Country Towns in Australian Films: Trap and Comfort Zone
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Country Towns in Australian Films: Trap or Comfort Zone? It was watching Strange Bedfellows (Dean Murphy, 2004) last year, with its patronizing view of country-town life, that set me to wonder about how Australian cinema has viewed these buffers between the metropolis and the bush, about what kinds of narratives it has spun around and inside them. BY BRIAN McFARLANE everal films of the last couple of years foregrounded, for me at least, the perception that the country town is neither one thing nor the other, and that it has rarely been subject to the scrutiny afforded the demographic extremes. What follows is more in the nature of reflection and speculation than orderly survey. To turn to Hollywood, glitzy capital of the filmmaking world, one finds paradox- ically that small-town Americana was practically a narrative staple, that there was almost a genre of films which took seriously what such towns had to offer. 46 • Metro Magazine 146/147 Metro Magazine 146 • 47 Genre, though, is perhaps not the best elty; and Cy Endfield’sImpulse (1954) re- word, as it suggests more similarity than moves its hero from the quotidian predict- these films are apt to exhibit. Think of ability of his solicitor’s office to the temp- Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1947) tations of the city and a dangerous wom- which so resonantly explores George Bai- an; while films such as Jack Clayton’s ley’s feeling of entrapment in Bedford Falls Room at the Top (1959) and Ken Loach’s and, then, his gratitude for the support it Kes (1969) relocate class, family and oth- offers him at the lowest point of his life. er tensions to industrial northern towns. In Or of Sam Wood’s version of Our Town Canada, whose films we more rarely see, (1940), from playwright Thornton Wilder’s there is a trickle of films which situate their critical celebration of the mores of small- dramas in provincial towns: films as var- town living. Or the darker uses to which ied as Alan Bridges’ drama of conflicting such a setting is put in Hitchcock’s Shad- values, The Age of Innocence (1977, Can/ ow of a Doubt (1943), where the comfort- UK), Ousama Rawi’s relocation of a Ruth able mundane round Rendell thriller, Judgement in Stone (1986), of daily life is disrupt- Do Filmmakers actually bers. As recently as and Australian John Curran’s drama of ac- ed by the arrival of a Garden State (Zach ademic adulteries, We Don’t Live Here Any killer in the guise of a know anything about the Braff, 2004) the sub- More (2005, Can/US). From New Zealand, loved family member, genre still surfaces, there have been films about people leaving or in Wood’s magis- country towns in which in this narrative of the (like Gaylene Preston’s Perfect Strangers, terial small-town mel- return, after a dec- [2003], in which the heroine is actually kid- odrama, King’s Row they situate their stories, ade, of a TV actor to napped from her country town) or return- (1942), in which the his hometown on the ing, as in Brad McGann’s compelling dra- confines of the town or do they just arrive occasion of his moth- ma In My Father’s Den (2004) in which the can barely contain the there on locations with all er’s death. revenant uncovers family secrets. play of psycho-sexu- al perversities. These their preconceived notions In other English- When one turns to Australian cinema, four major titles all speaking cine- since the revival of the 1970s one finds come from the classic and prejudices intact? mas, the incidence a thin but steady stream of films set in period of the 1940s, of such films is not country towns over the next three dec- but the vogue for affectionate recreation so marked. In British cinema, settings are ades or so, from Country Town (Peter of the life of small-town America persisted most apt to be London, provincial cities Maxwell, 1971) and Wake in Fright (Ted much longer, and in comparably diverse like Brighton or Oxford, or picturesque vil- Kotcheff, 1971) on. These films have nev- circumstances: from, say, Henry King’s lages. Lance Comfort undermined the pas- er really constituted a sub-genre, as was romance, Wait ‘Til the Sun Shines, Nel- toral calm of agreeably-set small towns the case in the US; more often it has been lie (1952) to Richard Fleischer’s melodra- in such films asGreat Day (1945) and just a matter of setting – but not always, ma Violent Saturday (1955), in which a qui- Daughter of Darkness (1947) by exposing as we shall see. et town is invaded by a gang of bank rob- their capacities for constriction and cru- 48 • Metro Magazine 146/147 IMAGES ARE from: THE CARS thAT ATE PARIS; FRINGE DWELLERS; LOVE SERENADE; love’s BROTHER; MULLET; PEACHES; SHAME; STRANGE BEDFELLOWS; STRIKEBOUND; thE HONOURABLE