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?