6/27/15 (Part Two): Two is the Loneliest Number

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Adam Cronheim, Alana O'Brien, baseball players, buddy films, Christian Stella, cinema, directorial debut, dramas, end of the world, film reviews, films, friendship, horror films, independent films, Jamie Pantanella, Jeremy Gardner, Larry Fessenden, low-budget films, low-key, Movies, Niels Bolle, post-Apocalyptic, road movie, Ryan Winford, slow-moving films, stranded, The Battery, undead, Walkman, writer-director-producer-actor, zombie apocalypse, zombie movies, zombies

How rad would it be to run wild in a post-apocalyptic world with your best friend? Hunting, fishing, killing zombies, taking whatever you need, never answering to “The Man,” never working another day in your life, just kicking back and taking it all in…if you squint just right, it looks like a damn good life, doesn’t it? Now…imagine the exact same scenario but substitute “a co-worker you don’t know very well” for “your best friend” in the above equation. Not quite as fun, eh?

First-time director Jeremy Gardner (working from his own script) takes a close look at the second scenario, the one that sees you getting stuck with a relative stranger during the fallout from an unnamed zombie epidemic, in the low-key, immensely effective horror-drama The Battery (2012). Utilizing a slow, measured pace and a startling degree of real-world verisimilitude, Gardner has created the equivalent of a mumblecore zombie film, a movie not so much about the ravenous hordes of undead that stagger and groan across empty swatches of abandoned humanity but about the few remaining humans who’ve been left holding the bag. When the end-times come, Gardner seems to say, we’ll all find ourselves doing the exact same things we did during “better times”: arguing, swearing, fighting, listening to music on our headphones, masturbating, hoping, goofing around, wondering and wishing for a better tomorrow.

In as economical a way as possible, we meet our two leads and get the lay of the land right off the bat: Ben (writer-director Gardner) and Mickey (Adam Cronheim) are a couple of baseball players who find their lot tied together once the U.S. (and, presumably, the rest of the world) becomes overrun by zombies. We don’t get big explanations, no sense of a larger scheme at play here, just the facts, ma’am. Although the two were never great friends when things were “normal,” they now find themselves needing to rely on each other for their very survival: you might think that making a new friend is difficult…try doing it when mobs of zombies are trying to eat your face!

Personality-wise, the two former teammates couldn’t be more different. Ben is the brash, act-first member of the team, a guy who sees killing zombies as his duty and relishes the opportunity to live “off the grid” and make his own way through life. Mickey, on the other hand, is much more reserved, quiet and withdrawn. With his ever-present headphones and lingering memories of his lost life with his pre-apocalypse girlfriend, Mickey is like an open, throbbing wound, slinking from one place to the next without ever really living. Hell, he even resists Ben’s constant attempts to teach him how to fish: he’s got plenty of canned goods, after all, so why bother with the “real stuff” until he has to? Grizzly Adams, he ain’t.

Change comes to the guys’ daily fight for survival when they happen to pick up a mundane conversation on their walkie talkies. The discussion might not be earth-shattering (picking out the movie choice for that night) but Ben and Mickey are rocked to their very cores: here, at long last, is proof that they’re not alone. For Ben, it means more potential problems but for Mickey, the existence of others allows him the faintest glimmer of hope: for the first time, he can begin to see the path that leads out of their personal wilderness and back into regimented society.

The problem, of course, is that folks in post-apocalyptic societies don’t tend to be the friendliest, most trusting, sorts. One of the voices, Frank (Larry Fessenden), pointedly tells our heroes that there’s no more room at this particular inn, while the other voice, Annie (Alana O’Brien) does much the same thing, albeit in a nicer way. Too late, however: poor Mickey has already locked on to the newly discovered survivors as his own source of salvation and he won’t take no for an answer. Despite Ben’s constant protests, Mickey wants to track down Frank, Annie and the others at all costs: not only does he get a whiff of the civilization he so desperately misses but, with Annie, he gets a hint of that other thing he desperately misses…female contact.

