Picnic at Hanging Rock [1975]

Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir’s seminal adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s acclaimed novel that helped usher in the Australian New Wave, was a lush, haunting, dream-like, quietly disquieting and exquisitely atmospheric work replete with socio-cultural observations on colonialism, rigid class divide, sexual awakening, repression and gender dogmas. Making deft and subtle use of surrealism, perspectives and mise-en-scène, Weir chronicled a possibly fictitious story in the form of a fact about the unexplained disappearance of three young girls and its aftermath, and in the process provided a fine illustration of the interpretative nature of truth akin to proponents of New Journalism. While the students of a private boarding school at the turn of the 20^th century are on an educative picnic at the eponymous geological formation in Victoria, three adolescent girls including the ethereal blonde Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert) and the striking brunette Irma (Karen Robson) – and then their middle-aged mathematics teacher, go missing while exploring the mountains. The incident doesn’t just create panic, it ends up having devastating repercussions on a diverse set of individuals – the upright, alcoholic headmistress (Rachel Roberts), the orphaned Sara (Margaret Nelson) in love with Miranda, an introverted aristocrat (Dominic Guard) who becomes obsessed with Miranda, and an alluring, empathetic teacher (Helen Morse), among others; the situation is further exacerbated when Irma is mysteriously deciphered few days later, “intact” yet shorn of her corset and visibly older than before. The resplendently shot mood piece, filled with mesmeric visuals and slo-mos, along with the melancholic organ-based score and leisurely pacing, created a rich, eerie atmosphere where dreams and reality mixed into a complex and confounding whole.

Director: Peter Weir
Genre: Drama/Period Drama/Mystery
Language: English
Country: Australia

The Snowtown Murders [2011]

The gritty and brutal Ausie kitchen-sink drama The Snowtown Murders is an intensely harrowing tale of a real-life serial-killer. The film’s protagonist is Jamie (Lucas Pittaway), an introverted teenager living in urban decrepitude with his working class mother (Louise Harris) and his brothers. When the pudgy, friendly, charming, outspoken and seemingly upstanding John Bunting (Daniel Henshall) arrives in their lives, the shy and soft-spoken Jamie immediately gets drawn to him. And when he muscles a closet pedophile out of the neighbourhood, he becomes popular too. But, as it turns out, beneath his cheerful veneer, he is a cold-blooded murderer who, with the help of a couple of low-lives and using his venomous desire of ridding the society of its slimy underbelly as a moral defense, satisfies his hunger for blood and a right-wing social order. His vigilante system of cleansing the society’s dirty linen was akin to Tavis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Though we never get to know who he really is, the film somehow managed to get us acquainted with this frightening individual, chillingly performed by Henshall. By the time the impressionable Jamie begins to realize what he has unwittingly become a part of, it is, as it usually always is, too late. The brilliant photography, using a combination of extreme close-ups and stunning panoramic shots, nicely juxtaposed the bleak socioeconomic environ and the disturbing content. The gradual manner in which the so-called moral line is blurred, and eventually shattered, made this a compelling, if tad alienating, watch. Though tonally and stylistically very different, it could serve as a companion piece to Imamura’s Vengeance is Mine.

Director: Justin Kurzel
Genre: Drama/Crime Drama/Biopic
Language: English
Country: Australia

The Square [2008]

Though directed by stuntman turned first-time feature filmmaker Nash Edgerton, and written by his brother and bit actor turned first-time screenwriter Joel Edgerton, the Aussie film The Square is surprisingly assured debuts for both. Substituting the current trend for labyrinthine and ultra-violent plots among neo-noirs, the movie’s straightforward storyline feels something out of the blue, and pleasantly so. A modern day recreation of such classic noirs as The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, the film is about how a young and ambitious housewife, wanting to add to some spice to her dull life, compels a married construction engineer, who’s having a torrid affair on the sly with her, to rob the stash of money belonging to her lowlife husband. As in nearly always the case with extra-marital couples planning to get rich quick and easy, things go horrible wrong as a chain of unfortunate coincidences lead their lives irrevocably downhill, in the process championing the gleefully nihilistic Murphy’s Law. The film, which has received exquisite treatment in terms of atmospheric photography and tight editing, is bleak and times even borderline absurdist, culminating in an ironic finale. The acting, unfortunately, isn’t very impressive, barring Claire van der Boom as the pretty femme fatale.







Director: Nash Edgerton
Genre: Thriller/Crime Thriller/Post Noir
Language: English
Country: Australia

The Proposition [2005]

The Proposition, in the modern tradition of revisionist or (as some fellahs like to put it) deconstructionist Westerns – a sublime example of which is Unforgiven – is a disconcerting and unforgiving work of astonishing visual clarity and fascinating storytelling. The movie has covered the entire spectrum, ranging, as a reviewer neatly summed up, from the beautiful to the brutal, and from the mesmerizing to the menacing. At its heart lie the themes of loyalty, revenge, justice and redemption. Set against a harsh and turbulent Australian landscape, the movie starts off with a bloody gunfight following which a weary British cop gives a proposition to an Aussie outlaw – he must kill his deranged older brother in order to save his naive younger sibling from the gallows. Aided by a brilliantly laid out script, stunning photography, and a melancholic soundtrack that manages to lend an evocative air to the moments of chilling carnage, the movie is an explosive masterstroke where terrific acting performances have coalesced with a very potent message of hope amidst lawlessness and desolation. This harrowing yet profoundly lyrical tale, with its barely concealed simmering rage as well as its exceedingly disturbing depictions of loneliness, brutality, honour and conflicting conscience, is a visceral poetry on violence; in that sense another brilliant movie of recent times comes to my mind, Cronenberg’s “mainstream” masterpiece A History of Violence.

To read a more detailed review of the movie by me, click here.








Director: John Hillcoat
Genre: Western/Psychological Drama
Language: English
Country: Australia