AFCA 2011 Writing Awards
Ivan Hutchinson Award for Writing on Australian Film
Who's Afraid Of The Working Class? We Are
By Rebecca Harkins-Cross
Previously published by The Lifted Brow
http://rebeccaharkinscross.com/2011/12/02/column-whos-afraid-of-the-working-class-we-are/
Australians love a battler. Oft touted as the national type, the battler's spirit has been invoked in the guise of Howard's "ordinary Australians" or Gillard's "working families". From both sides of the political fence, the battler personifies the Protestant work ethic, knowing the importance of keeping one's nose to the grindstone in the pursuit of personal salvation. The battler is, in short, the hard-working everyman, persevering in the face of adversity, eternally on the cusp of the Australian Dream – a double brick veneer in the suburbs, small business ownership and a nuclear family who spend their weekends frolicking by the man-made lakes of Caroline Springs.
From our rural origins to our suburban present, the battler has prevailed, too, as a central figure in Australian cinema. Presumably the corollary of our colonial history, Australia's cinema, like many of our cultural outputs, is still preoccupied with the idea of capturing and defining what constitutes our national identity. Spanning across Australian period films—the shearers of Sunday Too Far Away (Ken Hannam, 1975), the stockman of The Man from Snowy River (George Miller, 1982) and the ANZACs of Gallipoli (Peter Weir, 1981)—to the ockers of Ozploitation sex romps like Stork (Tim Burstall, 1971) and The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (Bruce Beresford, 1972), to suburban comedies such as Muriel's Wedding(P.J. Hogan, 1994) and The Castle (Rob Sitch, 1997), the battler has remained, in various permutations, the hero of our cultural imaginings.
But somewhere along the line, Australian cinema lost sight of true battlers like the Kerrigans—the simple folk with modest aspirations. During the 1990s, questions of national identity dominated the transition from the Keating to the Howard years, with issues like multiculturalism and indigenous rights at the forefront of political discussion. While Howard held up the battler as the national archetype, whom he defined as "somebody who's not earning a huge income but… who is trying to better themselves", in Australian cinema the battler turned against itself. A new kind of anti-hero emerged, the terrifying product of socio-economic disenfranchisement and the exclusion from Howard's Australian Dream. In films likeRomper Stomper (Geoffrey Wright, 1992), Idiot Box (David Casear, 1996) and The Boys (Rowan Woods, 1998), a genre that I'd like to term the 'working-class crime film' was born, simultaneously praised for their "authentic" representations of working-class life and lambasted for their lavish shows of violence. Here, the battler became a psychopath, the suburbs rendered as a real-life dystopia from whence these nightmarish characters sprang forth.
Just when we thought the genre might have exhausted itself after 2000's Chopper (Andrew Dominik, 2000), a new spate of working-class crime films emerged with last year's Animal Kingdom (David Michôd, 2010) and the recent Snowtown(Justin Kurzel, 2011)—a film so claustrophobic, bleak and brutal that it takes the genre to its zenith. These two films have received more attention than most other Australian cinema in recent years. Animal Kingdom cleaned up at the Australian Film Industry Awards (with a record-breaking 18 nominations and 10 wins) and received the Jury Prize for Best World Cinema at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival; Jacki Weaver was even nominated for an Oscar in her role as murderous matriarch Janine. And while Snowtown is yet to hit the prize circuit, it has already received international exposure at Toronto Film Festival and Cannes Critics Week, as well as securing distribution deals in the UK, USA and France.
What is it about the working-class crime film that has so captured the imagination of local and international audiences? Aesthetically, these have been some of the more innovative examples of Australian cinema in recent years. The genre can be defined as much by its style as by its narrative themes. Shot in the eternal dusk of blue filters, sunlight is a rare (if not entirely absent) occurrence in these worlds. Their sparse and ominous soundtracks hover at the edges of perception, only reaching consciousness at moments when violence takes centre screen. And more often than not, the film's action does not leave the suburban home, shots taken through doorways or behind furniture adding to these films' overwhelming sense of claustrophobia.
These are milieus of absentee fathers and overbearing yet ineffectual mothers, their tragedy inherently linked to the breakdown of the nuclear family. While poverty is shown to be a breeding ground for brutality, its ultimate source is always the figure of the charismatic, avuncular psychopath who is able to hypnotise and mobilise those around them—Hando (Russell Crowe) in Romper Stomper, Kev (Ben Mendelsohn) in Idiot Box, Brett (David Wenham) in The Boys, Pope (Mendelsohn again) in Animal Kingdom and John Bunting (Daniel Henshall) in Snowtown. Nobody is impervious to the psychopath's spell, for he (and it is always a he) fills the void left by the deserter Daddy and a need for the authority that Daddy represents. But we must ask what this says about Australian attitudes towards working-class existence? In these films' worldview, the battler is always but one psychopath away from savagery.
Snowtown takes the genre to its extreme, and has divided viewers as a result. Several of its Cannes audience infamously walked out, which has proved a fitting metaphor for its ensuing critical reception. Richard Wilkins of Today called it "the most disgusting, horrific, depraved and degrading film" he had ever seen, "as close to a snuff movie" as he could bear. Helen Garner, writing in the Monthly, chastised director Justin Kurzel for the film's amorality, asking, "What licenses a filmmaker to shove us off the edge of the abyss, to walk away and leave us endlessly falling, without hope of redemption?" Generally, however, the film's reception has been overwhelmingly positive, garnering reviews peppered with terms like "authentic", "gritty", "risky" and "compelling", praising its unflinching depiction of the blighted people who dwell on society's fringes. Mark Naglazas of the West Australian went so far as to ask if "crime dramas, not quirky comedies, are the truest, most natural expression of our natural character"?
Snowtown is based on the 'bodies in barrels' murders of the 1990s, the work of Australia's most notorious serial killer John Bunting, in which eight bodies were discovered in vats of acid stored in a bank vault in Snowtown, South Australia. Sketching a portrait of a forgotten community, Kurzel attempts to show the kind of destitution that allowed a psychopath like Bunting to take control. Much of the film's uncanny horror lies in the fact that it was shot in the North Adelaide suburbs where the real-life murders actually took place, the majority of the cast (except Henshall) non-professional actors sourced from casting calls in the area.
Yet there is something about Snowtown that wallows in this community's poverty. Kurzel is quick to survey the surrounding squalor—barren yards punctuated by miscellaneous trash, careless graffiti on the walls of austere council houses, burnt out shells of cars. The camera zooms in on family feasts of fried eggs and tomato sauce on white toast, overflowing ashtrays and kids' meals sitting side-by-side on the laminex table. Bored teenagers play videogames, smoke ciggies outside concrete shopping malls and ride their bikes in circles on sad, grey streets. As adults, the games may change but the patterns remain the same—they chain-smoke, drink stubbies and play the pokies, everyone doing the best they can to stave off the ennui of the suburbs.
