<< ACCURACY AVOIDED ~ MAIN ~ AMERICANS STEAL LAKE >>
REALITY DEPICTED
Greg Sheridan reviews new Australian film Three Dollars:
The ludicrous plot of this movie has a government employed chemical engineer, David Wenham, and a contract university lecturer, Frances O’Connor, buy a house in Melbourne in their 20s. Then in their late 30s they both lose their jobs and, hey presto, within a minute they’re scrabbling in rubbish bins for food, borrowing clothes from street people and generally living a Dickensian fantasy of brutish persecution ...
I kid you not, the plot and dialogue are beyond parody. The chemical engineer, instead of just getting another job like any normal person (why didn’t he retrain as a plumber and get rich?) spends an inordinate amount of time on Melbourne’s trains, where gangs of white guys beat up ethnic minorities, the homeless and Wenham himself ...
People have a perfect right to make idiotic films. What is disturbing is that so many commentators accept the pantomime caricature plot of Three Dollars as representing reality. SBS’s The Movie Show called it “refreshingly honest”, the ABC’s The 7.30 Report said it “reveals the downside of our dollar-driven society”.
Wenham specialises in unrealistic “reality” movies directed by Robert Connolly. The Bank was an orgy of leftoid fantasy in which a pudding-headed, heart-of-gold battler had his business shut down by vicious capitalists (who, it’s implied, also murder his daughter). Wenham played a maths genius employed by The Bank to predict stock movements, only to turn against his employers and send The Bank bankrupt. Why? Because bankers killed his daddy, that’s why!
Kinda funny that Connolly’s latest film is about the tragedy of unemployment, considering how many people would have been out of work following the collapse of his fictional bank, and how this collapse was presented as just and fair.
UPDATE. Bernie Slattery:
In a previous life I worked for a year in the ABC’s staging department which was a refuge for several young actors and writers trying to get their first big break.
I was constantly astounded at how these supposedly brilliant young minds had such a corny, cliched view of society: the working class were brutes, the business class rapacious and traditional institutions corrupt.
They firmly believed society could only be saved by the artistic endeavours of a talented class dedicated to social justice and arts grants who were rewarded with multi-million dollar contracts and adoration by the masses.
Ron Banks,respected long time critic for The West Australian,uncharacteristically savaged 3 dollars.He called it an insult to the filmgoer and the public investment.
Another reviewer spent more time describing his extraordinarily expensive lunch with either the producer or director than on his subsequent review.Remember the Mother Goose story, ‘“This is the house that Jack built”? Well we need a new version to remind lefties of a few things:
This is the capitalist who paid his tax,
That the Government gave you,
That paid for your wages,
That enabled you to create the dross that you did,
That nobody watched,
That bit the hand that fed itSBS’s The Movie Show called it “refreshingly honest”, the ABC’s The 7.30 Report said it “reveals the downside of our dollar-driven society”.
It depends on your definition of “honest”.
/Bill Clinton
Merely moving the tax rate threshholds, as this budget does, means that inflation and bracket creep eventually put you back in the same incentive-sapping position you’ve just escaped from.
And then our pollies can do another tax cut. Cut and come again!
Am I being too cynical?
Asian businessmen I talk to are aghast at the idea of relocating to Australia, where the Government would steal half of any extra success they have.
It’d be good if Greg were to cite a survey rather than just go on anecdotal evidence.
It is all a bit reminiscent of this situation outlined by Andrew Bolt
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,12860514%255E25717,00.htmlMy friend told me of an encounter with David Wenham, well actually she slightly bumped the car that he was a passenger in. She reckons he got out and went completely ballistic at her. She just started laughing because he was just so over the top.
Still I enjoyed him in Lord of the Rings playing Faramir, “ Borimir was a friend of yours then”? and leading the futile charge to Osgiliath, all good stuff.
The moral of the story is, avoid David Wenham on the road and also in Australian films.
Wenham was a terrific Faramir, also good (and scary) as the foulmouthed pyromaniac Doug in ``Cosi.’’ Sorry to hear that he’s reduced to making schlock now. Or maybe he’s just a self-absorbed twit who thinks the schlocky stuff is about Making Important Statements, or something.
And as PW said, the current abomination will probably never cross the Pacific anyway, so we’re safe for now.
Posted by Sonetka's Mom on 2005 05 21 at 08:26 AM • permalinkIn Film Australia calls it the “most interesting Australian film so far on the calendar for 2005.”
Three Dollars remains a plausible and affecting social fable bereft of preachy messages and glossy peripheral devices.
Maybe the French have an award they can give it.
Are these people getting by in this “dollar-driven society” they complain about by bartering cinematography for kangaroo jerky and used shoes?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 21 at 10:09 AM • permalinkFunny to think, then, that the Lord of the Rings and Van Helsing are probably the most realistic movies Wenham’s been in.
Really, does anyone think that middle class career couples end up homeless without drug or alcohol problems as the primary cause? It practically doesn’t happen, except in Hollywood (and its imitators).
Actors aren’t generally very smart people, which is why they are easily led into making crap “statement” movies about so-called injustices. There are a few exceptions here and there, but most actors are childlike Forrest-Gump-level dopes. They are also, unlike the fictional Mr Gump, carefully swaddled against real life’s sharp edges by their agents and managers and the other people in the industry who make money off of them. Sometimes I think I should start a “Hollywood Exploits the Mentally Handicapped!” campaign on behalf of poor dumb actors everywhere, but then I remember all the tripe I have had foisted on me in the name of entertainment (Titanic, the Dungeons and Dragons movie, The Day After Tomorrow, too many to list here) and I drop the idea.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 05 21 at 10:47 AM • permalinkAmos — An Eeeeeeeeeevil Bank, nyah hah hah…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 21 at 12:17 PM • permalinkGuinsPen — I believe it’s “Put Tim Robbins on the barbie...”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 21 at 03:20 PM • permalinkDid anyone else scroll down past David and Margaret’s twadddle to the comments box? Some fabulous stuff, most of it negative. Here’s a few samples:
If that movie was a pizza I’d have returned it.
Booooring.
I was glad when it was all over.
For a character-driven film, the characters are extraordinarily two-dimensional.
The actions of the protagonists look more like those who have chosen a career in the film industry.
What was the POINT?? The dogs were cute though.
david and margeret must be going soft in the head to so rap lyrically about this non event of a film.
It often reminded me of ‘Home & Away’.
Can’t wait for it to open in Hong Kong with Cantonese subtitles. Sounds wonderful.
Dare I make the link between movies like this one, out-of-work actors and the coming demise of the Australian movie industry? Too many leftoid fantasies, not enough entertaining movies. Most people go to the movies to be entertained, not to be on the receiving end of finger-wagging morality plays about aboriginals, asylum seekers and economic losers.
Steve Bisley working at his wife’s coffee shop? Now we know the end is nigh!
David Wenham always goes on about the Aust film industry being about Australian writers and actors telling Australian stories in Australian voices and accents, then then goes on to play Faramir (an American film shot in New Zealand telling an English story with an English accent), and that monk character in Van Helsing.
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
I recommend to all the piece by Micheala Boland in the Financial Review of 20/05, on the sheltered workshop that masquerades as Australia’s film industry. And check out the article by Tim’s old radio partner Imre Saluzinsky in the Weekend Australian.