As Ben and Mickey continue to move through the destroyed landscape of what used to be a familiar country, constantly on the watch for ambushing zombies, they find their own burgeoning friendship tested and strained at every twist and turn in the path. Will the two ever be able to set aside their differences and become united in their goals? Will Mickey be able to rejoin the civilized society that he always carries so close to his heart, via his ever-present Discman, or will he spend the rest of his days in the wild, gradually giving his own humanity over to survival instincts? And what, exactly, are Frank and Annie trying to hide from them? What is the truth behind “The Orchard” and will it spell salvation or doom for our hardy protagonists?

Low-key, understated and pitched at a glacial pace, Gardner’s film isn’t what one might call a “thrill-a-minute” ride. What it lacks in visceral action, however, it more than makes up for with intelligent, character-driven drama. The focus here is squarely on the humans, not the monsters: for almost the entirety of the film, give or take a few choice setpieces, the zombies remain in the background of the action, serving as omnipresent threat but allowing Ben and Mickey to take the reins. In some ways, it’s a similar tactic to Gareth Edwards’ Monsters (2010), in which the massive beasts became secondary to the human drama at the film’s core. The Battery is, first and foremost, about the ways in which Ben and Mickey navigate around their world. which is an important distinction from most low-budget zombie films.

Despite this focus on the dramatic aspect, however, Gardner and crew don’t shortchange the horrific aspect. The zombies are all well-realized, with effective makeup, and the violence, although infrequent, is always gritty and physical. When the film wants to pull out the stops, it has no problem doing so: the setpiece involving Ben and Mickey trapped in a car by a veritable army of the undead is as tense as they come, culminating in a truly brave six-minute shot that handily recalls the tent scene in Bobcat Goldtwait’s recent Willow Creek (2013). By not making the zombie action the center of the film’s universe, it makes the scattered horror moments that much more effective: I can’t stress enough how radically different this is from most low-budget zombie fare.

In many ways, The Battery is a two-man show: although we meet a couple other characters, including the aforementioned Annie and a carjacker (played by Niels Bolle), the vast majority of our screentime is devoted to either Ben or Mickey. As with many low-budget films (particularly horror films), this could have been the kiss of death: as a lifelong horror fan, “outstanding acting” isn’t usually something I usually associate with these types of movies, at least not at this level.

Rather than being a deficit, however, the performances in The Battery end up being one of the film’s greatest benefits. Quite simply, Gardner and Cronheim have fantastic chemistry: not only do we buy these guys as real people but we also buy into their developing friendship, warts and all. There are certain moments, such as the minutes-long scene consisting of nothing more than Ben and Mickey brushing their teeth, that feel like nothing less than getting a front-row seat to real-life, albeit one where the occasional zombie pops into view. Both actors give unique life and characterization to their respective roles (Ben is the “asshole,” Mickey is the “nice guy”) that extends beyond easy stereotyping and feels a whole lot more like real acting. In this aspect, The Battery reminded me of another exemplary indie horror film about a friendship, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s extraordinary Resolution (2012). Like Resolution, the characters in The Battery feel 100% authentic, which works wonders on selling the inherent “unreality” of the zombie apocalypse.

While the cinematography in the film is never much more than decent (aside from a few scattered standouts), the sound design is actually pretty brilliant and flawlessly integrated into the fabric of the film. The big conceit here, that Mickey’s Discman provides the score in “real-time,” is pretty damn awesome: that the musical selections are so varied and exceptional (incorporating everything from traditional blues to Neutral Milk Hotel-ish sonic collages) really kicks the whole film up a notch, resulting in scenes and moments that could best be described as “thoroughly kickass.” The montage of Ben and Mickey bumming around the countryside, set to an old blues stomper, is beautifully evocative, as is the wild, chaotic abandon that fuels the scene where Ben gets wasted and dances in front of a mural. Gardner and crew understand that sound design is as integral a part of a film as the visuals and The Battery provides a great crash course in just how to accomplish that.

All in all, I was massively impressed by The Battery: for a low-budget, independent zombie flick, this is just about as artistic and exceptional as it gets. While the film doesn’t always break new ground (Mickey’s obsession with Annie is particularly tiresome and “old hat”), it strikes out on its own path often enough to prove how much Gardner has to say. For some viewers, the slow pace and relative lack of action might be slightly off-putting but more patient audiences will realize one important fact: you have to learn to crawl before you walk. By taking its time and easing into the horror, Gardner’s film demonstrates that it has the stamina to go the distance. Here’s to hoping that Jeremy Gardner and his team continue to pump out effective, well-made little films like this: for a genre that can often be more smoke than fire, there will always be a need for movies that are actually about something.

