The AFI Awards - and How To
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THE AFI AWARDS - AND HOW TO THEM? BRIAN McFARLANE • Metro Magazine 146/147 Metro Magazine 146/147 • - could Somersault in which the author 1 The Age had a solo starring spot at real competition. And this real releases the year’s reflects run an article called, with better simply to skip a year ineffable good taste and ineffable to if the field is too meagre line-up, it’s fair to say it’s fair to say it’s line-up, it’s speak of, the 2005 awards speak of, the 2005 awards In marked contrast to last ally no supporting cast to like a looking more are again’, AFI Awards at this year’s could rightly say, ‘looking could rightly say, query whether it would be that have led up to it. In time to start worrying’, and the AFI awards with virtu the AFI awards wit, ‘Crappy days are here here wit, ‘Crappy days are warrant handing out prizes. (Cate Shortland, 2004) 2004, year, when year, things have looked up have a right to feel ‘snubbed’ for what is an accom- this year. Whereas Som- plished and alarming piece of work, though which of WELL ersault won in all catego- the nominated four Best Films it would have to nudge ries, a clean sweep which indicated only the lack of out is less easy to say. Probably The Oyster Farm- serious competition and which may have imposed er, which, attractive as it is (for some of the same rea- an intolerable burden on the film’s makers, in 2005 sons as Peaches), doesn’t really exploit the screen’s there are three films nominated in almost all of the potential to quite the same extent. And what about major categories and three further runners-up. Little the wonderfully impudent, blackly comic mockumen- Fish (Rowan Woods, 2005), The Proposition (John tary The Magician, which is not nominated for any- Hillcoat, 2005) and Look Both Ways (Sarah Watt, thing? Said to have cost almost nothing and to have 2005) have, respectively, thirteen, twelve and elev- nothing going for it apart from intelligence, wit and en nominations, including in each case those for verve, it perhaps doesn’t seem ‘important’ enough for Best Film, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Editing, awards. If that is so, then sod awards. Production Design, Costume Design and Sound. Trailing, but respectably, are Wolf Creek (Greg Again, though, it’s a luxurious year that could af- McLean, 2005) with seven, Three Dollars (Robert ford not to nominate Kerry Armstrong or David Field Connelly, 2005) with five and Hating Alison Ashley for their display as the life-toughened pair who need (Geoff Bennett, 2005) with four. When one consid- each other (and not just for her legendary powers ers that this half-dozen doesn’t include The Oyster as an oyster-whisperer). And speaking of actors ig- Farmer (Anna Reeves, 2005), The Illustrated Family nored, surely John Jarratt’s crazed old-timer in Wolf Doctor (Kriv Stenders, 2005), Peaches (Craig Mon- Creek is at least the equal of any of the nominees. ahan, 2005) or The Magician (Scott Ryan, 2005), all Responses to acting are always subjective (so are of which have palpable virtues, then it’s clear that all the categories, I guess) and this may be a good there’s no cause for despair, and that 2004 may reason for ditching awards altogether – and there’s have been an aberration. Ten worthwhile Austral- as futile a suggestion as you’ll read this year. I mean ian films in a year is probably a reasonable achieve- however to draw attention to really fine, detailed ment. work, into which has gone a lot of experience of life as well as of acting, that has been overlooked in the Whether the spread of the awards will reflect the need to whittle nominations down to four in each range of these films is another matter. One is aware category. If David Wenham is not one of the best of how, in certain years, the Oscars will distribute their film actors in Australia and if he did not give one of gloss unevenly over what has seemed a strong field, the most felt and thought-out performances in Three and that may happen here. More important by far Dollars, I’ll eat my keyboard. What does it mean to is the fact that there has been such a field. Though suggest that the nominated Messrs Pearce, Win- the nominated films represent real competition, the stone, McInnes and Weaving gave ‘better’ perform- winners of which will have earned their recognition, ances during the year? Just what are the criteria? there are still some surprises. The total non-appear- Oughtn’t we to require some spelling out of criteria, OPPOSITE