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Home , Anthony Hayes (actor), David Wenham, John Hillcoat, John Jarratt, Kerry Armstrong, Look Both Ways

The AFI awards - and how to

them?

Brian McFarlane

 • Metro Magazine 146/147 Metro Magazine 146/147 •  - could Somersault in which the author 1 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. (, 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 Wellersault 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 (, 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, , 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 or Connelly, 2005) with five andHating 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 ig- Farmer (Anna Reeves, 2005), The Illustrated Family nored, surely ’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 is not one of the best of how, in certain years, the Oscars will distribute their film actors in 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 findThree 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, . 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. ‘Things just happen’ Ashley turns a popular teenage-girls’ fic- tralia 2005. Not, though, that their signif- says one character and perhaps this com- tion into a good-natured, spiky teen mov- icance is limited to this time and place. ment comes as near as any to encapsulat- ie, and The Widower (Kevin Lucas, 2004) The protagonist of Look Both Ways, news ing the film’s agenda. There are moments is on more problematic territory in adapt- photographer Nick (William McInnes), of comedy because these happen, just as ing Les Murray’s poetry to the feature learns in the opening moments of the film do the rage of grief and the imminence of film. Not, you’ll note, a ‘classic’ among that he has been diagnosed with cancer. death which can sometimes lead to to- them, not even a novel which lit-critters Without any loss of his particularity, the tal introversion, sometimes to a height- might feel at home with (cf. Oscar and film resonates out from the individual to ened awareness of others and of life’s val- Lucinda, The Well in previous years). embrace the wider notion of: how does ues. It is absolutely to the film’s credit that anyone react to what may be a death it doesn’t settle for any of the easy out- And it’s interesting to note the patterns sentence? How does it affect the way comes it might have. There’s a storm at the among the filmmakers. Three are first-fea- one interacts with the other main play- end of the heatwave, as there is in Chek- ture writer–directors, two of them women: ers in the cast of one’s life? On the hot- hov’s Uncle Vanya, but that doesn’t mean Sarah Watt, with a background in anima- test weekend of the year, he meets and (in either film or play) that everything has tion, directed husband William McInnes in falls in love with Meryl (nominee Justine been washed clean. This is a major film, Look Both Ways, a film which combines Clark), who, returning from her father’s with a real and complex sense of the lives live action with book-illustrator’s anima- funeral, and expecting disaster every- it depicts, of grief, and rage, and loneliness tion techniques; and Anna Reeves, with a where, fears losing her job if she doesn’t and the need for others, and I hope it will history of short films and much festival ex- come up with the illustrations she’s be suitably rewarded on Awards night. posure, made The Oyster Farmer for vet- meant to be providing for her publish- eran producer Anthony Buckley. The other er. These two are thematically linked by Little Fish, nominated for everything ex- first-timer is Greg McLean, also with ex- having something hanging over them as cept location catering, also invokes com- perience in short film, music videos and threats, and stylistically linked by the way plex modern city living, with a troubling commercials, before embarking on Wolf these are introduced: she has (an illustra- awareness of urban tensions and with an Creek as writer–director–producer. The di- tor’s) visions of accidents of many kinds; astute eye for several strata of suburban rectors of Little Fish and The Proposition he has the images of his x-rays which life. It is not, however, essentially a milieu have in common the fact that each has lead into a rapid montage of his life. The study but a film of fraught relationships had a long wait since making very striking third protagonist, Nick’s colleague Andy – between siblings, between children and features in the 1990s. For Rowan Woods, (nominee ) has till Monday parents, between friends and lovers. At its Little Fish is his first cinema film (he has to come to terms with the idea of his girl- centre is ’s sure-to-win per- done a lot of television, including Fireflies) friend’s pregnancy. formance as Tracy Heart, a former hero- since the very powerful and unsettling in-user whose ‘colourful’ financial history