The Battery may a road movie set during a zombie plague but, in the bigger scheme of things, it’s really about human interaction and the ways in which we’re all intertwined, whether we like it or not. I’ll take that over another bloody disembowelment any ol’ day of the week.

9/22/14: Plowed Under

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alcoholism, black comedies, Canadian films, cinema, drama, Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, gallows' humor, independent film, indie dramas, Isabelle Nelisse, Marc Labreche, Movies, odd couple, snow plow, stranded, Thomas Haden Church, Vincent Hoss-Desmarais, voice-over narration, Whitewash, writer-director

If there’s a big takeaway from writer/director Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais’ exceptional debut feature, Whitewash (2013), it’s a pretty cynical one: people suck. Oh, sure: individuals may do good, selfless things but the rest of humanity will, invariably, find some way to screw it up. To wrap it up with a nice, clichéd bow: no good deed goes unpunished. The journey to this revelation is a twisted one, however, and there’s a genuine mystery at the heart of this blackly comic little wonder, albeit a small one: why, exactly, did Bruce (Thomas Haden Church) run over Paul (Marc Labreche) with a snowplow?

The event in question happens at the very onset of the film and the answer will be gradually revealed over the next 80-some minutes via a series of flashbacks. What we get at the beginning, however, has all of the linear insanity of a nightmare: we see Bruce run Paul over (via a gorgeous long shot) and then join him as he rides his snowplow off into the darkest recesses of the nearby forest, where the vehicle inevitably stalls out. From this point on, the film splits its difference between being an outdoor survival flick, ala Wrecked (2010), and being a prickly dark comedy about the subtle ways in which humans drive each other crazy.

There’s more to the film than meets the eye, however: much more. For one thing, unlike most survival dramas, Bruce doesn’t appear to be trapped. There’s no giant boulder pinning his arm, no crushed car to keep him in place. Rather, what’s trapping Bruce out in the cold hell of a brutal Quebecan winter is his own internal turmoil. As we begin to piece more of the story together, via the numerous flashbacks, we also start to put together a better picture of Bruce: a hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth type, Bruce is an easy-going fella who’s fond of eating his dessert before his entrée and thinks nothing of helping complete strangers, regardless of the inconvenience to himself. He’s a sad man, in many ways: his wife has died and the house is filled with belongings and memorabilia that makes her an omnipresent figure. There are a lot of facets to Bruce but one questions hangs heavy over everything: why would a guy like this run over someone else with a snow plow?

We do eventually get the answer but, as often happens in these situations, the journey is more important than the destination. As we learn more about Bruce and his “victim,” the mysterious and unbelievably obnoxious Paul, we begin to understand, piece by piece, what might drive a seemingly ordinary guy to snap. By the time we get to the brilliantly concise finale, we have many but not all of our answers. To paraphrase the Big, Bad Wolf: all the better to use our own minds, then.

For a modest, unassuming film, I was most impressed with Hoss-Desmarais’ debut. For one thing, the cinematography (courtesy of Andre Turpin) is absolutely astounding: with no hyperbole, the film looked like a million bucks and featured some stunningly beautiful shots. There’s one shot, where Bruce’s snowplow recedes into the background, taking all of the light with it and rendering the screen pitch-black, that’s practically a masterclass on evoking mood (besides being gorgeously framed). The film’s colors are bright and vibrant, with deep blacks, crisp whites and a truly ingenious use of shadows and negative space.

The other high point in the film, of course, is Thomas Haden Church’s commanding performance as Bruce. For the most part, the film is a one-man show and Church is more than up for the task. Even his voice, deep and reverberating, brings new layers and context to a voice-over convention that is too often misused: the voice-overs in Whitewash don’t repeat unnecessary visual information…they deliver the main character’s inner thoughts and observations in a way that enriches the overall story. If for nothing else, I must praise Hoss-Desmarais’ writing skills and entreat other screenwriters/directors to follow his lead: make the voiceover mean something or get it the hell out-of-the-way.

