Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - Australian Premiere - The Daughter

Ewen Leslie, Odessa Young and Sam Neill - The Daughter

Another intense dysfunctional family drama. The Australian film industry never tires of this category of screenplay and The Daughter fits well within this genre. Simon Stone is another theatre director trying his hand at film-making and has brought his adaptation of Ibsen's The Wild Duck for the Belvoir St Theatre to the cinema screen. A very experienced expert cast do nothing to dispel the darkness that pervades every element of this film which involves a complex drama between two intertwined families. The story follows the impact created when Christian (Paul Schneider) returns to his family home for his father Henry's (Geoffrey Rush) wedding to a younger woman. Christian is a very damaged young man constantly haunted by the suicide of his mother many years earlier and with suspicions as to the cause of that tragedy. On his return he reunites with an old childhood friend Oliver (Ewen Leslie), an employee of Henry's timber mill which is now closing down, and Oliver's wife Charlotte (Miranda Otto) and teenage daughter Hedvig (Odessa Young). Through constant questioning and with a good dose of paranoia, Christian discovers that many years previously his father Henry, had an affair with Charlotte before her marriage to Oliver and this revelation sets the direction for another devastating tragedy to unfold.

These two families have many more hidden secrets to uncover during the course of the film showing how interconnected two generations have become. Geoffrey Rush, Ewen Leslie, Mirando Otto, Paul Schneider, Sam Neill and Odessa Young are well cast in their roles and the locations are atmospherically chosen. A clear deficiency with the plot line is the unresolved conclusion leaving the audience with little other than the personal devastation of the key characters in the film.

Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - Australian Premiere - Ruben Guthrie

Patrick Brammell - Ruben Guthrie

Playwright and now screen director, Brendan Cowell has brought his stage play of the same name, produced for the Belvoir St Theatre, to the screen. This is a unabashedly Sydney-centric film in settings, themes, culture and characterisation with a well-known Sydney based cast including Patrick Brammell, Alex Dimitriades, Abbey Lee, Jeremy Sims, Robyn Nevin, Jack Thompson and Harriet Dyer to name a few.

The storyline for this film follows Ruben Guthrie (actor Patrick Brammell), an advertising executive who leads a party-boy lifestyle, with a model fiancee, waterside house and a reliance on alcohol. After almost drowning in his infinity backyard pool, Guthrie faces a stark crossroad in his life - either give up the alcohol for a year or lose his fiancee, Zoya (Abbey Lee). He decides to take the year-long challenge despite the alcoholic temptations offered by his gay friend (Alex Dimitriades), his parents (Jack Thompson and Robyn Nevin), and his boss at the advertising agency (Jeremy Sims). Ruben Guthrie is quintessentially Australian with a strong Sydney flavour demonstrating that bogan lives are often not about money but about taste. Director Brendan Cowell deliberately set out to focus on the alcoholic influence and makes no apology for the emphasis shown in the film.  This is a old style 'Aussie' film which resonates with the 'mateship' theme and best 'Ocker' traditions.

Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - World Premiere - Last Cab to Darwin

Michael Caton - Last Cab to Darwin

Theatre director, Jeremy Sims, has brought this stage play to the big screen with very mixed results and a substantial number of clichés. Essentially this is a road film taking the viewer across the Australian centre from Broken Hill to Alice Springs to Darwin. The plotline for the film follows Broken Hill cab driver, Rex (Michael Caton) who has received a terminal cancer diagnosis. Rex has known of his illness for some time following surgery from an earlier diagnosis for the same disease. He does not wish to die in hospital like his father and on learning of law changes in the Northern Territory allowing euthanasia and the existence of a laptop device which manages sedative drugs, he resolves to drive to Darwin to end his life. Along the way, he picks up two travellers, a young Aboriginal man with football abilities and a young backpacking English nurse, who both accompany Rex on his journey. Rex however has an unresolved relationship with Aboriginal woman, Polly (Ningali Lawford-Wolf) which eventually draws him back to Broken Hill before it is too late.

Jackie Weaver is sadly miscast as the euthanasia campaign doctor seeking to assist patients to end their lives and does not convincingly carry the role. Aboriginal interaction with white Australians is shown in a typecast segregated manner more in common in the US or an earlier South Africa than Australia's Northern Territory in the current era. The film may well be suitable for a stage play but overall sits less comfortably on the big screen.

Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - Australian Premiere - Strangerland - Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman in Strangerland

Strangerland from Australian director, Kim Farrant, has a strong internationally rated cast with Nicole Kidman, Joseph Fiennes and Hugo Weaving and beautifully shot images of the vast Australian outback landscape around the remote desert town of Nathgari. These production elements should provide a concrete foundation for a memorable and impressive film, yet Strangerland descends into another melodrama of a dysfunctional family, the plotlines of which are similar to many other recent Australian films. The strongest aspect of this film is the performance of Nicole Kidman, who with minimal makeup or sets to support her, delivers her part with deep vulnerability and emotion.

The storyline is centred on the Parker family who have relocated from another country town due to a scandal involving their teenage daughter and an affair with a married school teacher. Catherine Parker (Nicole Kidman) and Mathew Parker (Joseph Fiennes), her husband and the town's pharmacist do not have a perfect relationship and they differ in their approach to raising their young son and their teenage daughter. When a massive dust storm shrouds their town in red dust and an eerie red  light, their two children disappear. Outback police detective David Rae (Hugo Weaving) conducts the search and during the course of his investigations uncovers many hidden family secrets.

Overall this is a depressing film with very flawed, unlikeable characters. The mystery of the disappearance of the children is only partially answered and the conclusion of the film has an unresolved atmosphere.

Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - 99 Homes

Andrew Garfield as Dennis Nash in 99 Homes

The personal impact of the 2008 housing crisis in the United States which precipitated the Global Financial Crisis is explored in this feature film by director/screenwriter Ramin Bahrani. In this feature film rendition of the effects of the financial crisis, real estate agent Rick Carver (actor Michael Shannon) has made a fortune repossessing the homes of desperate mortgage holders and bank debtors. When tradesman, Dennis Nash (actor Andrew Garfield) is evicted from his home with his family, he finds himself working for Carver and becoming literally the Devils Apprentice by joining the business forcibly evicting others from their homes. Drawn by the lure of regaining his own family home and seduced by the wealth and increasingly glamorous lifestyle, Nash finds himself questioning his beliefs and values. When he is asked to courier a forged legal document in order to ensure a court win against another householder in debt, Nash reaches his nadir.

Actors Michael Shannon and Andew Garfield are perfectly cast in their respective roles and the film was shot in Florida and Louisiana using a mix of professional actors and amateurs, many of whom had lost their homes due to Hurricane Katrina and brought that experience to their performances. This is a well researched film with a strong underlying ethical dilemma and a message about the social impact of disconnected institutional behaviour.

Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - Australian Premiere - Love & Mercy

John Cusack and Elizabeth Banks - Love & Mercy

Seminal musical and dramatic moments in the life of Brian Wilson, the key composer of the Beach Boys, are represented in this sympathetic feature film by Director Bill Pohland. Running marginally over two hours, the film juxtaposes the early 1960s period of Wilson's life (actor Paul Dano is the young Wilson) with the later 1980s period (covered by actor John Cusack) during which Wilson suffered a break-down. The film makes excellent use of the musical works of Wilson and many of the most successful hits of the Beach Boys are captured throughout demonstrating Wilson's melodic genius. The controversial period during which Wilson was a patient of psychotherapist, Dr Eugene Landy and suffered exploitation and prescribed drug controls becoming a virtual prisoner of Landy is strikingly demonstrated in the film. Paul Giamatti plays Landy with Elizabeth Banks playing Melinda, Wilson's girlfriend (and later wife) who, with the Wilson family, brought Landy's control to an end.

This is a film for fans of Wilson and his extraordinary musical talent.

Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - Mr Holmes

Ian McKellen as the retired Sherlock Holmes

Ian McKellen delivers a masterful performance as the retired Sherlock Holmes in Bill Condon's Mr Holmes.  This film is an exquisite period piece sympathetic to and retaining the authenticity of the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conon Doyle. In this film Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) is long retired, aged 93 with fading memory and living a comfortable existence in the English countryside  tending his bees. His peers including Dr Watson have long passed-on and the only regular company he enjoys is his widowed housekeeper Mrs Munro (Laura Linney) and her young son Roger (Milo Parker) who displays a strong interest in his cases and one unresolved case in particular from decades earlier. Holmes is haunted by this case which involved a private investigation into the suspicion of a husband as to a possible murder plot by the man's wife. With the encouragement of Roger (who also assists with tending the bees) Holmes revisits the evidence and material of the case finding the answer which had so eluded him over many years.

