Being an Australian, I get the overly zealous and politically correct take on aboriginal Australia practically rammed down my throat [by the media, mainly] a lot of the time [my cynical to reaction to this comes about not because I'm racist, but because I just happen to think that there are better ways to make a point than to resort to syrupy portrayals of aboriginal peoples that are ultimately irrelevant in their reliance on the idea of the so-called "noble savage"], and thus I wasn't expecting a whole lot from Tracey Moffatt's short experimental film, Nice Coloured Girls (1987), when I saw it in my Australian Cinema class last week – or rather, I was expecting a lot of the same.

However, the film – which "audaciously explores the history of exploitation between white men and Aboriginal women" – was really quite something, far and away more engaging and stylistically intriguing than I would have ever expected. The blatant artificiality of the "documentary"/narrative sequences; the subjective point-of-view shots; the scenes in the art gallery; the juxtaposition between the "silent voice" of the aboriginal women [subtitles] and the mannered readings from a white man's journal...it was all very overwhelming, and in a sixteen or seventeen minute short, as well.

And then, as though to prove that it wasn't a fluke, I felt exactly the same way [to a slightly lesser extent, perhaps] about the extract of Moffatt's 1989 film, Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy, which we saw back-to-back with Nice Coloured Girls [unfortunately though, we didn't see the whole thing] and which was a clever, cynical take on the "landmark" Australian feature film [it was this country's first in colour], Jedda (d. Charles Chauvel, 1955), which I don't like at all.

And I couldn't help but wonder whether, maybe, the aforementioned "overly zealous and politically correct take on aboriginal Australia" was really just a white man's overly zealous and politically correct take. Jedda for example, in retrospect, is little more than an aging white man's romanticized and extremely melodramatic look at the aboriginal as a nomadic animal, of sorts, that cannot be tamed. Needless to say, the film hasn't aged well [hence my negative reaction to it].

That said, I'm a fan of both Rabbit-Proof Fence (d. Phillip Noyce, 2002) and The Tracker (d. Rolf de Heer, 2002), the directors of which are both aging white men, so maybe I'm wrong, and there you go. But, you know, even then, maybe I'm not. Their films are, after all, still sort of on the outside of aboriginal society looking in, usually by way of a white character – even though, of course, A. O. Neville (Kenneth Branagh) in Fence is the "bad guy," he's also the audience's [and Noyce's] representative in the film, and his "bad guy" status is very much supposed to shift the guilt that he should feel [but doesn't]on to us in the "now".

So, what's most interesting for me, then, about Tracey Moffatt's work [or what I've seen of it], is the fact that it provides that rare "insider's" take on aboriginal Australia that we don't normally get in this country –at least, that we don't usually get in the cinema. [Of course, visual art and painting might perhaps be a different story; I just wouldn't know. I'm not a visual art aficionado at the best of times and especially not in regards to Australian artists].

Anyways, now I'm thinking that I should track down some of Moffatt's other work [not to mention some of her still photography and painting], because I'm really intrigued by what I've seen so far, and intriguement [which isn't a word] is usually a good place to start...


Referenced Films

Jedda (d. Charles Chaveul, 1955) * ½

Nice Coloured Girls (d. Tracey Moffatt, 1987) ****

Rabbit-Proof Fence (d. Phillip Noyce, 2002) *** ½

The Tracker (d. Rolf de Heer, 2002) *** ½


[By the way, just a quick thanks to the members of Milk Plus for inviting to be the blog's first regular international Australian contributor. I'll try to write at least once a week as, believe you me, I want to earn my keep. To be honest, I'm just flattered to be in such good company...!]

Posted By Matthew Clayfield at 6:55:00 AM 0 comments

 

A Dirty Shame

You know what is really sad? When a provocateur’s ideas actually become “quaint,” which, is either a step down or a step up from “marketable,” I’m just not too sure. But I digress; “quaint” was the adjective consistently running through my head as I watched John Waters’s newest film A Dirty Shame, which strives for outrageousness, and succeeds...if the film was transported back in time, oh, I don’t know, 25-35 years ago. In this age of Loveline, Dan Savage, that old lady on the Oxygen network, the mainstreaming of the pornography business, and this little thing called the Internet, Waters’s latest poor-taste opus concerning the perpetual war between the Neuters (aka “The Squares”) and the Sex Addicts (aka “Insert Any Outcast Group Here”), is well “quaint,” this despite the “dreaded” NC-17 rating (though this is perhaps the tamest, albeit deserving, NC-17 movie that I’ve ever seen; what again was Christine Vachon complaining about?).

I would not call Waters “reactionary” like Joker. Nobody that is this affectionate towards all forms of pervs and fetishists, as well as being the creator of the one of the more blasphemous films I’ve seen in a long time, really deserves that label. Kind of bland?...OK. Dated?...You betcha. A sexual attitude that once would have been regarded as somewhat daring, but now is squarely the province of 13-year old boys (or younger)...Yep. How about inoffensive? Well, maybe I’m jaded (or more likely I lived through the last 20 years and pretty much know what to expect from a John Waters film), but I wasn’t really offended or grossed-out in the slightest by any of the sexual shenanigans going on in the film. In its more daring moments, the film seems to be really skirting towards the edge (the final hint of necrophilia) but pulls back, or avoids the less appealing aspects of the many perversions listed throughout the film altogether. Basically, nobody is eating dog shit in this movie, much to its detriment.