Awesome voice aside, Church is stone-cold perfect in the role: his dryly humorous quips and facial expressions deliver miles of character in shorthand and the actor is so charismatic that spending an entire film stuck with Bruce is something significantly less than torturous. Truth be told, I had kind of forgot about Church before this film, despite being a big fan of the TV show Wings back in the day. I’m not sure if Whitewash counts as a comeback (did he ever go anywhere or was I just not paying attention) but Church deserves more (and bigger) films in the future. Here’s to hoping this helps kick the door in.

Also impressive, for different reasons, is Marc Labreche as the odious Paul. Paul is kind of a difficult character to parse, since we start to learn about his true character over time. Nonetheless, Labreche is pretty great at hitting all of the necessary beats: his long-winded story about Mexico starts to pull back the curtain hiding the wizard (in a truly organic way), while his ridiculous bar-room dance must be seen to be believed. Most importantly, Church and Labreche make a great odd couple: the film wouldn’t be nearly as effective if their relationship didn’t seem so real.

Lest my praise seem too effusive, Whitewash is definitely not a perfect film. Despite the great script, there are a few odd plot-holes that never get resolved and the back half of the film ends up being more confusing than seems necessary. In the long run, however, none of the film’s problems ever approach the level of “deal-breaker.” The acting is extraordinary (no lie, Church deserved some kind of award for this), the script is tight and the cinematography is flat-out beautiful. Hoss-Desmarais makes particularly good use of the Canadian countryside, which almost becomes a third character in the film. The cherry on the sundae? A pitch-perfect, sardonic, dry-as-dust final shot that feels like the filmmakers decided to take a victory lap.

Nowadays, it seems that cheaply made, disposable independent films are a dime-a-dozen (hell, maybe that’s what Netflix is payin’ em these days). The good ones? Far less frequent. The great ones? Even rarer still. Whitewash, in case anyone is keeping score, is one of the great ones. Here’s to hoping this is the beginning of a long and fruitful writing/directing career for Hoss-Desmarais, who first cut his teeth as an actor in films like The Day After Tomorrow (2004). While moving behind the camera isn’t always the best move for an actor, Hoss-Desmarais proves that the best things don’t always fall neatly within the lines.

6/6/14 (Part Two): Alpha Males

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action-adventure, adventures, Alaska, Alaskan wilderness, alpha males, based on a short story, Bronson, cinema, Dallas Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, faith, fighting animals, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Frank Grillo, Greg Nicotero, guy movies, isolation, Jack London, Joe Anderson, Joe Carnahan, killer wolves, Lee Marvin, Liam Neeson, man vs. nature, Movies, Narc, Nonso Anozie, oil riggers, Ottway, plane crash, Smokin' Aces, snow, stranded, survival, survival-horror, The A-Team, The Descent, The Grey, voice-over narration, wolves, writer-director

Mankind likes to think that it’s the master of any domain it comes across but the reality isn’t quite as optimistic. Sure, we can go into frigid Arctic areas, travel deep below the sea and even walk on the Moon: if we put our minds to it, nothing seems impossible. Throw humans into any of these situations wearing just the frail skins we were born with, however, and see how far we get. We may be able to use technology and innovation to take us further than anyone has gone before but, at our core, we are shockingly fragile, insignificant little things. Without the various safety nets we establish for ourselves, like clothing, shelter and weaponry, humanity is very much at the mercy of the natural world. Hunters are all-powerful when they’re armed but look an awful lot like food when they aren’t. A shady banker with a computer can bring down the world: a shady banker, in the forest, with no protection, will get eaten by a bear…that’s just the way the world works.

Writer-director Joe Carnahan’s The Grey (2011) (an adaptation of Ian Mackenzie Jeffer’s short story, “Ghost Walker”), is yet another examination of “man vs. nature,” one of those time-honored tales where disparate and diverse personalities must come together in order to survive a greater threat. In the process, the characters will do lots of surviving, lots of dying and lots of personal discovery. While this type of story is certainly nothing new (hell, Jack London may have invented this subgenre all the way back in the 1900s), The Grey ends up being an extraordinarily powerful film, anchored by a quietly explosive performance from Liam Neeson and a strong, viscerally violent atmosphere. While popular jokes at the time may have cast The Grey as nothing more than “Liam Neeson punching wolves,” the film is a helluva lot more than that. In fact, it may just be the best survival-horror film since Marshall’s classic The Descent (2006).