This is a film with high production values, photographed in quintessentially identifiable cultural locations in the United Kingdom (the White cliffs of Dover are particularly striking) and worth seeing on the large cinema screen.

Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

Documentary film maker, Alex Gibney delivers a damning insight into the inner workings of the Church of Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard and current head David Miscavige in this methodical non-sensationalist two hour film. Using archival footage including much of the Church's own public relations material linked to personal interviews conducted by Gibney with several key former senior leaders of the Church, Gibney portrays an organisation which uses extensive psychological methods and harsh edicts to maintain control over its members. The invention of the pseudo science of 'Dianetics', the origins of the inner trusted body in the Church known as 'Sea Organisation' (or Sea Org), employment contracts set at a billion years and the war waged with the United States Internal Review Service for tax free status are just a few of the aspects which the film covers.

The relationship between the Church and its two star recruits, John Travolta and Tom Cruise is given attention particularly the close involvement between David Miscavige and Tom Cruise. The extent of the connection is now so visible that both men almost resemble each other in style and habits. The Church's involvement in the dissolution of the marriage between Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman presents a particularly insidious insight into the tactics which the Church deploys. The use of private investigators, covert video surveillance and considerable harassment are commonly used methods for the persuasion of silence.

Alex Gibney has a number of well-regarded documentaries to his name including Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and Mea Maxima Culpa and won an Academy Award for his film Taxi to the Dark Side. This latest film adds to an impressive body of work and is a must-see for those with a concern about the operations of cults.

Sydney Film Festival 2015 - Film Review - Slow West

Kodi Smit-McPhee and Michael Fassbender - Slow West

Screenwriter and Director, John Mclean's debut feature film set in the desolate regions of Colorado in the United States around the period near the Civil War is described as an 'unconventional' Western. This is an understatement as it's a very curious and inconsistent film in many respects. Filmed in Scotland and New Zealand (which was the substitute location instead of Colorado), the film follows the trek westward by young Scotsman, Jay (actor Kodi Smit-McPhee) who is searching for his lost love, Rose and her father who had fled Scotland after a tragic family dispute. Jay is young and naive, traversing a territory full of harshness and predators including bounty hunters, lawless soldiers, bandits and the ever likely Indian raiders. He runs into Silas (Michael Fassbender) a cunning and worldly bounty hunter who, for a fee, will provide a hired gun escort to enable Jay to find Rose. What Jay does not know is that Rose and her father have a $2,000 price on their heads and bounty hunters including Silas are on the lookout. At the end of the trail lies an all-too-likely classic western shoot-out.

This is a very odd little film with multiple inconsistencies throughout its length. Although in desolate country far from an civilisation, Jay and Silas encounter all manner of strange people and sights. Three Congolese men in suits sitting on benches singing love songs in the middle of nowhere, a well built bridge crossing a river yet there's no trail or road with it; a rough hewn trading store with various limited supplies yet there are fresh apples without any apparent way the fruit could have been transported there (a question posed to the film's producer during Q & A who admitted that was a flaw in the film). And finally Rose and her father's house in a desolate field looking brand new with pristine perfect timbers. The film is so quirky its quite entertaining and is worth a cinema ticket.

   

Sydney Film Festival 2015

335 screenings of 250 films in 9 venues over 12 days. The 2015 Sydney Film Festival has reached its 62nd year and continues strongly with a broad swag of new films to view which will be released in the coming weeks and months to the broader public market. New Australian films have a marked presence in this year's selection demonstrating that the local industry has not become inert, albeit it does remain dependent on substantial public funding from bodies such as Screen Australia. From the first set of screenings, family dysfunctionalism again seems to have centre stage in many of the stories presented. Whether this is simply a trend being set in the Art House film genre or is representative of current social trends generally is a matter of conjecture. It does however demonstrate an unusually limited focus for many of the films which have been produced over the past few years.