12 • Metro Magazine 146/147 comes between her and the modest, un- These three urban films, each with fingers Australian films, of recent years, much secured loan she needs to set herself up on the contemporary pulse, each com- more genuinely frightening than George in business. It’s a new spin on the once- pellingly personal in emphasis while nev- Romero’s extravagantly praised Land of common Aussie battler paradigm, giv- er losing sight of the fact that the personal the Dead (2005), with its crude shock ef- en far more complexity and depth by her always has a social context, are superior fects and its even cruder allegorism. messy dealings with the other residents of examples of the kinds of films that seem her personal world. Tracy is gradually de- made for AFI nominations. That could ‘Based on true events’ and its release de- fined by her responses to her mother (su- sometimes be read as less than compli- layed while the Northern Territory trial for perbly played by , enraged mentary, but that’s not the intention here. the alleged murder of an English tourist in by what’s been done to her kids – one It’s just by way of moving on to the oth- the outback proceeded, it gets off to a sly- was an addict, one is an amputee), to her er two most-nominated films: two fero- ly promising start with young holiday-mak- mum’s ex-boyfriend Lionel (Hugo Weav- cious films set in outback Australia, one ers in northern Australia lurching between ing), former rugby star and supplier to Tra- a powerful historical melodrama, spiked vacation inertia and having a good, mind- cy’s addiction, to her own ex-boyfriend, with horrific tragedy, the other a genuine- less, noisy time. Director–writer McLean Johnny (Dustin Nguyen), who returns from ly frightening horror genre-piece. In recent knows exactly how to create a creepy overseas and wants to help, but lies to her times, neither films with the period sweep feeling that this hedonism can’t last and about his own prosperity … and to others. of The Proposition nor easily classifiable isn’t safe, that the two English backpack- The film’s elliptic approach to narrative, re- genre films such asWolf Creek have been ers Liz and Kristy (Cassandra Magrath and calling Woods scary manoeuvres in The Boys, pays off, keeping us uncertain about characters and connections. Little Fish doesn’t settle for easy answers any more Wolf Creek, though nominated in seven than Look Both Ways does, and they both categories, has missed out on Best Film, so emerge as more considerable films for just this reason. They are both harrowed by the maybe there is a feeling that genre filmmaking pain potential in living, but both refuse to surrender some residual belief in human is somehow less demanding, less worthy of resilience. recognition, than films less easy to classify

So, too, in its quirky way, does Three Dol- lars, whose protagonist Eddie, balanc- major winners. It’s over twenty years since the nominated Kestie Morassi) who join ing the claims of wife and child, integrity Gallipoli (, 1981) won hearts and Australian Ben (Nathan Phillips) on a car in his work and a more broadly-based in- minds and awards, and works sui generis, trip to Wolf Creek National Park, are sur- stinct for altruism, for empathy, in a social like Lantana (Ray Lawrence, 2001) or Jap- rendering themselves to dangerous possi- climate that makes his goodness hard- anese Story (, 2003), have usu- bilities. As the road slices its way through er to sustain and less likely to be valued. ally been preferred to, say, comedy or mu- magnificent country and outback towns, Three Dollars didn’t quite catch on in the sical or adventure or horror. Well, as noted there is a growing sense of menace in the way that Look Both Ways and Little Fish earlier, Wolf Creek, though nominated in vast empty landscape and sky, and cin- did, but in Wenham’s bizarrely un-nomi- seven categories, has missed out on Best ematographer Will Gibson is deservedly nated Eddie and Frances O’Connor (up Film, so maybe there is a feeling that gen- AFI-nominated for depriving the scene of for Best Actress) it has performances re filmmaking is somehow less demand- neutrality. It’s even more threatening than to match anything seen in an Australian ing, less worthy of recognition, than films the bubbling sexual tensions in the car film this year. In a contemporary cinema less easy to classify. and in the nasty wayside pub, or than the too often dominated by mindless, soul- way their watches stop (recalling the more less blockbusters and digitalized would- It may nevertheless be true that a sturdy genteel horrors of Picnic at Hanging Rock be epics, a film likeThree Dollars, so rig- filmindustry is more likely to be built on [Peter Weir, 1975]) and their car won’t start orously focused on ways of being valua- genre successes than on one-off exercis- after they leave Wolf Creek. Coming, it bly human, within the small scope of any- es in the unclassifiable. Just look at Hol- seems, to their rescue is Mick Taylor (John one’s life, is doubly valuable. Unlike Tom lywood’s conquest of the cinema screens Jarratt), who tows them to his camp, White (Alkinos Tsilimidos, 2004), which of the world by just this means (among where … But that’s enough plot. Suffice it in some ways resembles thematical- others): if something (e.g. science-fiction) to say that from then on, horror and terror ly and formally, it keeps its focus small: it works in one film, then quickly make an- take over, so well orchestrated by McLean doesn’t sit up and beg to be seen as be- other, or another dozen. I’m speculating as to keep one seriously alarmed for the ing about Important Issues. It is about here but maybe, of all genres, horror is the second half of the film, and the final cap- Eddie, his wife Tanya (O’Connor), their one least likely to attract voters. Maybe it tion offers no consolation. It is a horror adorable six-year-old daughter, Eddie’s smacks too much of the comic book, of film, and really horrifying things happen former girlfriend Amanda, and the minor exploitation filmmaking, though in recent before our eyes, but these are alarming- characters Eddie meets in his urban od- years it has been the subject of much se- ly and convincingly rooted in the mind of yssey, in his inexplicit but instinctively felt rious academic writing.3 Whatever the ex- the brutal Taylor – and in the unsuspect- urge to be – and do – good. planation, I’d say that Wolf Creek is one of ing guilelessness of the laid-back young the best of the genre, and one of the best people.