We’re immediately dropped into the desolate, snow and wind-blasted wilderness of Alaska, where we meet Ottway (Liam Neeson), our guide through this particular wasteland. Ottway is a master outdoors-man and responsible for protecting the rugged members of an oil-rigging crew from the hungry wolves that endlessly patrol the icy wastes. Ottway is also a hopelessly damaged individual, suffering from some sort of unnamed loss (we get lots and lots of flashbacks) that drives him perilously close to eating a bullet. He doesn’t, however, and boards a plane with the rest of the crew, including Diaz (Frank Grillo), Flannery (Joe Anderson), Talget (Dermot Mulroney), Henrick (Dallas Roberts) and Burke (Nonso Anozie). When the weather gets worse, the plane freezes over and ends up crashing in a spectacular, absolutely thrilling sequence (talk about edge of your seat…literally): the lucky ones are killed in the crash. The unlucky ones, led by Ottway, must now survive in the harsh elements with only the clothes on their backs and a few canisters of pilfered airplane fuel to start fires. They need to get back to civilization but there are plenty of eyes watching from the woods…hungry eyes.

As Ottway does his damnedest to keep the survivors alive, he finds himself butting heads with the worst aspects of humanity, including greed, fear and the selfish desire to survive at the cost of everyone else. In particular, Ottway finds himself at odds with Diaz: while the vicious wolves circle in the darkness, Diaz and Ottway circle each other in the light, sniffing for weakness and constantly struggling for domination. Even as Ottway discusses the need to find and slay the alpha male wolf, the struggle for alpha dominance within the survivors threatens to tear them all asunder. Will Ottway be able to overcome his own emotional issues in order to fulfill his duties as group protector? Will the men learn to work together, against all odds, or will they continue to be picked off, one by one, until only their bones remain to remind of their existence? In order to survive, the men will not only need to overcome the wolves: they will need to become the wolves.

The Grey is, first and foremost, a glorious return to the kind of big-screen adventure-survival epics that used to be de rigueur at the box office back in the ’70s. In many ways, the film isn’t such a huge departure from films like Deliverance (1972), Jaws (1975) or Sorcerer (1977) but a much closer parallel would be the aforementioned one with The Descent. In many ways, The Grey is definitely a survival-horror film: the wolves are introduced in a way that establishes them as monsters (the glowing eyes and frightening baying) and the alpha male wolf is established in a way that sets him up as the “chief bad guy” (the scene where Diaz tosses the decapitated wolves’ head into the darkness, only to be met by the angry response call from the alpha male, isn’t much different from any scene where an evil leader reacts in anger to the death of a subordinate at the hands of the heroes). In this way, the wolves are very similar to something like Peter Jackson’s orcs or Marshall’s cave dwellers and serve a similar function in the film.

An action-adventure film lives or dies by its action sequences and, in this regard, The Grey is a complete stunner. From the initial plane crash to the heart-in-mouth scene where the survivors rappel down a craggy mountain-side to the final confrontation with the alpha wolf, The Grey is one incredibly intense scene after another. Carnahan masterfully coils and uncoils the tension, building up quiet, personal dialogue scenes into explosive action beats, prompting me to (literally) jump out of my seat on at least a half-dozen occasions. One of the scenes, which begins as a confrontation between Diaz and Ottway but ends as a confrontation between Diaz and a wolf, is so perfectly executed that it’s almost a textbook example of how to set-up and execute such a moment. I’ve never been a huge fan of Carnahan’s other films (I positively abhor the empty-headed Smokin’ Aces (2006)) but he displays an absolutely deft touch on The Grey that has me eagerly anticipating his next project.

The film almost always looks and sounds great (the sound design is particularly strong) but I wasn’t fond of cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi’s (who also shot the Oscar-winning Silver Linings Playbook (2012)) frequent over-reliance on blown-out visuals. His landscape cinematography was so beautiful that it was frustrating to have such an obvious visual aesthetic for the more intimate scenes: I get that it’s a cold, white, desolate place…no need to rub my nose in it. Additionally, in the minor quibble department, I felt that Ottway’s frequent flashbacks/dream sequences wore out their welcome pretty early into the film and frequently killed the forward momentum. The sequences did a little to help establish Ottway’s character, although this type of character development seems particularly heavy-handed and unnecessary.

