Rating: 17/20
Plot: A disgruntled teacher on Christmas break plans to travel to Sydney but gets stuck in Hell along the way. He drinks, makes some friends, kills a few kangaroos, drinks some more, and gets a little too friendly with a bald bearded man.
This movie is apparently also called Outback. I don't like that title or Wake in Fright actually, but I'm not sure what I'd call it.
This might have to be my go-to Christmas movie from now on. There's a great performance of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" by a dumpy, dispassionate middle-aged man. I'm sure there's a full version of the performance in the bonus features of the disc, but I didn't check because I didn't want to get too much in the Christmas spirit in May. I mean, April! The end of April!
The opening shots of this--a circular tour of the browns and different shades of brown in Tiboonda--set the stage. Australia is apparently a dilapidated place. All I know about Australia was learned watching Finding Nemo several times. Oh, and Crocodile Dundee. This paints Australia as a fairly bleak place, a good thing for me since all my favorite movie places are fairly bleak. Doc's dilapidated shack--dilapidated because he's probably shot it full of holes--the school house; both "hotels" he stays in, either one which could have contained its own urine couch; the front porch of the pub the quartet of hunters nearly destroys; the unlikely spaciousness of the gambling room; the dry, sizzling Outback. These are settings you can feel, atmospheres that make you feel like sweating right along with the characters. Add the sound--creaking, bored guitars, buzzing. Flies buzz around this movie like it's a carcass, probably of a kangaroo. Hell's a kangaroo carcass. Pleasance's character's first words are so appropriate: "All the little devils are proud of hell."
Was that a metronome I heard in that opening scene in the classroom? If so, we've got a streak of two in a row for Oprah Movie Club picks that have a metronome. As a public educator, I can tell you that that was an accurate portrayal of what happens in the typical classroom. It's a staring contest between students and a teacher, one that ends with the teacher getting a gift. Add a few standardized tests, and you've got an accurate look at public education. I did appreciate that all of the poor guy's problems seemed to evolve from his desire to not teach anymore. I know teaching can drive somebody to drink and gamble, but I've never met anybody who wanted to stab a kangaroo to death because of teaching.
Speaking of kangaroos, I might as well get that out of the way. That kangaroo hunt seemed really dangerous to everybody involved. It was a scene that was a little tough to watch, and I'm the type of person who really only likes kangaroos when they're boxing. It was also one of those "I can't believe this scene is in a movie" scenes, one that is so ruthless, so uncompromising. Those eerie trees illuminated by those spotlights, those red eyes of those doomed kangaroos, that close-up of the closing of that kangaroo's hand, that final shot of parts of four dead kangaroos. Those are the type of scenes you don't shake from your head for a while, artistically ugly and manic.
I like how much of this movie shows us things from the teacher's perspective. The slow pan over the faces of those bored students, the quick glance at the black dude on the train, the children running toward the train, the snippets during a scene where he's drunk, the stuff in that gambling room. The latter was electric, by the way. The circling camera around John, the shots of different funny-looking guys laughing (I love movie scenes that feature unnerving group laughter), the falling coins in slow motion followed by a freeze on the guy's face. This movie's got a filthy 1970's style--one that attracts flies apparently--and it helps us experience this guy's trip through hell through his eyes.
Gary Bond is good as the lead, a suitable everyman. I'm not sure he does a lot, but he works as an outsider who is swallowed up by circumstance until he's an insider. Chips Rafferty is great as Jock the cop. The woman who plays the front desk clerk (Maggie Dence) is aloof and sultry, popping in a pair of scenes to robotically give the main character directions. I also liked a guy with one top tooth. But Donald Pleasance steals the show with those wide eyes, giant nipples, and quick smile of his. He's so good in this as this character you know you can't trust but also don't know what else to do with.
So what the hell's this movie about? The protagonist's masculinity is questioned a few scenes before he mounts a woman and pukes. Later, of course, he gets to know--it seems--Donald Pleasance's character intimately. What's this trying to say about manning up in hell? Or Australia? Does one have to kill a kangaroo in order to become a man? Is it our obligation as males to lose all inhibitions, drink ourselves into stupors, lose our shirts, gamble and growl, smash up a joint, stroll around town with a rifle? Just what would Crocodile Dundee say about all this? What would the heroes of Australia--the ones remembered when everything stops in the middle of the night for an odd "Lest We Forget" tribute--say about it? What about John's girlfriend? What about the kangaroos?
This is a mysterious little movie, one that feels like a horror movie without being a horror movie. Throw it in the pile with movies like The Wicker Man or After Hours, stories that feature these unfortunate guys who are out of their element and in these situations where they seemingly have no control. John survives the experience like Paul in After Hours, ending up right where he started. His journey is a giant nightmarish circle, one that echoes that opening shot of the film that shows us Tiboonda.
Great pick, Matt from Canada! I'd actually never heard of this movie. Did anybody else watch it?
Glad you liked it! I hadn't seen it before I nominated it, but from everything I read it sounded like a winner. Having seen it, I compare it to an artistic, existential version of The Hangover.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite kind of stories are the ones that have powerful sense of surrealism without ever quite tipping the scales into the supernatural. Wake in Fright has a horrifying atmosphere, but it comes from the sense of isolation, the situations, and from the characters. Nothing here struck me as unbelievable or even particularly implausible, despite the intensity. There are some great touches that humanize the Yabbites just when things are getting out of hand, like the two crazy drunks who won't let John buy beer with his last dollar: "When you get some money you can take us on a bash."
I liked how quickly John's sneering, superior attitude to rural life gets torn down. One minute he's mocking people for betting on a coin toss, the next he's laying his money down. As I read the scene, it's his belief in his own specialness as an outsider that makes him think he's destined to win. I never knew where the story was headed, even though it was consistent throughout.
