Australian New Wave IV

Gallipoli is almost perfect. I have so many good things to say. In addition to being a wonderful love letter to Australia – like all films in the Australian New Wave – its also a brilliant anti-war film. It does its anti-war work by not showing the war, barely even showing the fighting. This film is an obvious inspiration for both Heartbreak Ridge and 1917 – also both excellent war movies. But Weir's film is also not merciless. Most of the movie is pleasurable, even fun, and the war is made to look silly, in many ways, as, I suppose, so many people treated the war. It's so very silly... until it isn't. The third act of this movie is outright bloody genius. There was a moment, very late in the film, when I screamed at how good Weir's choices were. I literally was just cheering on the way Weir represented the violence of war. (I'm not a normal person.) And the film's end is heartbreaking, devastating. I actually just curled up and sobbed when it was over. I loved this movie.

Australian New Wave III

Am I obsessed with the Australian New Wave? I might be.  

Sunday Too Far Away is another – less well known in the United States – Australian New Wave film, and this one is excellent. I absolutely loved it. It's so smart and so affecting. 

This is not a film about a strike – despite apparently every synopsis of the film online – although, there is a strike late in the film. Instead Sunday Too Far Away is about labor and laborers as such. We follow a group of laborers led stunningly by Jack Thompson. This is a superb film from start to finish, brilliantly directed by Ken Hannam. The tone is really balanced perfectly between adventure, mourning, Marxist observation, humor, and sublimity. I have nothing but good things to say. 

It deserves to be considered alongside the great films about labor and unionizing from this same period in other parts of the world. I am thinking of films like Actas de Marusia (also 1975), I Compagni (1964), Blood on the Land (1965), La Venganza (1958), Ådalen 31 (1969), and The Molly Maguires (1970).

And Jack Thompson truly is brilliant. I am glad Hollywood got Mel Gibson and Sam Neill and Judy Davis out of the Australian New Wave, but we really deserved to get Thompson too. He's just so damn good in this.

Australian New Wave II

Nope nope nope. I liked Mad Max for its Australian New Wave-ness and for nothing else. I fail to understand George Miller's work. It doesn't seem the least bit cool to me, even though it's attempting to project coolness and masculinity throughout. And the villains – as in all of his films – are dangerous and violent, of course, but also laughable and stupid. The main guy in this one (his name is Toecutter) has one eyebrow shaved off and is constantly doing little kindergarten gymnastics as if he never graduated from tumbling. I think the thing that is especially distasteful about this film is its reliance on disability imagery as grotesquerie for its ideas of horror. I am going to keep watching more Australian New Wave, because I'm interested in the movement now, but George Miller is not my style. (I didn't care for Mad Max: Fury Road either.)

Australian New Wave I

My Brilliant Career (1979) is perfect. It's charming and beautifully made. It's a love letter to the Australian landscape, which is gorgeously shot here, including some really extraordinary camera work by Don McAlpine. And then there's the luminous Judy Davis and the very handsome Sam Neill. The supporting cast is also terrific. And of course this is all due to Gillian Armstrong's script and direction, which are literally just perfect. This is a fuckin' gem. More Australian New Wave, please. I think the only Australian new wave that I've seen are 'Breaker' Morant and The Year of Living Dangerously. I will be remedying that error tout de suite.

'Breaker' Morant

This was only slightly hampered by its source material as a stage play. The performances in 'Breaker' Morant are so good, however, and the plot so interesting, that I was willing to forgive its occasional awkward staginess. Edward Woodward and Jack Thompson are superb, and John Waters and Lewis Fitz-Gerald great in supporting parts.