Apologies for the delays in getting further posts on the Melbourne International Film Festival up. There was always going to be limited opportunity to post during the festival, since so many of the films I was seeing were in the last few days, but things were made worse by difficulties at my day job which caused a few planned films on my schedule to bite the dust. Hopefully my previous plugs for Paul Martin’s Melbourne Film Blog led anybody who was hankering for day-by-day coverage there; the boys over at Hoopla also managed to cover a reasonable number of films. One of the films I missed (El Topo) remains very much on my list to cover on the site.
What I did see was generally pretty good, and I had a better time of it than last year. So here are some quick thoughts on what I did end up seeing.
Manufacturing Dissent: Michael Moore and the Media (Debbie Melnyk, Rick Caine)
This anti-Michael Moore documentary would make a good primer for anyone who thought Michael Moore was an ethically uncompromised documentary maker… if, that is, there were any such people left. I’d have thought that the world long ago split into those who find Moore’s documentaries to be hopelessly biased propaganda, and those (like myself) who find him a really interesting filmmaker but who despair at his occasional lapses of ethics and judgment. However, Canadian documentary maker Debbie Melnyck feigns ignorance of Moore’s sometimes dubious methods to spin a tale of her growing disillusionment with him, adopting many of his most infamous methods – most particularly, unannounced doorstops – and turning them against him. The points the documentary makes are sometimes very telling, but the adoption of the worst aspects of Moore’s style is a double-edged sword. Yes, it exposes Moore as a hypocrite, in that he can be made to look bad using the same methods he uses on others. Yet because Melnyck only manages to reproduce Moore’s worst, without managing to match the incisiveness of Moore at his best, she comes off looking a far inferior filmmaker. Having revisited most of Bowling for Columbine on TV the other night, I was reminded again how much better Moore’s best work is; seeing a film like this take such a naive approach to debunking him (by, for example, professing shock at the way in which the gun collection in Columbine was staged for the camera) didn’t really shake my view of Moore in any meaningful way.
Billy the Kid (Jennifer Vendetti)
This low key documentary about a sweet but socially maladjusted teenager living in a small town in the US is very entertaining, but left me with mixed feelings. So much of a documentary comes down to choice of subject, and you can’t dismiss the role of a filmmaker in making their own luck and spotting the good subjects that exist in everyday life. Yet reviewing a slice-of-life film like this veers dangerously close to reviewing the people themselves, as the qualities that make Billy the Kid worth seeing really all relate to Billy himself. Billy is an awkward misfit, but obviously very bright, and his relationship with his mother is touching: you get the feeling Billy could have been really troubled if he hadn’t had such a supportive parent. Indeed, the principle reservation I have about the film follows from the protectiveness it makes you feel towards Billy, as you start to resent the filmmaker’s interventions in his life. For example, the film centres on Billy’s crush on a sweet girl who works at the local diner, and as Billy makes his first moves on her you suddenly feel the heavy weight of manipulation by the director. Billy’s first big moments with the subject of his crush are shot with such close cameras and heavy coverage that there is simply no way that the two teens could have had a natural discussion. It’s difficult not to feel that the course of Billy’s budding relationship was drastically affected by the filmmakers, who may have unwittingly put their own interests ahead of Billy’s.
Monkey Grip (Ken Cameron)
It’s not hard to see why Ken Cameron’s adaptation of Helen Garner’s semi-autobiographical novel died at the box office back in 1982. For starters, the subject matter – the soap opera-ish interpersonal shenanigans of a group of inner-Melbourne intelligentsia and bohemians – could hardly be better misjudged to alienate a middle-suburban audience. And there’s something really frustrating in watching Noni Hazlehurt’s Nora take so long to come to terms with a pretty fundamental relationship lesson: there’s no future with a junkie. What’s more, the storyline is jumbled, with peripheral characters (like Chrissie Amphlett’s Angela) being dragged onto centre stage for big relationship crises despite having been only fleetingly established earlier in the film: it’s as if Cameron and Garner have forgotten that we don’t know these characters as well as they do. Hazlehurst puts in a brave performance, but is miscast. She’s too sunny and squeaky clean for what seems to be intended as a troubled and sexually adventurous character, and so the film ends up with something of a blank at its centre. Yet for all that, the intervening years have made the film’s virtues that much stronger: it works really well as a time capsule of a particular period, location, and intellectual clique. The songs by Amphlett and the Divinyls are now standards, and Ken Cameron’s direction holds up really well, with a good feel for location and strong performances right through the cast.
Eagle vs Shark (Taika Waititi)
This oddball comedy from New Zealand seems sure to become a big cult item. It’s a simple tale of the relationship between two misfits: the shy but sensitive Lily (Loren Horsley), and the self-centered ubernerd Jarrod (Jemaine Clement), who is training for his revenge on the bully bully from his high school. It’s very funny and it’s good to see an upcoming New Zealand director make a splash with his first feature. Yet, while I definitely recommend it when it gets its commercial release, it is also going to be hurt by one serious problem: Jarrod’s sheer awfulness. Clement does great work in the role, creating an amusing and unique character – nerds in movies tend to be portrayed as lovable and misunderstood underdogs, so it’s interesting to see a social misfit who is actually just a jerk – but you can never warm up to him. The little redemption he gets in the film is so little and so late that it simply can’t justify the faith that Lily puts in him all through the film. Yet that gripe aside, this is still a lot of fun.