When a man offers to babysit Elizabeth's (Louise Harris) children in the film's opening scenes, it comes as no surprise when he turns out to be a paedophile, taking naked photos of Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) and his younger brothers, who all seem unperturbed. This is a world where abuse is casual. Jamie's older brother nonchalantly rapes him while they watch the cricket, the sound of Richie Benaud's commentary echoing from the television set in the background and the flyscreen door open to the street.
So when John Bunting materializes in their kitchen seemingly out of nowhere, driving away the paedophile by defacing his house with severed kangaroo appendages, he seems like a fairy godfather. He takes Jamie under his wing, cooks meals with vegetables and escorts Elizabeth out dancing, one of the only scenes in which we see this burnt out shell of a woman smile. But in the logic of Snowtown, and the logic of the working-class crime films more broadly, we know that any happiness will be short lived.
Bunting views himself as something of a vigilante, a kind of suburban Travis Bickle who has been sent to cleanse the suburban scourge. "The cops won't do anything," he tells his neighbours. "You gotta take it into your own hands". Bunting is able to create a much-needed sense of community, encouraging parents to convene around the dinner table and relay their dissatisfaction with the system that has abandoned them. Bunting lets them express their pain, empowers them to verbalize how they would enact justice, if only they could—lurid revenge fantasies in which they show the abusers just who's boss. But the difference with Bunting is that these are not mere fantasies. He plans to act on them, ridding the world of "paedos" and "fags" (which, in Bunting's eyes, means the same thing).
Like in Animal Kingdom (which is told from the perspective of 17-year-old Josh [James Frechville]), the spectator is aligned with the subjectivity of Jamie, a blank slate of a 16-year-old boy who falls under Bunting's spell. Often framed through Jamie's eyes, we too are taken forcibly into this world in which Kurzel plays with what is necessary to show on screen. Extreme close-ups of toenails being torn off with pliers, a man's face beaten brutally, Jamie's brother being garrotted in the family bathtub from which their mother later bathes. We too become complicit in these horrors, and like Jamie are taken from innocence to corruption.
As the film progresses, Bunting's targets become increasingly more indiscriminate. He kills Jamie's best friend, a "fucking junkie" who Bunting insists is "a waste," and later, an intellectually disabled teen. Why? Simply because he can. But it is the final murder that completes Jamie's descent into moral turpitude—the killing of his half-brother, who has started a mechanic's apprenticeship and is on the cusp of escape. As the two drive towards Snowtown, we don't know whether Jamie is planning to confess—to reveal his misdeeds in the hope of redemption—or to deliver his brother into Bunting's arms. Of course, it is the latter. The camera pans out through the doorway, leaving the brother alone with the most prolific serial killer Australia has ever known. The transition from innocence to corruption is complete, and it is here Kurzel deserts us, in the darkness, as the credits begin to roll.
What is it about this utterly grim portrait of working-class life that has caused so many to praise Snowtown for its authenticity? In suburban comedies like The Castle, we love the Kerrigans because they are at once us and not us. They are quintessentially Australian, the archetypal battler through whom we define our national specificity. And yet they are so grotesque, their ordinariness so aggrandized, that we do not only laugh with them but also at them. We can praise our own good tastes, for surely no one is that Australian, and file the Kerrigans under the category of cultural cringe.
The people of Snowtown, however, are decidedly not us. Nor are any of the characters of the working-class crime films. And we definitely do not love them. On the contrary, they terrify us. The Castle played at suburban multiplexes, butSnowtown's distribution has been limited to arthouse cinemas. We praise Kurzel for his 'authentic' representation of the Australian experience, yet we are safe in the knowledge that this 'authentic' experience is far removed from our own—that 'authenticity' lies in forgotten communities in forgotten suburbs, far removed from the inner-city cinemas where we look on in dismay.
It is difficult to chart where the fictional and the cinematic diverge. Most of these are true crime films, based on real life events – the Anita Cobby case in The Boys, the Pettingill family in Animal Kingdom, and of course Bunting in Snowtown. And there is no doubt that the impoverished worlds in which these events occurred are similarly bleak, plagued by violence, addiction, abuse and a range of other repercussions of poverty.
In their cinematic representations though, hopelessness becomes all encompassing. As a friend commented to me after seeing Snowtown, "Surely they weren't all that stupid? Surely somebody disagreed?" Kurzel does not allow Jamie and his family a moment of joy, nor is there any character who is left untouched by Bunting's madness. And there is certainly no possibility of transcendence. Death is the only escape. There is an overwhelming pessimism surrounding working-class existence that imbues this genre—a sense of fait accompli, the repetitive nature of this world ensuring tragedy is the only outcome. The innocent will inevitably be infected by evil, and the whole vicious cycle will start again.
Australians say they love a battler. But when we place the underclass on screen, it seems our empathy goes AWOL, much like that of these psychopathic protagonists. If this is really how we see ourselves, then what are we so scared of?
Award for Writing on Non-Australian Film
Islands and Ghosts: The Ghost Writer
by Jake Wilson
Previously published by Kill Your Darlings
http://www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com/article/islands-and-ghosts-roman-polanski’s-the-ghost-writer-by-jake-wilson/
Could Roman Polanski and Michel Houellebecq, two arch-cynics, ever find a way of working together? A fanciful thought, and yet it's hard for me to watch Polanski's latest thriller, The Ghost Writer, without recalling the title of Houellebecq's 2005 novel, The Possibility of an Island. That possibility is diminishing for all of us in a world of constant news broadcasts, of Facebook and Google Street View, of omnipresent surveillance devices and mobile phones. Nowadays, privacy is threatened in ways beyond the worst nightmares of the persecuted victims in Polanski's earlier films, whose legitimate fears often fuse with paranoid delusions, as in Repulsion (1963) and The Tenant (1976).
Usually, these characters are socially and culturally displaced, like Polanski himself: a Pole who left his homeland after his first feature, Knife in the Water (1962), and has been in transit more or less ever since (The Ghost Writer was shot in Germany, with financing from various European sources). Indeed, the search for refuge is one of his constant themes, with protagonists either fending off invaders or stepping into mysterious spaces ruled by unknown laws such as the shadowy realm of book dealers in The Ninth Gate (1997), or the labyrinthine Italian villa explored by the frequently nude heroine (Sydne Rome) of his underrated sex comedy What? (1973).
Polanski's latest exercise in this vein is full of echoes of his artistic past. Yet it's also a very modern film, based on a novel by the British journalist Robert Harris that takes overt inspiration from recent headlines and makes no bones about caricaturing the author's one-time friend, Tony Blair. The central figure is a recently departed British prime minister named Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), branded a war criminal for approving the torture of terror suspects offshore.
