Australian Film In 2007
An Overview of Australian Film for 2007
Bernard Hemingway
If there was a dominating theme in Australian film for 2007, appropriately enough the same year that saw off John Howard's 9 year long Menzie-ite rule, it was one of migrants' stories. A significant number of the year's major releases tackled the subject, none of them in rosy-hued ways. The two films that dominated the Australian Film Industry Awards, Tony Ayre's autobiographical Home Song Stories and Richard Roxburgh's Romulus, My Father, based on Raimond Gaita's autobiographical novel were films that on one level belong to the Australian tradition of "quality" historical recreations but, on the other, differ from it in not being concerned with the reassuringly familiar Anglo-Celtic settler mythos but rather the disturbing experience of, in the case of Ayres' film, an Asian family in 1970s Melbourne and in Romulus, a family of German-Romainian descent in the immediate post-war period. Both films were impeccable productions with strong dramatic content and fine performances although whilst Romulus went on to be the top theatrical grosser of the year, Tony Ayres' film did not do well at the box office. We can probably ascribe much of the difference in interest to the presence of Gaita's already successful 1998 novel delivering a ready-made audience.
Other two notable films dealing with immigration of a completely different kind were Lucky Miles, Michael James Rowland's entertaining story of three illegal immigrants lost in the wilderness of the Pilbara and pursued by a trio of army reservists and Dee McLachlan's hard-hitting account of the trafficking in sex slaves in Melbourne. Both films were based on real life experiences although they took very different approaches to dealing with human rights issues. Both films were popular successes. Lucky Miles won the audience award for Best Film at the 2007 Sydney Film Festival as well as a raft of international film festival awards, whilst The Jammed came from nowhere to become one of the most commercially successful Australian films of the year. With no advertising or marketing budget and seemingly destined to go straight to video, a last ditch screening at the Brisbane Film Festival saw it reviewed in glowing terms on the ABC's The Movie Show, whilst a one week limited screening at the Nova Cinema in Melbourne turned into a 3 month run after The Age's Jim Schembri called it "the best Australian film of the year". Rejected by the AFI Awards for failing to meet selection criteria, the film went on to win the IF Award for Best Feature Film. The Nova tried a repeat performance with South Australian director Alex Frayne's independently produced gothic horror story, Modern Love, but without comparable success.
The key to success of both Lucky Miles and The Jammed, as can also be said of Home Song Stories and Romulus, My Father was that they were all grounded in actuality, indicating a healthy appetite amongst Australian film audiences for films that reflect lived experience. Another film this that demonstrated this very well was the Sunny Abberton and Macario de Souza documentary on Maroubra surf-culture, The Bra Boys, which became the highest-grossing Australian theatrical feature documentary ever released. One can also mention here Sally Regan and Anna Broinowski's AFI Best Documentary winner about author Norma Khouri, Forbidden Lie$, which also found respectable audience numbers. If real life was dominant amongst the most successful Australian releases in 2007, two notable exceptions that successfully proferred escapists pleasures to a broader film-going audience were Cherie Nowlan's Clubland and Darren Ashton's Razzle Dazzle, both comedic confections that made entertainment out of the activity of entertaining people
Real life was not a guarantee of audiences. The Final Winter (d.Jane Forrest and Brian Andrews) a strong drama about the end of Rugby League as an amateur, workingman's sport, was perhaps too localized in subject matter to appeal outside its home state of New South Wales. Daniel Krige's Romper-Stomper-ish West drew even smaller crowds These releases were relative successes compared to Kriv Stenders hard-hitting realist film, Boxing Day. Although fitting the "low budget" category, no budget could go low enough to meet the film's abysmal box office performance despite a positive critical response.
Matthew Saville's Noise was a film that foregrounded its aesthetic surface and, with its dark subject matter, seedy characters and noir-ish look, was, at heart and despite a strong reliance on the local vernacular, indebted to American genre models. Emphasising mood and style over plot it spoke to a film literate audience and it was little surprise that it took out both Australian Film Critics Association and Film Critics Circle of Australia Best Film Awards.
Critical approbation, of course, is never a guarantee of popular success. Rolf De Heer's ambitiously eccentric and critically admired Dr Plonk did little business as was also the case for the first film to come out of the Tropfest feature program, September, directed by Peter Carstairs.
Other films that failed to find an audience were The Bet directed by one-time Gallipoli star, Mark Lee, and the black comedy, Burke & Wills (d. Oliver Torr and Matthew Zeremes). Greg McLean, who had a huge critical and commercial success with Wolf Creek in 2004 scared no-one with his follow-up crocodile monster movie, Rogue.
Overall whilst there were modest successes, Australian film as always struggled to find a domestic audience. The total take of the ten top-grossing Australian films was roughly equivalent to the Hollywood romantic comedy Music and Lyrics which was itself only the 21st highest grossing film of the year (Box Office figures courtesy of Box Office Mojo. I am leaving out of calculation George Miller's Happy Feet which won Best Animated Feature at the 2007 Academy Awards and has taken over A$450m worldwide). However it can be said that what was a relatively small roster of releases was marked by a healthy diversity and creative strength that in itself was a reflection of the mood of Australian society in general.
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