Metro Magazine 146/147 • 13 If Wolf Creek is viscerally confronting in Winstone and as Charlie are ly sentimental, teen-movie manoeuvres. the interests of scaring us witless (and both nominated for Best Actor, and it Plain girl Erica (very smartly played by succeeding), The Proposition, a sort of would be hard to quarrel with the idea of nominated Saskia Burmeister, who had Australian western, is more overtly seri- either as winner. With McInnes and Weav- some droll moments in last year’s Thun- ous. Director John Hillcoat’s previous film ing, they constitute a formidable quartet, derstruck) eventually finds that seeming- To Have and to Hold was described by bringing sensitivity and complexity to roles ly perfect Alison (Delta Goodrem) really Geoff Mayer as ‘a powerful anti-coloni- that need such qualities. The Proposition’s just longs to have a family that loves her al image of European exploitation and en- director of photography, Benoit Delhom- as Erica’s scatty mum and kooky fami- trapment.’4 It has taken Hillcoat nearly a me, must also be a very strong contend- ly love her. Along the way to this not very decade to get his new film made and re- er for the Best Cinematography award. surprising revelation, though, there are leased but The Proposition shows that He is on record as wanting to capture the some genuinely funny moments of com- he has not lost his power to disturb pro- texture and the heat of outback Queens- ic invention, especially those involving foundly, both in terms of his imagery and land, adding: ‘One of my other obses- comedienne Jean Kittson as a teacher the ideas that inform it. Set in outback sions was to try and increase the violence who takes no prisoners. She should have in the 1880s, it tells a story of the landscape, to show how hard it re- been nominated for Best Supporting Ac- of crushing violence and racial relations, ally was to live and survive there.’6 He’s tress rather than Tracey Mann, who as set in motion when English police captain achieved this aim of rendering the land- Erica’s Mum has little to do but beam be- Stanley (Ray Winstone) puts a proposition scape ‘non-neutral’ just as Will Gibson did nignly. to bushranger Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce). in Wolf Creek. He will pardon both Charlie and his 14- Though one may detect this or that trend year-old brother Mikey (Richard Wilson), if Surprisingly, The Widower, set among the among the nominated films (contemporary Charlie will hunt down their brother Arthur craggy peaks and mountain-ash forests dramas, first-time women directors, oth- (Danny Huston) who is wanted for rape around Marysville, , was not nomi- er directors returning to the fray after sev- and murder and is believed by Stanley to nated for Kim Batterham’s ravishing im- eral years absence from the big screen, be the leader of the gang. ages of sky and water and tree and mist- etc.), the most encouraging aspect of the shrouded ridges. The Widower, a film list of films up for awards is their diversi- The film is headed for a bloody climax but about memories, elegiac in mood, looks ty and the kinds of quality achieved with- there is nothing gratuitous about this. This wonderful but succumbs to some very in that diversity. To conclude this round-up is a story of all-too-probable violence in a self-conscious stylistics. In telling its mini- of the nominated films, it would be good setting of fierce hostility to everyday hu- malist tale of a grieving, then dying, wid- to be able to report a spread of awards if man life, overlaid with profoundly uncom- ower whose son quite touchingly