A good-looking fitness enthusiast and a former Cambridge Footlights star, Lang has a strained relationship with his clever, embittered wife Ruth (Olivia Williams), and seems closer to Amelia (Kim Cattrall), his loyal personal assistant. At the film's outset, all three characters are holed up with a small army of staff in a high-security compound resembling a military bunker, on a windswept island off the coast of Massachusetts, where Lang hopes to fend off his accusers for long enough to finish his memoirs.
Or, rather, have somebody finish them for him. The latest arrival on the island is the ghost writer himself, a nameless hack played by Ewan McGregor with typically brash yet self-effacing charm. Like most of Polanski's heroes, he's not especially brave, noble or clever; as far as we can judge his main talent lies in coaxing his clients into supplying the kind of banal human-interest material that guarantees a best-seller. He's conceived as the ultimate innocent bystander, if not a perfect cipher: no family, no hobbies, no public profile or visible ties. His most firmly established personal traits are a taste for whisky and a lack of interest in politics, guaranteeing he'll fail to connect the dots of the mystery until it's too late.
We soon learn that this ghost is the second writer to accept the job of helping Lang with the book; his predecessor having fallen off a ferry and drowned en route to the mainland, leaving a completed but impenetrable manuscript behind. In the film's opening sequence, this character is also visualised as an absence: after the ferry docks at the terminal and all the passengers disembark, a single car remains on board without its driver.
Viewers may immediately suspect foul play, but it takes a while for the ghost himself to wake up to the possibility. Dozing through his flight and his boat ride, he arrives at his destination jet-lagged, disorientated and out of his depth like the American businessman (Harrison Ford) making his way to a Paris hotel at the beginning of Frantic (1988). Without often resorting to direct point-of-view shots, Polanski ensures that we share this feeling of relinquishing control, which can be soothing as well as suspenseful. For much of the film, we sit next to the ghost as he glides from one location to another in a black official car, following an itinerary known only to the filmmaker. From the moment he leaves for the island, the film has the atmosphere of a dream: repeatedly we see him roused from sleep by a summons from his employers, as if shifting from one kind of trance to another.
Polanski is always a rational and grounded director, patiently developing a mood through carefully chosen details most of them individually plausible, yet cumulatively distancing us from the waking world. Deserted in the off-season, the hotels are cluttered with maritime bric-a-brac for the tourist trade; the compound's wide picture windows open onto low-lying sand dunes, strewn with dry grass waving in the breeze; the grey walls are lined with semi-abstract paintings in murky dark brown or violent red.
When Amelia praises the ghost's powers of observation, the viewer is implicitly challenged to notice more; many touches are almost subliminal, only revealing their import on a second viewing. The main characters are shadowed by functionaries who lurk like stagehands at the edges of the action, such as Ruth's bodyguard, who trails her night and day, and clearly knows more than he's willing to disclose. There's also a pair of middle-aged Asian servants, who might be husband and wife: she serves up meals in silence, while he labours outside the compound, raking stray strands of grass into a wheelbarrow only to have the wind scatter them again.
Sound is always vital for Polanski, and here, too, a feeling of foreboding is induced by elements that may not be consciously registered, at first like the sirens heard a couple of times out on the street during the ghost's initial meeting with his London publishers. Whenever the story is on the move, Alexandre Desplat's busy, chugging score contributes immeasurably to the build-up of tension, often rising to a crescendo before giving way to eerie near-silence. Other sounds recur like motifs in a symphony: the clip-clop of Amelia's heels on the staircase, the steady patter of rain, mobile ringtones that shatter the uneasy calm.
Thanks to these repetitions, Lang's chilly, besieged fortress soon feels like a familiar and therefore reassuring world in itself which might be the film's slyest trick. True to Harris's novel, The Ghost Writer qualifies as one of the angriest and most explicit attacks on Anglo- American foreign policy in recent popular cinema. And yet, perversely and characteristically, Polanski refuses to play favourites: along with the ghost, we find ourselves uncomfortably aligned with the putatively villainous Lang against the do-gooders campaigning to bring him down. Like all such groups in Polanski's work, the protesters who dog Lang's footsteps when he goes for a run are portrayed as a howling, unlovely mob. A turning point comes when the ghost agrees to put his professional skills to use by crafting Lang's response to the criminal charges; at a bar that night, he hears his own words on the evening news, already part of the official record. “You're one of us now”, Amelia tells him the next morning.
The inevitable conclusion is that politics is a kind of collective hallucination, at least for those who experience it via the media. (For victims of torture, naturally, it's something else.) In a truly uncanny moment, Polanski cuts from a helicopter hovering above Lang and his entourage as they leave the compound to a nearby television displaying the same scene as viewed from overhead. It takes a couple of seconds to deduce that the helicopter contains a camera crew, videotaping images that are simultaneously being broadcast live: a closed loop. In no other Polanski film are characters put on this kind of public display; all the same, they seem to be making statements and gestures in a void, so that supposed life-or-death consequences are hardly a concern. Lang, to be sure, is assigned an impassioned speech where he defends the role of torture in ensuring national security; but does he deliver it with more than an actor's flair?
Like any successful thriller, The Ghost Writer is an exercise in leading the audience down the garden path (if you haven't seen the film, you might want to stop reading here). After some investigations on and off the island, the ghost comes to believe that Lang is directly aligned with the United States government, and that his predecessor was bumped off after learning too much. But this proves to be wrong, or half-right, at most: the missing link in the chain is Ruth, who was recruited by the CIA in the mid-1970s, and has been manipulating her unwitting husband ever since in the interests of her masters. This revelation has literally been staring the ghost in the face embedded in Lang's original manuscript like an acrostic, recalling the anagrams which Mia Farrow decodes with the aid of Scrabble tiles in Rosemary's Baby (1968).
If the plot has a flaw, it's that Polanski gives us no chance to solve this particular puzzle for ourselves. Still, in retrospect we can see that he has presented us with numerous other clues, including Lang's background in theatre and Ruth's frank admission that he usually takes her advice. Even the title has a double meaning: Ruth is the true, hidden author of Lang's political career. Then again, she has her own 'ghost' – the American academic Paul Emmett (Tom Wilkinson), outed online as another member of the CIA. And he, too, has a wife, who readily supplies her husband with false information and watches through the kitchen doorway as the ghost leaves their house…
So who's really pulling the strings? In Polanski's universe, there are only two kinds of characters, the manipulators and the manipulated. But there's always the potential for the resulting power relations to be modified or reversed as happens in a film like Bitter Moon (1992), where the sadomasochism is explicitly erotic. If The Ghost Writer is centrally a film about the creation of a book, the process of filmmaking can be seen as a comparable kind of conspiracy, inevitably involving power struggles of various kinds. As writer and actor respectively, neither the ghost nor Lang have any success at controlling the course of events; if any character serves as a representative of Polanski himself, it's surely Ruth, a behind-the-scenes powermonger who directs nearly everyone in sight.