Ultimately, however, no discussion of The Grey can be complete without singling out Liam Neeson for some special recognition. Although the rest of the cast is solid (Dermot Mulroney is particularly good as Talget), this is definitely Neeson’s film. Over the last few years, Neeson has been gradually morphing into an action star, not too far removed from what Bronson and Eastwood were doing in the ’80s and ’90s. In fact, it’s pretty easy to imagine someone like Bronson, Eastwood or Lee Marvin playing the part of Ottway: it’s a quiet, brooding role that requires not only plenty of ass-kicking but also some degree of wounded vulnerability. Ottway may be a man of action but he’s still just a man: Neeson shows us the confusion, fear and conflict beneath his stoic visage, without doing anything to denigrate his inherent heroism. Ottway is not some unrealistically pure “white knight”: he’s just as fucked up as everyone else, yet manages to work through his issues to do what needs to be done. It’s a truly multi-faceted performance made all the more impressive by how little (relatively speaking) Neeson says. Those flinty eyes tell a helluva story, however, and Carnahan/Takayanagi take full advantage of this with plenty of intense closeups, ala Eastwood and his similarly flinty orbs.

While The Grey could, perhaps, be considered the ultimate “guy movie,” (the only women in the film appear in flashback/dream sequences, which is probably rather telling) I think that there’s a lot more bubbling beneath the surface than mindless chest-beating and machismo. This is definitely an action film, through and through, and packed with enough hardcore, visceral violence to please even the most discerning gorehound (the film doesn’t skimp on the “wolves eating people” visuals and there’s one bit involving half of a guy that’s pretty difficult to watch). Along with action and violence, however, there are some surprisingly deep conversations about the nature of faith and there’s one particularly moving scene where Ottway helps a dying man pass on peacefully. They’re rare moments of beauty and serenity in an otherwise unforgiving, harsh landscape but they make the film an overall richer experience.

Ultimately, I found myself quite taken with The Grey: perhaps future viewings will help push it into the neo-classic status of films like The Descent but, for the time being, it simply stands as an extraordinary, ridiculously exciting adventure film. That being said, the film also features one of the most perfect final scenes I’ve ever seen (ruined only so slightly by an unnecessary post-credits tag), a scene that manages to be simultaneously regal, sad and ruthlessly badass. It’s a scene that stops right before it begins, leaving the viewer’s brain to fill in the gap. It’s a wonderful, powerful, amazingly cinematic moment: it’s what movies are all about (in my non-humble opinion) and any modern film should be proud to feature anything close to it. If the finale doesn’t find you on your feet, fist thrust heroically into the air…well, let’s just say that there may not be any hope for you, after all. The Grey is vicious, vital, bloody filmmaking at its very best: you’d be wise to give it a look sometime.

 

6/6/14 (Part One): All the Little Devils are Proud of Hell

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1970's cinema, Al Thomas, alcohol abuse, animal cruelty, animal massacre, Australia, Australian films, auteur theory, based on a book, bonded teacher, Bundanyabba, Chips Rafferty, cinema, civilized vs savage, depression, desolation, Doc Tydon, Donald Pleasence, drama, Film auteurs, film review, films, First Blood, gambling, Gary Bond, homoerotic tension, hunting, isolation, Jack Thompson, John Grant, John Meillon, kangaroo hunt, Kenneth Cook, male friendships, mining town, Movies, North Dallas Forty, obnoxious friends, Peter Whittle, Purgatory, repressed sexuality, school teacher, stranded, Sylvia Kay, Ted Kotcheff, the Outback, the Yabba, Tiboonda, Tim Hynes, Uncommon Valor, urban vs rural, Wake in Fright, wasteland

Many times, we discuss vacations in terms of “getting away from it all.” The presumption, obviously, is that we’re getting away from all of the tedious, mundane and unpleasant aspects of our daily lives: all of the annoying things like 9-5 jobs, chores, responsibilities and anonymous authority figures. People will hike deep into the woods, sail away to the middle of the ocean and climb the tallest mountains possible, all in the pursuit of “getting away from it all” and finding some internal serenity. In a day and age where we all seem to be alarmingly “plugged in” almost 24 hours/day, there’s something not only attractive but downright necessary about dialing everything back to a more simple level: just “us” and nature, our phones on silent and our brains turned off. By “getting away from it all,” we’re actually hoping to get back to ourselves, that core version that exists below the commitments of civilized society.

