Snowtown rant

Snowtown is a really hard film to watch, and I don’t mean ‘hard to watch’ in a so-deeply-disturbing-and-harrowing-and-confronting-and-interesting way, (which it should be) I mean ‘hard to watch’ in a stupidly-pretentious-and-up-it’s-own-arse way, which is just so fucking disappointing isn’t it? Yet another missed opportunity to resurrect audience’s faith in Australian filmmaking. Sigh. True-crime-film is a delicate genre, and, unfortunately, Snowtown hasn’t pulled it off.

Let’s get one thing straight before I begin, Lucas Pittaway (who plays the lead Jamie Vlassakis) is nothing, whatsoever, like Heath Ledger. Sorry to start with such a snarky and seemingly inane point, but all the lead up hype to this film has been banging on about Pittaway being Heath Ledger and it’s been really irritating, it’s just such absurd, PR, rot. Ignoring the fact he’s not got even half the looks Ledger had, HEATH LEDGER WAS A FUCKING ACTOR. Pittaway, like most of Snowtown’s cast, is not, and it damn well shows in his far, far, less than mediocre performance. Justin Kurzel has attempted to tell a ‘humanised’ version of the story by centring the film around Pittaway’s character, Jamie, and show the seduced-and-corrupted-by-the-desperately-craved-father-figure angle on the tragedy. However, sadly, what with not actually being an actor, Pittaway doesn’t have the range required to pull off the angle…(Let’s not even get into whether this a tad sensationalised and irresponsible, insensitive, way to tell the story… Surely the kid had agency in the horror that shouldn’t be filmically excused with a but-he-was-corrupted-and-coerced telling of the story?) Snowtown is littered with stupid shots of Pittaway not doing much. Pittaway ‘acts’ by looking blanky at the camera in the hope the audiences will do the work and insert complicated emotions. It makes sense, he’s a non-actor so he’s been directed by Kurzel not to do much, because the camera is a sensitive eye and picks up everything, so the best thing to do with non-actors is to get them to stay still and then they won’t over act. In this way, Pittaway delivers an adequate(ish) performance, punctuated with moments when he gasps a bit and dribbles tears in a mildly moving manner. It is certainly not an embarrassing performance but it isn’t enough to make the boy the lynch-pin of the story. We’re supposed to see the story through his eyes and understand him to an extent, but as nothing much goes on in his eyes (apart from when he cries) we just don’t and the whole story merely lingers around him, weakly.  

Casting non-actors was one of Kurzel’s many pretentious choices that didn’t end up paying off in his artshit-house film. A choice that means Daniel Henshall, (who plays John Bunting,) being the only trained actor in the film, has to carry the entire film, and, while his performance is sound, it’s not good enough to carry or save the film. The performance Kurzel didn’t pay enough attention to, (but I’m betting audiences will) is that of Louise Harris, who plays Elizabeth Harvey, Jamie’s mother. It is Harris, not Pittaway that is the really exciting fluke of the non-actor casting. It is with Harris that Kurzel did find that gritty combination of performance and real. That terrifying, and heartbreaking, edge of artifice, that honesty and earnestness that can come from a truly gifted non-actor who is free from all the pretension/wank/ambition of having acting as their vocation. I feel, it would have been a truly fascinating film, if told through the eyes of Elizabeth rather than Jamie. Her journey is heart-wrenching and Harris goes well beyond doing justice to role. She embodies vulnerability and strength. She explores the (sickening and terrifying) love that Elizabeth felt for Bunting. Her performance is complicated and nuanced and heartbreaking and breathtaking. She is the little bit of human that makes this dreadful film watchable. Harris is sensational but at the end of the day, (and the way-too-fucking-long-film) I think the non-actor thing was a really silly call and didn’t do the powerful thing that Kurzel was banking on it doing… but then, the whole film didn’t do the powerful thing Kurzel was banking on. Kurzel has delivered a really adequate film. It’s not a masterpiece and it desperately wants to be, and pretends it is oh-so-profound, which is really awkward to watch. The aesthetic is cold and bleak. The film starts abruptly in a we’ve-been-whisked-away-into-this-frightening-world sort of way and begins with mood-setting voice-over and heart beat like score. The cinematography (by Adam Arkapaw) is really wanky. Heaps of self-consciously artful shots like shots through blinds or from between poker-machines behind ashtray, or reflections from arcade games. It’s very look-at-me-be-an-artist. Which is annoying. Kurzel needed to get on with telling the story and not spend so much time loudly proving how clever and interesting a film-maker he is. I really disliked the disorienting way the story was edited too. It is mostly chronological but you never really know where you are in the story and you don’t get enough of a sense of ending at the beginning. The story does come the full circle, but by the time we get there we’ve forgotten where we were because the beginning was kind of forgettable. Meh. I’m bored of writing. Save your time and money and give Snowtown a miss. Australian film will make its comeback one day. But not just yet… Sadly…

April Rant

April rant disclaimer: this is going to be an odd round up, I didn’t get out and about too much and some of the things I did I’m refusing to talk about!

Flicks Rant: 

Let’s start with the not-talking. I saw a film this month and it was so offensively bad I don’t want to talk, or write about it. I wouldn’t discuss it with my mum and dad when I left the cinema, I wont tell my friends about it, and I won’t fucking blog about it, cos, I feel like, even tearing it apart is giving it publicity/word-of-mouth/intrigue it doesn’t fucking deserve. I’ve never had a film make me so fucking angry. It entirely spoiled my mood too. I was a total bitch for about 24 hours because I was just a ball of hurt, frustrated, cinematically assaulted, fury. So. I saw a really terrible film. That wasn’t even interestingly terrible. And I’m not going to tell you what it was, I am just going to hope and prey that no-one goes to see it. The end.