Indeed, The Ghost Writer is also a film about the question of authorship, fiercely contested in cinema and politics alike. If political speechwriters occasionally challenge their bosses over ownership of official language, this struggle has a parallel in the eternal war between screenwriters and directors over who deserves to be viewed as the author of a movie. Credited jointly to Polanski and Harris, the screenplay of The Ghost Writer follows Harris's novel almost scene for scene, yet the finished film is so purely Polanski's that we're tempted to forget about the story's originator. A similar uncertainty exists in the realm of acting, especially with a director who is famous for his tightly controlling ways: when McGregor looks up at a key moment to pull a grotesque face, who's the ghost and who's the real performer?
Of course, the title incorporates another kind of pun as well: from the outset, McGregor's character is viewed as a mere shadow, one of the walking dead. Ultimately, he meets his end off-screen, just as his predecessor did, leaving the pages of his manuscript to be scattered by the wind like the gardener's strands of grass. This bleakly perfect ending can be taken as one more sign of Polanski's disillusionment but also as a way of putting the whole story in quotation marks, sealing off any possible escape routes to the outside world. It's oddly consoling that The Ghost Writer, along with the rest of Polanski's work, leads nowhere and proves nothing: a film like an island, singular and complete.
Award for a Review of an Individual Australian Film
GRIFF THE INVISIBLE (Leon Ford, 2010)
By Alice Tynan
Previously published by Concrete Playground
http://sydney.concreteplayground.com.au/event/16128/griff-the-invisible-.htm
A simple and sweet romance disguised a crime-fighting superhero flick, Griff the Invisible is a film to fall in love with. This elegant feature debut from writer-director Leon Ford stars True Blood's Ryan Kwanten as the eponymous masked crusader, though one who might spend a little more time practicing his lines in front of the mirror than actually protecting the streets. As a painfully awkward recluse, Griff bears all the hallmarks of a misfit: he's mercilessly harassed by office bully Tony (Toby Schmitz), while at home his sole visitor is his caring, if exasperated brother Tim (Patrick Brammall). But this all changes when Tim brings by Melody (Maeve Dermody), a delightful eccentric who spies the superhero behind Griff's shy facade.
Shot through with enchanting magical realism and chock full of heart, Griff the Invisible needs to take its place in your DVD collection alongside films like Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004) and Lars and the Real Girl (Craig Gillespie, 2007). Though Ford's fable is more modest in scope, these titles provide a handy primer for the appeal and tone of his marvellous creation. Because to truly appreciate this film, the audience needs follow Melody and let themselves be sucked into Griff's oddball world; a leap of faith which ultimately prove utterly charming.
For True Blood fans, Kwanten will be almost unrecognisable as the sociophobic superhero. His performance is so expertly restrained (in fact one briefly wonders if there isn't a more insidious pathology at work), yet he also infuses Griff with such earnest enthusiasm, that the audience is quickly rallied to become his champions. Leading the charge is of course Melody, who is brought to wondrous life by the ever-impressive Dermody. Her performance is as bright and colourfully quirky as Melody's wardrobe, and she provides a perfect complement to Kwanten's quiet reserve. After stealing scenes from Ben Mendelsohn in Beautiful Kate (Rachel Ward, 2009) as well as making a name on the Sydney theatre scene, Dermody again proves herself a talent to watch.
Another stand-out is Sydney band Kids at Risk, who have leapt from Triple J Unearthed discovery to pen the film's soundtrack. Though Ford also makes bold use of silence, the indie-rock trio hit it out of the park, crafting such a striking soundtrack, you'll want to head straight from the cinema to buy the album (though, for now you'll have to make do with downloading the single Doing the Best that We Can).
As a writer and director, Ford playfully eschews the whiz-bang trappings of both the superhero and romantic comedy genres to craft a disarmingly honest and guileless love story. But Griff the Invisible also succeeds in acting as a heart-warming reminder to celebrate your idiosyncrasies, as well as having the courage to embrace love when you're lucky enough to find someone who truly sees you. And much like the film, these are lessons worth taking to heart.
Award for a Review of an Individual Non-Australian Film
Review: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
by Josh Nelson
Previously published by Philmology
http://www.philmology.com/?p=1209
"Facing the jungles the hills and vales my past lives as an animal and other beings rise up before me"
Awarded the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010) is as grand in themes as it is intimate in focus. Ruminating on death, the afterlife and reincarnation, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's film centres around the final days of Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar), an ageing man suffering from kidney failure. Accompanied by his sister-in-law and nephew, Boonmee is unexpectedly revisited one night by his deceased wife and long lost son. Far from suggesting a dark, supernatural turn of events, the reappearance of the dead and missing in Uncle Boonmee merely prefigures the film's exploration of mortality and personal memory.
Indeed, the matter-of-fact manner in which Boonmee responds to his wife and child's sudden re-emergence in that scene is in keeping with the still, almost meditative sensibility that underscores the film. Characterised by long single takes and static frames, the direction and cinematography Uncle Boonmee repeatedly evokes the central character's preoccupation with the past./p>
However, the sense of stillness that underlines Uncle Boonmee is also indicative of the film's rural setting. Emphasising nature as an element within the cycle of life, death, and reincarnation, the film makes constant reference to the animals, insects and jungle terrain that surround Boonmee and constitute his existence. Unlike his sister-in-law Jen (on leave from her urban home) who complains about the 'bugs', migrant workers and living conditions, Boonmee's spiritual identity is bound to the natural world. In that context, Uncle Boonmee certainly offers up comparisons with the films of Terrence Malick and his preoccupation with Heideggerian notions of nature and 'being'. Like Malick's protagonists, Weerasethakul depicts Boonmee's communion with nature as a fundamental aspect of his acceptance of life/death.
Beyond the film's depiction of the natural world though, perhaps the most striking element of Uncle Boonme is its conception of time, images and memory. In this, Weerasethakul's work shares more than a passing similarity to Chris Marker's evocative masterpiece, Sans Soleil (1983). In a sequence consisting entirely of still photographs – a technique Marker also used within La Jetée (1962) – Boonmee narrates a dream about a future world in which time travellers are hunted down and erased when their image is projected upon a screen. Imagining death through a form of photographic projection, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives comments on the camera's ability to capture a life (as a series of moments or memories) that is destined to disappear. It seems fitting then that by the end of the film both director and lead character have achieved a form of enlightenment. Weerasethakul has discovered in cinema the perfect metaphor for reincarnation: a form of representation in which – as Uncle Boonmee comes to realise – all things are at once both present and past.