WALLY NORMAN; thE OYSTER FARMER AND THE YEAR MY VOICE BROKE As one who was brought up in a country town, who later worked in one with great enjoyment and satisfaction, and who has since gone regularly to yet others for lows does for Yackandandah, I checked pleasure, I may claim that my response out the Lonely Planet guide Victoria to see to how they are represented in Austral- what it had to say about Victorian country ian films is based on some direct experi- towns.1 It makes clear that there are doz- ence. This experience has too often had ens of country towns with a sort of life go- the effect of irritating me about the gener- ing on that never gets into our films: there tial dangers, except when you move to al tendency to cliché and condescension are numerous towns that have art galler- the suburbs which in film lore are uniform- in how the life of such towns is rendered ies or museums or historical societies, ly dull and conformist. I want now to look in our films. There is not much aware- some with all three; they take environ- briefly at several recent films set at least ness of the vibrant interaction possible in mental issues seriously and some have partly in country towns and see how they such communities, of the thriving culture institutionalized this concern; they have are used and depicted, what kinds of sto- that is at work in them, of the support net- restaurants worth eating at; they have ries are situated in them, which values works they can offer, or even of their no groups interested in film, books and dra- are celebrated, which mocked. Essential- longer in fact being all that separate from ma – and if all else fails they have internet ly, I want to see how country towns have metropolitan centres, modern communi- cafes. The internet and email mean, any- been used in Australian cinema. cation modes and processes being what way, that isolation is a thing of the past, they are. Too often, the townspeople are but you’d hardly guess it from the movies depicted as essentially out of touch with which care so little about the dynamics of Disturbances of the Peace the mainstream of contemporary life or, in how such places work, in terms, say, of the style of some Antipodean sub-Ealing class, occupations or leisure. I’m not sug- Well, what kinds of themes and treat- venture, seen as being, in their sly, simple gesting that we need Pathe Pictorial-type ments have shaped the images of the way, actually sharper than city folks. Both accounts of life of such towns; only that country town in recent Australian cinema? views seem to me, in their apparent op- the films set in them would be texturally There have been several examples of the position, to be equally patronizing; both richer if their mise-en-scène evinced more small community reacting to a stranger seem equally remote from treating the in- awareness on the filmmaker’s part that in its midst (The Oyster Farmer [Anna habitants of country towns as individuals they have a complex life of their own. Reeves, 2005], Somersault [Cate Short- who are as worthy of sustained attention land, 2004], Love’s Brother [Jan Sardi, as bush heroes or city sophisticates. Compared with other forms of represen- 2004], or, going back further, Love Sere- tation, such as poetry, drama, painting, or nade [Shirley Barrett, 1996], Hotel Sorren- Do filmmakers actually know anything TV,2 how does the cinema emerge in its to [Richard Franklin, 1995], Shame [Steve about the country towns in which they dealings with this halfway-house between Jodrell, 1987]). Mullet, on the other hand situate their stories, or do they just ar- the city and the bush? These latter two dramatized the case of the local return- rive there on locations with all their pre- spaces have been easily accommodated ing home disruptively, but there has been conceived notions and prejudices in- by films across a wide genre range: the nothing in this paradigm to rival the pow- tact? Do they think that because they’re bush has acquired historic significance er of In My Father’s Den. There are peo- not making documentaries it doesn’t mat- as the crucible in which admirable nation- ple straining under the constraints of the ter whether their representations have any al characteristics have been forged (hardi- purely local, wanting larger horizons, as in connection with reality? To test wheth- hood, endurance, mateship etc.); the city Peaches (Craig Monahan, 2005); and, in er I was letting my irritation run away with has often been seen as the site of excit- generic terms, there have been comedies me after seeing what Strange Bedfel- ing and/or corrupt possibilities, of poten- (The Honourable Wally Norman [Ted Em- Metro Magazine 146/147 • 49 ery, 2003], Strange Bedfellows, The Road portant in its context and is still more ad- generally are made to look ridiculous.