Strings Attached Rant:

My friend, who I’ve blogged about before, Gemma Lark, had her first solo show in April (and it runs till the 9^th of May so shake a leg and go see it @ Oh Really Gallery – 55 Enmore Rd, Newtown) and it was pretty fucking wonderful. She’s a theatre-ey trained artist (NIDA design) who’s a bit of a puppeteer/performer/everything too. Her works were very puppeteer inflected, including a live/performance sculpture of a marionette/woman/zombie tied to a wall with ropes and scissors hanging from the ceiling just above her crotch. Ropes also hung in the middle of the exhibition space, attached to the girl’s wrists, that you could yank and the performer would move accordingly. I found the work so powerful I could barely look at it. I felt like a sleazy, fucked-up, voyeur, complicit-in-rendering-women-as-dolls, puppeteer for even glancing at her and when the performer met my gaze I wanted to vomit and bawl. The rest of the works are gorgeous. A few yummy painted-on-bits-of-old-wood offerings with curling, curving, characters and moments with big eyes and something dark about them and lots of puppety sculptures. My favourite work was a teapot with a face, crying long drapey tears made of teabags. Yum. Anyway, at the opening I had a really random/weird/loveliness. I met this guy called Hugo and he epitomised everything I used to believe in: freedom, generosity and spontaneity… everything that seems to have turned to hipster in my life was still real and alive and generous and spontaneous in his. He handed me the short story collection he hadn’t even finished reading and asked me to read it, just cos he thought I’d like it and to pass it along when I was done. Sadly, I had nothing I could swap him but he was unfazed, I implored him to swap numbers with me so I could at the very least return the book, he wasn’t interested though, he just wanted to give it to me. He gave me hope, he also filled me with sorrow cos I worry his heart will get kicked around like mine and he’ll one day give up on the swings-and-round-abouts take on art - that everything should be shared and all knowledge should be free… not that I’ve given up, just that I’m very very disheartened and every time I think I’ve found a salon-like, earnest, generous, lets-just-share-ideas, type place of magic it tends to turn out its actually about wank and hipster and fame and isn’t really very magic at all… He was like time traveling to me in first year, and now I’m caught in a whirl of nostalgia, hope, bitterness, betrayal, gratitude, sorrow… and, I really hope that hope wins the war in my heart and soul, because humans should connect and give each other novels and share stories and art and love, and it shouldn’t be about return… oh dear… Anyway he convinced another fella we were chatting with to give me a copy of his EP It’s called Losing Business and the act is called Ex-Trendy… which is oddly fitting considering the universe lecturing me on growing old and jaded and trendy… It’s very cute and earnest and has a fun quality to it with Bowie-esque sounds in the singing style. I found the lyrics a little hard to take seriously at times ( foe example, they sing about standing in line at the text-book store) but at other times quite endearing. I think my favourite track was No Connection, which oddly enough is about losing all your (I’d say hipster) adornments and losing connection and contact. They definitely have heaps of promise. I reckon keep an eye on them. This EP isn’t amazing but it’s very impressive and shows heart and humour and love. And it’s beautifully presented with a gorgeous photographs of a man draped across an old TV-set taken by Greer Rochford. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to meet and connect with people on such a real, generous, level, at what is customarily the breeding-ground for disingenuous-ness and wank – the art-show opening night drinks… but I did, and I was also very, very proud of my friend Gemma Lark who, has made some very, very, nice, and fucking powerful, art.

Gig rant: 

This month I saw Shiver Like Timber play at World Bar, She (Betony Dircks) was great, as always. She triumphed despite some serious gig-adversity… crazy noisy amps and strange beer-throwing brawls in the crowd. I’m not so sold on World Bar, I found it a bit wanky and super cold. Betony was definitely worth my battle to be there, and I had to battle, apparently thongs are a liability or some such nonsense, I’ve not worn anything but thongs since I was 18 and have never had trouble getting in anywhere else. So my tear-filled wait in the gutter for a dear friend to rescue me and bring borrowed purple boots was all worth it and Bet’s gorgeous imaginary landscapes, nostalgia, story-telling and upside-down imagery delivered and looped in her unique (and extremely beautiful) take on the child-woman-with-her-mouth-full like singing voice dressed and danced away all the woes of the evening, well almost, to be entirely honest the weirdness of the evening did catch up to me and I did scurry home a bit of a mess... but Bet very nearly soothed all the worries and the wank... I also stumbled down the road (in thongs) this month and saw another friend, Dave Fong, play music at the Glengarry. He played a mixture of his own songs and covers and he was pretty damn awesome. I’d never seen him play before and was blown away by his honey-like dreamy vocals and dream-scape take to his own song writing, and others. It was a very enjoyable way to spend an evening. I also really like the Glenngary, it’s a neat pub, very local and real and not wanky and Sydney-tries-to-be-Melbourne… It also pretty much consists of one room, and one long table, which pretty much insists on connected-ness which is nice, you sit with strangers and talk to them, or, at the very least, acknowledge them! Not stomp around like we’ve all sucked lemons and pretend other humans who aren’t in our click don’t exist… There you go, April, in short, was about connectedness… (Perhaps)…

Love,

Ridiculous.