Ivan Hutchinson Award for Writing on Australian Film
Who's Afraid Of The Working Class? We Are
By Rebecca Harkins-Cross
Previously published by The Lifted Brow
http://rebeccaharkinscross.com/2011/12/02/column-whos-afraid-of-the-working-class-we-are/
Australians love a battler. Oft touted as the national type, the battler's spirit has been invoked in the guise of Howard's "ordinary Australians" or Gillard's "working families". From both sides of the political fence, the battler personifies the Protestant work ethic, knowing the importance of keeping one's nose to the grindstone in the pursuit of personal salvation. The battler is, in short, the hard-working everyman, persevering in the face of adversity, eternally on the cusp of the Australian Dream – a double brick veneer in the suburbs, small business ownership and a nuclear family who spend their weekends frolicking by the man-made lakes of Caroline Springs.
From our rural origins to our suburban present, the battler has prevailed, too, as a central figure in Australian cinema. Presumably the corollary of our colonial history, Australia's cinema, like many of our cultural outputs, is still preoccupied with the idea of capturing and defining what constitutes our national identity. Spanning across Australian period films—the shearers of Sunday Too Far Away (Ken Hannam, 1975), the stockman of The Man from Snowy River (George Miller, 1982) and the ANZACs of Gallipoli (Peter Weir, 1981)—to the ockers of Ozploitation sex romps like Stork (Tim Burstall, 1971) and The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (Bruce Beresford, 1972), to suburban comedies such as Muriel's Wedding(P.J. Hogan, 1994) and The Castle (Rob Sitch, 1997), the battler has remained, in various permutations, the hero of our cultural imaginings.
But somewhere along the line, Australian cinema lost sight of true battlers like the Kerrigans—the simple folk with modest aspirations. During the 1990s, questions of national identity dominated the transition from the Keating to the Howard years, with issues like multiculturalism and indigenous rights at the forefront of political discussion. While Howard held up the battler as the national archetype, whom he defined as "somebody who's not earning a huge income but… who is trying to better themselves", in Australian cinema the battler turned against itself. A new kind of anti-hero emerged, the terrifying product of socio-economic disenfranchisement and the exclusion from Howard's Australian Dream. In films likeRomper Stomper (Geoffrey Wright, 1992), Idiot Box (David Casear, 1996) and The Boys (Rowan Woods, 1998), a genre that I'd like to term the 'working-class crime film' was born, simultaneously praised for their "authentic" representations of working-class life and lambasted for their lavish shows of violence. Here, the battler became a psychopath, the suburbs rendered as a real-life dystopia from whence these nightmarish characters sprang forth.
Just when we thought the genre might have exhausted itself after 2000's Chopper (Andrew Dominik, 2000), a new spate of working-class crime films emerged with last year's Animal Kingdom (David Michôd, 2010) and the recent Snowtown(Justin Kurzel, 2011)—a film so claustrophobic, bleak and brutal that it takes the genre to its zenith. These two films have received more attention than most other Australian cinema in recent years. Animal Kingdom cleaned up at the Australian Film Industry Awards (with a record-breaking 18 nominations and 10 wins) and received the Jury Prize for Best World Cinema at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival; Jacki Weaver was even nominated for an Oscar in her role as murderous matriarch Janine. And while Snowtown is yet to hit the prize circuit, it has already received international exposure at Toronto Film Festival and Cannes Critics Week, as well as securing distribution deals in the UK, USA and France.
What is it about the working-class crime film that has so captured the imagination of local and international audiences? Aesthetically, these have been some of the more innovative examples of Australian cinema in recent years. The genre can be defined as much by its style as by its narrative themes. Shot in the eternal dusk of blue filters, sunlight is a rare (if not entirely absent) occurrence in these worlds. Their sparse and ominous soundtracks hover at the edges of perception, only reaching consciousness at moments when violence takes centre screen. And more often than not, the film's action does not leave the suburban home, shots taken through doorways or behind furniture adding to these films' overwhelming sense of claustrophobia.
These are milieus of absentee fathers and overbearing yet ineffectual mothers, their tragedy inherently linked to the breakdown of the nuclear family. While poverty is shown to be a breeding ground for brutality, its ultimate source is always the figure of the charismatic, avuncular psychopath who is able to hypnotise and mobilise those around them—Hando (Russell Crowe) in Romper Stomper, Kev (Ben Mendelsohn) in Idiot Box, Brett (David Wenham) in The Boys, Pope (Mendelsohn again) in Animal Kingdom and John Bunting (Daniel Henshall) in Snowtown. Nobody is impervious to the psychopath's spell, for he (and it is always a he) fills the void left by the deserter Daddy and a need for the authority that Daddy represents. But we must ask what this says about Australian attitudes towards working-class existence? In these films' worldview, the battler is always but one psychopath away from savagery.
Snowtown takes the genre to its extreme, and has divided viewers as a result. Several of its Cannes audience infamously walked out, which has proved a fitting metaphor for its ensuing critical reception. Richard Wilkins of Today called it "the most disgusting, horrific, depraved and degrading film" he had ever seen, "as close to a snuff movie" as he could bear. Helen Garner, writing in the Monthly, chastised director Justin Kurzel for the film's amorality, asking, "What licenses a filmmaker to shove us off the edge of the abyss, to walk away and leave us endlessly falling, without hope of redemption?" Generally, however, the film's reception has been overwhelmingly positive, garnering reviews peppered with terms like "authentic", "gritty", "risky" and "compelling", praising its unflinching depiction of the blighted people who dwell on society's fringes. Mark Naglazas of the West Australian went so far as to ask if "crime dramas, not quirky comedies, are the truest, most natural expression of our natural character"?
Snowtown is based on the 'bodies in barrels' murders of the 1990s, the work of Australia's most notorious serial killer John Bunting, in which eight bodies were discovered in vats of acid stored in a bank vault in Snowtown, South Australia. Sketching a portrait of a forgotten community, Kurzel attempts to show the kind of destitution that allowed a psychopath like Bunting to take control. Much of the film's uncanny horror lies in the fact that it was shot in the North Adelaide suburbs where the real-life murders actually took place, the majority of the cast (except Henshall) non-professional actors sourced from casting calls in the area.
Yet there is something about Snowtown that wallows in this community's poverty. Kurzel is quick to survey the surrounding squalor—barren yards punctuated by miscellaneous trash, careless graffiti on the walls of austere council houses, burnt out shells of cars. The camera zooms in on family feasts of fried eggs and tomato sauce on white toast, overflowing ashtrays and kids' meals sitting side-by-side on the laminex table. Bored teenagers play videogames, smoke ciggies outside concrete shopping malls and ride their bikes in circles on sad, grey streets. As adults, the games may change but the patterns remain the same—they chain-smoke, drink stubbies and play the pokies, everyone doing the best they can to stave off the ennui of the suburbs.