That's a command performance by Donald Pleasance. He just radiates power; you always know he's the one to watch. I particularly enjoyed that because I know him best as the mousy guy from The Great Escape. He's got quite a range, turns out. I thought the suggestion that he and John had a roll in the Outback was handled realistically. It's treated as an uncomfortable, undiscussed matter of fact, and I think a lot of modern movies would include more hand-wringing and lowbrow jokes. In fact, to extend the analogy further, The Hangover 2 has a gag with a ladyboy that demonstrates exactly what I mean.
Filthy is a good word to describe the look of this thing. I thought the flashback montage of John's big night was particularly seventies, but the harsh edits were well-matched to the feeling of being blackout drunk.
Kangaroos: I loved the scene. I thought it was tense and bold and unlike anything I'd seen before. It also means I can never recommend this movie to my vegan friends.
Glad the schoolteacher thing resounded with you, Shane. I thought you might enjoy that opening scene.
By the way, did you realize that Ted Kotcheff would go on to direct Weekend at Bernie's? What kind of terrifying Yabbaesque twist of fate led him so low?
Artistic, existential 'Hangover'...I like that a lot. 'The Hangover' didn't cross my mind at all, probably because Mike Tyson wasn't in this, but the parallels are definitely there.
ReplyDeleteThis movie does seem like a terrible dream which gives it that mild surrealistic vibe. And you're right about this being the type of nightmare that could definitely happen which does, even though it's not a horror movie, give you some of the same feelings that you'd have when watching a horror movie.
John's character was interesting to me. It's hard to pinpoint his flaws, I think. He drinks too much and he gambles foolishly although I think the odds of winning that game (50/50, right?) are slightly better than the odds of winning Blackjack. But what causes him to fall into this black hole he finds himself in? The overindulgence? The need to defend his masculinity? Cockiness? A sense of entitlement?
I keep thinking about those kangaroos. I'm trying to think of something I've seen that I can compare that scene to. There's the killing of a turtle in 'Cannibal Holocaust' maybe. There's the chicken sex scene in 'Pink Flamingos'...there's a dying rabbit in 'Rules of the Game' which is probably closest to what happened to these kangaroos including a lingering shot of a poor bunny who is dying. Oh, there's Arrabal's 'Viva la Muerte' during which a bull is eviscerated. All those would raise a stink with the animal rights folk, but they're not the same as this. That was just so many kangaroos, and the spotlight thing was so eerie.
'Weekend at Bernie's' can be forgiven. Did he make the sequel?
I think my favorite shot in this movie is when the coins flip up and land in Pleasance's eyes during that nutty montage.
I found it strange that they were celebrating Christmas in what would have been their summertime. As an American, I think I might even be offended by that. You know, since we invented Christmas and all.
Sorry I was late with this one, by the way...
ReplyDeleteYeah, John's character is interesting. He's haughty, but doesn't he have a right to be, when he's surrounded by these goons? He definitely drinks too much - but I imagine I'd probably try to keep up my first week in Australia, before a world-ending hangover taught me my place. I thought he overextended himself partly because of a belief in his own specialness. It's common for expats, or people from the capital who have landed in the boonies, to mistake their difference for superiority. John thought his odds were better than blind chance because he was betting against yokels. The isolation of both the place and the era - no ATMs or credit cards for John - did the rest. He probably could've reached his girlfriend by phone, but I imagine the shame element keep him from dialing her up.
ReplyDeleteThe masculinity stuff was all there, though I couldn't decode it very well. I think what's crucial is the movie doesn't say, "This is what it means to be a man," it says, "This is what happens when a man stands next to another man who says, 'This is what it means to be a man...'"
My favourite part of the kangaroo killing was the big redfaced drunk going toe-to-toe with the adult kangaroo. That's where it got complicated; I wanted to root for the kangaroo, but I found myself thinking, man, what are the other guys going to say if their drunken buddy gets eviscerated by a kangaroo? They're going to think for the rest of their lives that they let a man die. Better just to kill the kangaroo, then go home and sleep it off. That's not the moral high road, but I couldn't help thinking it as I watched. And killing a baby kangaroo - well that was just a bizarre, sophisticated lesson in peer pressure.
Ted Kotcheff was not responsible for Weekend at Bernie's II. That was some shemp named Robert Klane. From what I can tell, Klane does not have a surrealistic masterpiece in his back catalogue. IMDb tells me he wrote "'Greasier,' a rejected script for a Grease sequel, in 1979."
His "fall" was the fall of a desperate man. I'm not sure if I agree that he gambled because he thought he was better than everybody else in there. I think he was just so desperate to do something else and was looking for that easy way out. He's in a major funk and too young to be in a major funk, just sitting around staring at a bunch of kids while listening to a very loud clock (what I said was a metronome but probably wasn't)...the gambling is a bit of something new and, at the same time, a potential way out of the funk.
ReplyDeleteGreasier? Oh, my. To be followed by Greasiest and then Most Greasiest?
Oh, I was definitely rooting for the kangaroo. If that thing had boxing gloves, it would have been more in its element. I'm trying to put myself in Pleasance's character's place or the other hooligan's place and thinking about how I'd respond if the kangaroo had won that little fight. I think in that particular place, it wouldn't have mattered all that much. I don't think they'd feel responsible at all because in that type of place, everybody gets to make their own decisions and live their own lives. I think the guy's death at the paws of the kangaroo wouldn't be used as a lesson of any kind or change the characters in any way. It would just become part of the texture of that place.
Nobody else watched this? Oprah's going to be pissed. And they're missing out on a really good one!