Not that I would have minded as much, if the film had been funnier. Again, unlike Joker, I found parts of the film to be amusing, but maybe I’m just a sucker for watching people repeatedly get hit on the head (I do like me some Three Stooges). Waters is clearly going for the intentionally bad, campy, amateurish vibe of the New York Underground of the 60s, so it’s kind of hard to fault the performers for their over the top or stilted performances; the incoherent story with its mind boggling, paper thin message; the cheesy, obvious music; the “cheap” special effects; and crude mise-en-scene, since that is the whole point (though A Dirty Shame is still much, much more slicker than anything by such directors as Herschel Gordon Lewis, Mike Kuchar, Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, Russ Myers, or Andy Warhol; for instance, it was consistently in focus). Making a good bad movie is a bit of tricky alchemy, but Waters comes up with more lead than gold. His film is neither outrageous, gross, or hysterically bad enough to warrant much praise, which, as the title suggest, is a dirty shame.
Posted By Anonymous at 7:10:00 PM 0 comments

 

A Portait of the Artist

While in Montreal a couple months ago, I stopped in at the Jean Cocteau: Enfant Terrible exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. The only thing I knew about Cocteau was that he'd directed Beauty and the Beast, so the exhibit was a lot of fun: an exhaustive look at Cocteau's artistic and biographical journey through life. I won't go into all the details – that could take a good review in itself – but the movie clips made a definite impression on me: long enough to get an idea of Cocteau's style, short enough to maintain the flow of the exhibit, and set up so that they didn't intrude on adjacent displays.

Coming across as dreamy / introspective / otherworldy, they also got me very interested in tracking down Cocteau's films. In particular, I saw an instant link between Les Enfants Terribles and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (which I spent a lot of angst on earlier this year). Knowing that Bertolucci had spent time in France and had to know Cocteau's work, I wanted to see how much the earlier movie had influenced him. As it turns out, my library has a copy of Criterion's Orphic Trilogy (a box set of The Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, and The Last Testament of Orpheus), and the BFI released Les Enfants Terribles on DVD at the beginning of September, so all I had to do was block off some time and watch...

• The Blood of a Poet (1930) : This was Cocteau's second film (the first is lost). As such it's both cerebral and rough around the edges, but shows the signature touches common to many of Cocteau's movies: metaphoric mirrors, reverse photography, animated statues, exaggerated movement, and the central concept of rebirth from death. This last one is pretty important; Cocteau's explorations of the life of the artist show a deep affinity with the Orphic myth. It's clear that Cocteau approached filmmaking as another way to express his art, and that expressing the artist's life was what his art was about.


• Orpheus (1949) : Very beautiful, and much more accessible than I had guessed based on the clips in the museum. Orpheus is Art. Orpheus is (hu)Man. Orpheus is Cocteau. Orpheus is obsessed with Death - quite literally. Again this is the Orphic myth, but it's many others stories on many other levels - personalized to Cocteau, broadened to the human condition, extended to existence and beyond. Cocteau plays with time, space, and meaning - and leaves nothing definite or secure. All of these story levels are effortlessly joined, much like watching perfect, infinite reflections arc between multiple mirrors. Those Cocteau touches (mirrors, passing between worlds, etc) are well integrated into the whole; they don't stick out as gimmicks. The movie is an extension of but not a sequel to the The Blood of a Poet; the earlier movie is the skeleton, this movie is the flesh and blood. A smart, fresh retelling of the Orphic myth, in some ways it may be better than Beauty and the Beast.


• The Testament of Orpheus (1960) : This Orpheus is a direct descendant of the 1949 movie, with Cegeste, a minor character, indicting Cocteau for leaving him unresolved in the earlier movie (a truly artistic crime). This is where Cocteau as artist truly morphs into Orpheus, with Cegeste as his guide through the underworld of his life, to the tribunal to be judged for his crimes by the characters from his film. Cocteau isn't above mocking himself during that journey (much as others had been doing in real life); for example, a little girl reciting facts about Cocteau to a principal-like questioner refers to the artist as a musician who plays the "buffoon" (maybe she meant "bassoon," maybe not). In the context of the three movies, The Testament of Orpheus is the clothing on the corps of the Oprhic trilogy. An integral part, but I still see Orpheus as the critical movie.


• Les Enfants Terribles (1950) : This is a Jean Cocteau story. This is not a Jean Cocteau film. There's the tangled web and fatalism of Cocteau's standard storyline, but the movie lacks the waking dream state of Cocteau's movies. There are no mirror/doorways, camera tricks, not even a peep from a statue. The one Cocteau trademark - a child felled by a stone-filled snowball - is central but straightforward; the other symbols are too cut-and-dried to be Cocteau. I've heard that there was a struggle between Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville, the director, over casting, shooting, directing, you name it... and the movie itself is amazingly cohesive enough given a struggle; but the things that make Cocteau's works Cocteau's just aren't there.
  This also isn't The Dreamers circa 1950. Both movies share similar main characters along with a sense of isolation. But Bertolucci added his own inner demons and personal narrative (not to mention resolution). Maybe there's bias in looking back from 2004, but I doubt Cocteau could have added more than the barest whiff of incest to his story, and it's really the platonic side of the combative love/hate relationship between Elisabeth and Paul that dominates the story. I never got the sense that Paul felt any sexual attraction towards Elizabeth.
  Am I disappointed? Hard to say. Obviously not what I was expecting on several fronts. It's interesting; Nicole Stéphane as Elisabeth is a strong presence (much stronger than Edouard Dermithe as Paul, likely cast because he was Cocteau's lover); the key conflict speaks volumes; but it just doesn't have Cocteau's spirit.
  
  This might be an excuse, though, to check out both Melville's other works (including Bob le flambeur, Le Samouraï, and Le Cercle Rouge) and Cocteau's 1929 novel Les Enfants Terribles...

Posted By Lady Wakasa at 6:16:00 AM 0 comments