AND ance of Peaches, for instance. This had certain for- not only in the acting but in all the categories, if the PREVIOUS pages: mal and stylistic ambitions which perhaps were not whole business isn’t to seem merely a lottery? A SELECTION OF fully realized, but it created a strong sense of place, PHOTOGRAPHS both physically and as a network of relationships, and It is always tempting to see if any identifying spoor FROM: HATING ALISON at very least I’d have expected Emma Lung’s affect- has been exhibited by those films which have been ASHLEY, LITTLE FISH, ing performance as Steph, the young girl looking for a admitted to the charmed circle of multi-nomina- LOOK BOTH WAYS, THE new impulse in her life, to have been nominated in the tion. One thing that strikes me is that the four most- PROPOSITION, THREE Supporting Actress Category. ‘Wolf Creek snubbed’ nominated are all based on original screenplays. DOLLARS AND WOLF was a headline in The Age2 and in my view its makers Whatever other excellences Little Fish, The Propo- CREEK 10 • Metro Magazine 146/147 Metro Magazine 146/147 • 11 sition, Look Both Ways and Wolf Creek drama The Boys (1998), and, for John Hill- The film traces with subtlety and sympa- exhibit, these – the excellences, that is coat, The Proposition breaks a nine-year thy the ways in which these lives connect. – are all based in screenplays by peo- drought since the passionate melodra- A train accident at the start of the film ple thinking in terms of cinema. The days ma To Have and to Hold (1996) – and pri- will prove to be crucial for each of them. when adapting classic Australian nov- or to that the unnerving Ghosts … of the Watt’s screenplay is unusually intricate in els to the screen (Walkabout, Picnic at Civil Dead (1988). These are two very un- its setting up of the motif of interlocking Hanging Rock, The Getting of Wisdom, cosy directors and what they have served lives and in taking on such weighty mat- My Brilliant Career, Kangaroo etc.) was up in 2005 won’t lull anyone into a sense ters as: What does life mean and mat- the short cut to prestige seem to have of false genre-security. Robert Connolly, ter? Without being solemn about it, this is passed. In the Best Adapted Screenplay who missed out on a nomination for Three a serious film, a film for grown-ups who category we find Three Dollars, co-writ- Dollars, directed the very solid thriller The don’t mind being given something to think ten by director Robert Connolly (who, in Bank (2001), in which he was similarly well about. There are unobtrusively made com- a just world, would be up there with his served by David Wenham as a man with parisons between lives that seem to be four nominated compeers) and the author a different mission, and was producer for contemplating a fruitful future, as in the of the antecedent novel, Elliot Perlman. Woods on The Boys. Not prolific, these wedding episode, while Nick contem- This wry, compassionate, witty account chaps, but it is heartening to find that plates the curtailment of his own life; or of a man’s descent into near-penury with- some of our best films are being made by Andy, selfishly anxious about the effect of out his losing sight of the need to love people who have done strong work pre- launching a new life when he is so utter- will surely take out the award: Perlman’s viously; that not all Australian films are ly absorbed in his own. There’s the family novel provided fine raw (very raw in terms made by first-time directors who will, after of a child who may have been killed in the of affect) material and he and Connol- their maiden successes, be lost in short train crash, mute with pain, in quiet con- ly reshaped it into a painfully rewarding order to more lucrative pastures. trast with the strong happy family of Nick’s two hours of film. Similarly, The Illustrat- editor Phil (Andrew S. Gilbert). ed Family Doctor releases its dark, some- Another strain among the five most-nom- times lethal instincts via a screenplay inated films is that of the angsty, contem- There are intimations of tragedy in what jointly written by director (Kriv Stenders) porary, urban-set drama, utterly focused is often on the edge of being a roman- and the novel’s author (David Snell), and on the personal, on issues of emotional tic comedy – and McInnes and Clark han- I’m sorry that more people didn’t respond and psychological connection, or shreds dle this latter element of the film with to its startling acerbities. Hating Alison of it, in the recognizable world of Aus- grace and feeling.