comes that were a way of acknowledging a year fortable issues of race and gender and the to care for him in the lead-up to his death, in which several quality products were jos- harshness of a repressive law, that is taxed it can’t resist all manner of split-screen ef- tling for attention. At least, I hope there will to the uttermost by appalling human ac- fects, odd fades to black and disconcert- be no temptation to add a footnote to this tion. But screenwriter is right ing stop-start techniques. And all this is article saying: ‘And the winners is …’ as when he says: ‘it is about an inhospita- accompanied on the soundtrack by a sing- would have been apt last year. ble environment … The violent episodes er intoning some of Les Murray’s poems. It are necessary for the thrust of the story’.5 is on this account that this obdurately art- Brian McFarlane’s Encyclopedia of Brit- It may be less easy to concur with his next house film (it has had only the most limit- ish Film is now available in its 2nd edition sentence: ‘They were really just punctua- ed release) is nominated for Best Adapt- (2005). He is writing a book on Great Ex- tion points between [sic] a fairly meditative, ed Screenplay. However much one may pectations, both the novel and various film slow kind of film.’ The narrative is set in admire the poems and their commitment versions, for New Mermaid, UK. • motion by a brutal rape and murder, which to the simple lives they explore and cele- is over before the film begins, and which brate, lines such as ‘I’ll go outside and split Endnotes gives rise to the eponymous proposition. some kindling wood’ sound merely banal 1 Jim Schembri, The Age, 29 October 2004, EG. There are certainly long-held shots of dis- when portentously sung. Most of the sung 2 Garry Maddox, ‘Wolf Creek snubbed’, The turbing beauty, but though they may point commentary seems to me to misfire, too Age, 21 October 2004. to a ‘meditative’ tendency they never lull often merely repeating the visual informa- 3 Barbara Creed’s Phallic Panic: Film, Horror one into forgetting the ferocity of the initial tion. However, there is real affection and and the Primal Uncanny (2005) is perhaps the events or expecting anything other than poignancy in the grown son’s saying the latest example. a dreadful retribution. This comes at the opening stanza of Murray’s ‘Evening Alone 4 Geoff Mayer, ‘To Have and to Hold’, in Brian Stanleys’ Christmas dinner table: the film at Bunyah’ as he contemplates his father’s McFarlane et al (eds.), The Oxford Compan- is intelligent enough not merely to make preparation to go dancing. ion to Australian Film, Oxford University Press, Stanley an undifferentiated figure of Brit- , 1999, p.505. ish oppression and is able to spare some The other nominees for Adapted Screen- 5 Quoted in Stephen Dalton, ‘Nick and John’s acute sympathy for him and his wife (Emi- play are Three Dollars, The Illustrated excellent adventure’, The Sunday Age, 25 ly Watson) living in this demanding terrain. Family Doctor7 (its only nomination) and September, 2005, Preview section. Attempts to maintain echoes of decorum Hating Alison Ashley, the latter also re- 6 Quoted in Production Notes, p.19. in such a place and time recall John Ford’s ceiving a nod for Best Actress. I’d have 7 I wrote at some length about this idiosyn- The Searchers (1956), and the comparison expected Hating Alison Ashley to find a cratic film in ‘Signs of Health: The Illustrated by no means diminishes The Proposition. young audience for its lively, if ultimate- Family Doctor’, Metro, No. 144.

14 • Metro Magazine 146/147