta winds up wearing soft drink bottles as a bra, perhaps Bennett is making a statement about postmodern feminism and the role of women-as-objects in corporate America’s global takeover?  Methinks not…

*…with heartfelt thanks to Rhiannon, who gave up $2 beers for this pile of shit.

FORTY THOUSAND HORSEMEN (1940)

Red Gallagher (Taylor) is in Cairo with the Australian Light Horse awaiting deployment to the Holy Lands. Juliet Rouget (Bryant) is the daughter of a murdered French wine merchant, disguised as an Arab boy serving with the Germans.  When the Light Horse is called for after a British defeat, Red is saved by Juliet in drag, and Juliet falls in love with her “mad bushman” before the Australians’ thrilling conquest of Beersheba.

Wartime Australian propaganda film is far more concerned with mythmaking than storytelling.  Useful to see how Chauvel accomplished his project, with the assistance of the Department of Defence!  The opening credits, against Evans’ score merging Advance Australia Fair (still more than thirty years from becoming the official national anthem) and Waltzing Matilda, give an almost xenophobic account of “greedy” Germany’s push into the Middle East and, as the silver lining, the Anzacs, to become the “greatest cavalry force of modern times”.  Germans are, of course, played by non-Germans, and the silly accents invoke ridicule, as do the simplistic representations of German military strategy-making. 

By 1940, nearly all of the Australian radical nationalism of the 1890s had been stamped out, at least in popular culture, and the “Tommy’s fight” became “our fight”.  Chauvel’s representations of the Light Horse brigade invoke familiar myths of pioneering bushmen, of larrikinism, of ockerness and of egalitarianism, epitomised in Red’s monologue, delivered during a break on the “long march to the Oasis of Ogratina:

I suppose [we’re fighting for] the right to stand up on a soap-box in the domain.  The right to tell the boss what he can do with his job if we don’t like it.  And the right to start of as a rousabout and finish off as Prime Minister.  That’s what we’re fighting for!

The inherent contradiction between these “Australian mateship” myths and the notion of Empire, for which they are fighting, is a contradiction of the times.  Other contradictions abound: during the same break, the young men are discussing their place in history, alongside Napoleon on the Road of Kings; not long after, Rafferty’s character is professing ignorance of the existence of Glasgow, despite Australia’s status as a preferred destination for Scots. 

Inevitably and traditionally, the film becomes an unlikely romance, between Juliet and her “mad bushman” Red; for gender students of the present, Juliet’s swapping of roles is instructive and amusing.  And, keeping with the Australian tradition of “tragic victory”, Red’s two best mates are shot and killed before the Light Horse’s glorious conquest of Beersheba, leading to the “deliverance of Jerusalem” and the “shattering of German domination throughout the Holy Land”.  Events in the film are retold in the 1987 film The Lighthorsemen, suitably with Gary Sweet.