When a man offers to babysit Elizabeth's (Louise Harris) children in the film's opening scenes, it comes as no surprise when he turns out to be a paedophile, taking naked photos of Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) and his younger brothers, who all seem unperturbed. This is a world where abuse is casual. Jamie's older brother nonchalantly rapes him while they watch the cricket, the sound of Richie Benaud's commentary echoing from the television set in the background and the flyscreen door open to the street.
So when John Bunting materializes in their kitchen seemingly out of nowhere, driving away the paedophile by defacing his house with severed kangaroo appendages, he seems like a fairy godfather. He takes Jamie under his wing, cooks meals with vegetables and escorts Elizabeth out dancing, one of the only scenes in which we see this burnt out shell of a woman smile. But in the logic of Snowtown, and the logic of the working-class crime films more broadly, we know that any happiness will be short lived.
Bunting views himself as something of a vigilante, a kind of suburban Travis Bickle who has been sent to cleanse the suburban scourge. "The cops won't do anything," he tells his neighbours. "You gotta take it into your own hands". Bunting is able to create a much-needed sense of community, encouraging parents to convene around the dinner table and relay their dissatisfaction with the system that has abandoned them. Bunting lets them express their pain, empowers them to verbalize how they would enact justice, if only they could—lurid revenge fantasies in which they show the abusers just who's boss. But the difference with Bunting is that these are not mere fantasies. He plans to act on them, ridding the world of "paedos" and "fags" (which, in Bunting's eyes, means the same thing).
Like in Animal Kingdom (which is told from the perspective of 17-year-old Josh [James Frechville]), the spectator is aligned with the subjectivity of Jamie, a blank slate of a 16-year-old boy who falls under Bunting's spell. Often framed through Jamie's eyes, we too are taken forcibly into this world in which Kurzel plays with what is necessary to show on screen. Extreme close-ups of toenails being torn off with pliers, a man's face beaten brutally, Jamie's brother being garrotted in the family bathtub from which their mother later bathes. We too become complicit in these horrors, and like Jamie are taken from innocence to corruption.
As the film progresses, Bunting's targets become increasingly more indiscriminate. He kills Jamie's best friend, a "fucking junkie" who Bunting insists is "a waste," and later, an intellectually disabled teen. Why? Simply because he can. But it is the final murder that completes Jamie's descent into moral turpitude—the killing of his half-brother, who has started a mechanic's apprenticeship and is on the cusp of escape. As the two drive towards Snowtown, we don't know whether Jamie is planning to confess—to reveal his misdeeds in the hope of redemption—or to deliver his brother into Bunting's arms. Of course, it is the latter. The camera pans out through the doorway, leaving the brother alone with the most prolific serial killer Australia has ever known. The transition from innocence to corruption is complete, and it is here Kurzel deserts us, in the darkness, as the credits begin to roll.
What is it about this utterly grim portrait of working-class life that has caused so many to praise Snowtown for its authenticity? In suburban comedies like The Castle, we love the Kerrigans because they are at once us and not us. They are quintessentially Australian, the archetypal battler through whom we define our national specificity. And yet they are so grotesque, their ordinariness so aggrandized, that we do not only laugh with them but also at them. We can praise our own good tastes, for surely no one is that Australian, and file the Kerrigans under the category of cultural cringe.
The people of Snowtown, however, are decidedly not us. Nor are any of the characters of the working-class crime films. And we definitely do not love them. On the contrary, they terrify us. The Castle played at suburban multiplexes, butSnowtown's distribution has been limited to arthouse cinemas. We praise Kurzel for his 'authentic' representation of the Australian experience, yet we are safe in the knowledge that this 'authentic' experience is far removed from our own—that 'authenticity' lies in forgotten communities in forgotten suburbs, far removed from the inner-city cinemas where we look on in dismay.
It is difficult to chart where the fictional and the cinematic diverge. Most of these are true crime films, based on real life events – the Anita Cobby case in The Boys, the Pettingill family in Animal Kingdom, and of course Bunting in Snowtown. And there is no doubt that the impoverished worlds in which these events occurred are similarly bleak, plagued by violence, addiction, abuse and a range of other repercussions of poverty.
In their cinematic representations though, hopelessness becomes all encompassing. As a friend commented to me after seeing Snowtown, "Surely they weren't all that stupid? Surely somebody disagreed?" Kurzel does not allow Jamie and his family a moment of joy, nor is there any character who is left untouched by Bunting's madness. And there is certainly no possibility of transcendence. Death is the only escape. There is an overwhelming pessimism surrounding working-class existence that imbues this genre—a sense of fait accompli, the repetitive nature of this world ensuring tragedy is the only outcome. The innocent will inevitably be infected by evil, and the whole vicious cycle will start again.
Australians say they love a battler. But when we place the underclass on screen, it seems our empathy goes AWOL, much like that of these psychopathic protagonists. If this is really how we see ourselves, then what are we so scared of?
Award for Writing on Non-Australian Film
Islands and Ghosts: The Ghost Writer
by Jake Wilson
Previously published by Kill Your Darlings
http://www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com/article/islands-and-ghosts-roman-polanski’s-the-ghost-writer-by-jake-wilson/
Could Roman Polanski and Michel Houellebecq, two arch-cynics, ever find a way of working together? A fanciful thought, and yet it's hard for me to watch Polanski's latest thriller, The Ghost Writer, without recalling the title of Houellebecq's 2005 novel, The Possibility of an Island. That possibility is diminishing for all of us in a world of constant news broadcasts, of Facebook and Google Street View, of omnipresent surveillance devices and mobile phones. Nowadays, privacy is threatened in ways beyond the worst nightmares of the persecuted victims in Polanski's earlier films, whose legitimate fears often fuse with paranoid delusions, as in Repulsion (1963) and The Tenant (1976).
Usually, these characters are socially and culturally displaced, like Polanski himself: a Pole who left his homeland after his first feature, Knife in the Water (1962), and has been in transit more or less ever since (The Ghost Writer was shot in Germany, with financing from various European sources). Indeed, the search for refuge is one of his constant themes, with protagonists either fending off invaders or stepping into mysterious spaces ruled by unknown laws such as the shadowy realm of book dealers in The Ninth Gate (1997), or the labyrinthine Italian villa explored by the frequently nude heroine (Sydne Rome) of his underrated sex comedy What? (1973).
Polanski's latest exercise in this vein is full of echoes of his artistic past. Yet it's also a very modern film, based on a novel by the British journalist Robert Harris that takes overt inspiration from recent headlines and makes no bones about caricaturing the author's one-time friend, Tony Blair. The central figure is a recently departed British prime minister named Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), branded a war criminal for approving the torture of terror suspects offshore.
A good-looking fitness enthusiast and a former Cambridge Footlights star, Lang has a strained relationship with his clever, embittered wife Ruth (Olivia Williams), and seems closer to Amelia (Kim Cattrall), his loyal personal assistant. At the film's outset, all three characters are holed up with a small army of staff in a high-security compound resembling a military bunker, on a windswept island off the coast of Massachusetts, where Lang hopes to fend off his accusers for long enough to finish his memoirs.
Or, rather, have somebody finish them for him. The latest arrival on the island is the ghost writer himself, a nameless hack played by Ewan McGregor with typically brash yet self-effacing charm. Like most of Polanski's heroes, he's not especially brave, noble or clever; as far as we can judge his main talent lies in coaxing his clients into supplying the kind of banal human-interest material that guarantees a best-seller. He's conceived as the ultimate innocent bystander, if not a perfect cipher: no family, no hobbies, no public profile or visible ties. His most firmly established personal traits are a taste for whisky and a lack of interest in politics, guaranteeing he'll fail to connect the dots of the mystery until it's too late.
We soon learn that this ghost is the second writer to accept the job of helping Lang with the book; his predecessor having fallen off a ferry and drowned en route to the mainland, leaving a completed but impenetrable manuscript behind. In the film's opening sequence, this character is also visualised as an absence: after the ferry docks at the terminal and all the passengers disembark, a single car remains on board without its driver.
Viewers may immediately suspect foul play, but it takes a while for the ghost himself to wake up to the possibility. Dozing through his flight and his boat ride, he arrives at his destination jet-lagged, disorientated and out of his depth like the American businessman (Harrison Ford) making his way to a Paris hotel at the beginning of Frantic (1988). Without often resorting to direct point-of-view shots, Polanski ensures that we share this feeling of relinquishing control, which can be soothing as well as suspenseful. For much of the film, we sit next to the ghost as he glides from one location to another in a black official car, following an itinerary known only to the filmmaker. From the moment he leaves for the island, the film has the atmosphere of a dream: repeatedly we see him roused from sleep by a summons from his employers, as if shifting from one kind of trance to another.
Polanski is always a rational and grounded director, patiently developing a mood through carefully chosen details most of them individually plausible, yet cumulatively distancing us from the waking world. Deserted in the off-season, the hotels are cluttered with maritime bric-a-brac for the tourist trade; the compound's wide picture windows open onto low-lying sand dunes, strewn with dry grass waving in the breeze; the grey walls are lined with semi-abstract paintings in murky dark brown or violent red.
When Amelia praises the ghost's powers of observation, the viewer is implicitly challenged to notice more; many touches are almost subliminal, only revealing their import on a second viewing. The main characters are shadowed by functionaries who lurk like stagehands at the edges of the action, such as Ruth's bodyguard, who trails her night and day, and clearly knows more than he's willing to disclose. There's also a pair of middle-aged Asian servants, who might be husband and wife: she serves up meals in silence, while he labours outside the compound, raking stray strands of grass into a wheelbarrow only to have the wind scatter them again.
Sound is always vital for Polanski, and here, too, a feeling of foreboding is induced by elements that may not be consciously registered, at first like the sirens heard a couple of times out on the street during the ghost's initial meeting with his London publishers. Whenever the story is on the move, Alexandre Desplat's busy, chugging score contributes immeasurably to the build-up of tension, often rising to a crescendo before giving way to eerie near-silence. Other sounds recur like motifs in a symphony: the clip-clop of Amelia's heels on the staircase, the steady patter of rain, mobile ringtones that shatter the uneasy calm.
Thanks to these repetitions, Lang's chilly, besieged fortress soon feels like a familiar and therefore reassuring world in itself which might be the film's slyest trick. True to Harris's novel, The Ghost Writer qualifies as one of the angriest and most explicit attacks on Anglo- American foreign policy in recent popular cinema. And yet, perversely and characteristically, Polanski refuses to play favourites: along with the ghost, we find ourselves uncomfortably aligned with the putatively villainous Lang against the do-gooders campaigning to bring him down. Like all such groups in Polanski's work, the protesters who dog Lang's footsteps when he goes for a run are portrayed as a howling, unlovely mob. A turning point comes when the ghost agrees to put his professional skills to use by crafting Lang's response to the criminal charges; at a bar that night, he hears his own words on the evening news, already part of the official record. “You're one of us now”, Amelia tells him the next morning.
The inevitable conclusion is that politics is a kind of collective hallucination, at least for those who experience it via the media. (For victims of torture, naturally, it's something else.) In a truly uncanny moment, Polanski cuts from a helicopter hovering above Lang and his entourage as they leave the compound to a nearby television displaying the same scene as viewed from overhead. It takes a couple of seconds to deduce that the helicopter contains a camera crew, videotaping images that are simultaneously being broadcast live: a closed loop. In no other Polanski film are characters put on this kind of public display; all the same, they seem to be making statements and gestures in a void, so that supposed life-or-death consequences are hardly a concern. Lang, to be sure, is assigned an impassioned speech where he defends the role of torture in ensuring national security; but does he deliver it with more than an actor's flair?
Like any successful thriller, The Ghost Writer is an exercise in leading the audience down the garden path (if you haven't seen the film, you might want to stop reading here). After some investigations on and off the island, the ghost comes to believe that Lang is directly aligned with the United States government, and that his predecessor was bumped off after learning too much. But this proves to be wrong, or half-right, at most: the missing link in the chain is Ruth, who was recruited by the CIA in the mid-1970s, and has been manipulating her unwitting husband ever since in the interests of her masters. This revelation has literally been staring the ghost in the face embedded in Lang's original manuscript like an acrostic, recalling the anagrams which Mia Farrow decodes with the aid of Scrabble tiles in Rosemary's Baby (1968).
If the plot has a flaw, it's that Polanski gives us no chance to solve this particular puzzle for ourselves. Still, in retrospect we can see that he has presented us with numerous other clues, including Lang's background in theatre and Ruth's frank admission that he usually takes her advice. Even the title has a double meaning: Ruth is the true, hidden author of Lang's political career. Then again, she has her own 'ghost' – the American academic Paul Emmett (Tom Wilkinson), outed online as another member of the CIA. And he, too, has a wife, who readily supplies her husband with false information and watches through the kitchen doorway as the ghost leaves their house…
So who's really pulling the strings? In Polanski's universe, there are only two kinds of characters, the manipulators and the manipulated. But there's always the potential for the resulting power relations to be modified or reversed as happens in a film like Bitter Moon (1992), where the sadomasochism is explicitly erotic. If The Ghost Writer is centrally a film about the creation of a book, the process of filmmaking can be seen as a comparable kind of conspiracy, inevitably involving power struggles of various kinds. As writer and actor respectively, neither the ghost nor Lang have any success at controlling the course of events; if any character serves as a representative of Polanski himself, it's surely Ruth, a behind-the-scenes powermonger who directs nearly everyone in sight.
Indeed, The Ghost Writer is also a film about the question of authorship, fiercely contested in cinema and politics alike. If political speechwriters occasionally challenge their bosses over ownership of official language, this struggle has a parallel in the eternal war between screenwriters and directors over who deserves to be viewed as the author of a movie. Credited jointly to Polanski and Harris, the screenplay of The Ghost Writer follows Harris's novel almost scene for scene, yet the finished film is so purely Polanski's that we're tempted to forget about the story's originator. A similar uncertainty exists in the realm of acting, especially with a director who is famous for his tightly controlling ways: when McGregor looks up at a key moment to pull a grotesque face, who's the ghost and who's the real performer?
Of course, the title incorporates another kind of pun as well: from the outset, McGregor's character is viewed as a mere shadow, one of the walking dead. Ultimately, he meets his end off-screen, just as his predecessor did, leaving the pages of his manuscript to be scattered by the wind like the gardener's strands of grass. This bleakly perfect ending can be taken as one more sign of Polanski's disillusionment but also as a way of putting the whole story in quotation marks, sealing off any possible escape routes to the outside world. It's oddly consoling that The Ghost Writer, along with the rest of Polanski's work, leads nowhere and proves nothing: a film like an island, singular and complete.
Award for a Review of an Individual Australian Film
GRIFF THE INVISIBLE (Leon Ford, 2010)
By Alice Tynan
Previously published by Concrete Playground
http://sydney.concreteplayground.com.au/event/16128/griff-the-invisible-.htm
A simple and sweet romance disguised a crime-fighting superhero flick, Griff the Invisible is a film to fall in love with. This elegant feature debut from writer-director Leon Ford stars True Blood's Ryan Kwanten as the eponymous masked crusader, though one who might spend a little more time practicing his lines in front of the mirror than actually protecting the streets. As a painfully awkward recluse, Griff bears all the hallmarks of a misfit: he's mercilessly harassed by office bully Tony (Toby Schmitz), while at home his sole visitor is his caring, if exasperated brother Tim (Patrick Brammall). But this all changes when Tim brings by Melody (Maeve Dermody), a delightful eccentric who spies the superhero behind Griff's shy facade.
Shot through with enchanting magical realism and chock full of heart, Griff the Invisible needs to take its place in your DVD collection alongside films like Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004) and Lars and the Real Girl (Craig Gillespie, 2007). Though Ford's fable is more modest in scope, these titles provide a handy primer for the appeal and tone of his marvellous creation. Because to truly appreciate this film, the audience needs follow Melody and let themselves be sucked into Griff's oddball world; a leap of faith which ultimately prove utterly charming.
For True Blood fans, Kwanten will be almost unrecognisable as the sociophobic superhero. His performance is so expertly restrained (in fact one briefly wonders if there isn't a more insidious pathology at work), yet he also infuses Griff with such earnest enthusiasm, that the audience is quickly rallied to become his champions. Leading the charge is of course Melody, who is brought to wondrous life by the ever-impressive Dermody. Her performance is as bright and colourfully quirky as Melody's wardrobe, and she provides a perfect complement to Kwanten's quiet reserve. After stealing scenes from Ben Mendelsohn in Beautiful Kate (Rachel Ward, 2009) as well as making a name on the Sydney theatre scene, Dermody again proves herself a talent to watch.
Another stand-out is Sydney band Kids at Risk, who have leapt from Triple J Unearthed discovery to pen the film's soundtrack. Though Ford also makes bold use of silence, the indie-rock trio hit it out of the park, crafting such a striking soundtrack, you'll want to head straight from the cinema to buy the album (though, for now you'll have to make do with downloading the single Doing the Best that We Can).
As a writer and director, Ford playfully eschews the whiz-bang trappings of both the superhero and romantic comedy genres to craft a disarmingly honest and guileless love story. But Griff the Invisible also succeeds in acting as a heart-warming reminder to celebrate your idiosyncrasies, as well as having the courage to embrace love when you're lucky enough to find someone who truly sees you. And much like the film, these are lessons worth taking to heart.
Award for a Review of an Individual Non-Australian Film
Review: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
by Josh Nelson
Previously published by Philmology
http://www.philmology.com/?p=1209
"Facing the jungles the hills and vales my past lives as an animal and other beings rise up before me"
Awarded the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010) is as grand in themes as it is intimate in focus. Ruminating on death, the afterlife and reincarnation, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's film centres around the final days of Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar), an ageing man suffering from kidney failure. Accompanied by his sister-in-law and nephew, Boonmee is unexpectedly revisited one night by his deceased wife and long lost son. Far from suggesting a dark, supernatural turn of events, the reappearance of the dead and missing in Uncle Boonmee merely prefigures the film's exploration of mortality and personal memory.
Indeed, the matter-of-fact manner in which Boonmee responds to his wife and child's sudden re-emergence in that scene is in keeping with the still, almost meditative sensibility that underscores the film. Characterised by long single takes and static frames, the direction and cinematography Uncle Boonmee repeatedly evokes the central character's preoccupation with the past./p>
However, the sense of stillness that underlines Uncle Boonmee is also indicative of the film's rural setting. Emphasising nature as an element within the cycle of life, death, and reincarnation, the film makes constant reference to the animals, insects and jungle terrain that surround Boonmee and constitute his existence. Unlike his sister-in-law Jen (on leave from her urban home) who complains about the 'bugs', migrant workers and living conditions, Boonmee's spiritual identity is bound to the natural world. In that context, Uncle Boonmee certainly offers up comparisons with the films of Terrence Malick and his preoccupation with Heideggerian notions of nature and 'being'. Like Malick's protagonists, Weerasethakul depicts Boonmee's communion with nature as a fundamental aspect of his acceptance of life/death.
Beyond the film's depiction of the natural world though, perhaps the most striking element of Uncle Boonme is its conception of time, images and memory. In this, Weerasethakul's work shares more than a passing similarity to Chris Marker's evocative masterpiece, Sans Soleil (1983). In a sequence consisting entirely of still photographs – a technique Marker also used within La Jetée (1962) – Boonmee narrates a dream about a future world in which time travellers are hunted down and erased when their image is projected upon a screen. Imagining death through a form of photographic projection, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives comments on the camera's ability to capture a life (as a series of moments or memories) that is destined to disappear. It seems fitting then that by the end of the film both director and lead character have achieved a form of enlightenment. Weerasethakul has discovered in cinema the perfect metaphor for reincarnation: a form of representation in which – as Uncle Boonmee comes to realise – all things are at once both present and past.