But what if we went so far away from polite society that we ended up in an altogether darker place? What if our quest for internal peace and discovery of the self led us not to personal evolution but to devolution? Is it possible to embrace our primitive, savage ids so much that we become nothing but flesh-sacks for volcanic, primal emotions like lust, hate, fear and the need to inflict pain? Getting away from the everyday bullshit of polite society is a noble goal but it leads to a dangerously slippery slope: once we’ve begun to accept a more primal, savage lifestyle, we automatically become at odds with the rest of the “civilized” world. As Nietzsche so eloquently put it, “When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” In Ted Kotcheff’s disturbing Wake in Fright (1971), we get the distinctly perverse pleasure of witnessing someone not only stare into the abyss but get consumed and shat out the other end.

It’s Christmas vacation for bonded school teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) and he eagerly closes the doors on his one-room schoolhouse in the tiny Outback town of Tiboonda, looking forward to his next six weeks of leisure. He’s heading for the bright lights of Sidney but must take a train to the small mining town of Bundanyabba in order to catch his flight. Ostensibly only in town for the evening, John takes a rather dim view of the hard-drinking, overly “friendly” locals: their earthy behavior is at decided odds with his more “civilized” big-city upbringing. As a local tells him, however, the “Yabba” is actually the best place in Australia: no one cares where you are or where you come from, as long as you’re a “good bloke”. John meets one of these “good blokes” in the person of Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty), a local state trooper who proceeds to buy him one beer after the other at a local pub. When John complains that he’s hungry and would rather eat than drink, Jock thinks for a moment and does the most sensible thing: he takes John to a different bar so that he can order a steak along with the booze. “Best dollar you’ll ever spend,” Jock reckons, as he leaves John in the less than capable hands of local sawbones Doc Tydon (Donald Pleaseance).

Tydon is an amazing character, a slovenly, feral, ridiculously self-assured train-wreck who deflates the previously positive affirmations of the Yabba with the ominous declaration that “all the little devils are proud of Hell.” It’s here that John also gets introduced to the backroom gambling game of two-up, which involves betting on the flipping of a pair of coins. In a classic example of the fatal flaw, John initially scoofs at the game, before becoming intrigued, betting and winning. Unable to leave well enough alone, John continues to bet (and win), all with the hope of earning the $1000 bond necessary to buy his way out of Tiboonda and end his perceived servitude. He displays an amazing streak of luck, all the way up to the point where he loses all of his money. And, just like that, John’s one-night stay in the Yabba is about to turn into a whole lot more.

Unable to pay for his flight, John watches helplessly the next morning as it flies away overhead. He visits the local labor exchange but it’s closed: the only place that actually seems open is the bar (of course) and John drags himself there to spend his final coins on some sweet, if temporary, escape. Once there, John meets Tim Hynes (Al Thomas), another “good bloke” who buys him multiple drinks (after shouting down John’s initial protests) and takes him home to drink some more (pretty much the official past-time of the Yabba). Once there, John meets Tim’s strange daughter, Janette (Sylvia Kay), who mopes around silently while John and Tim continue to drink until they pass out, at which point they’re roused by Tim’s obnoxious friends, Dick (Jack Thompson) and Joe (Peter Whittle) for more drunken debauchery. After Doc Tydon shows up, Janette sneaks the blotto John away for a little drunken making out session, although his contribution to things pretty much begins and ends with puking on her. When John passes out, he wakes up in the Doc’s absolutely filthy pigsty of a home, a place that looks just like the dreadful Turkish prison in Midnight Express (1978). This leads to more drinking, of course (as Tydon tells him, Yabba water is only for washing, not drinking), while leads to more debauchery which leads to an absolutely horrifying kangaroo hunt, drunken rampage and possible rape. As John gets further and further away from his former gentle “civilized” nature, he finds himself in a shadowy world where the only diversions from a brutally bleak life are drinking, fucking, killing, fighting and destroying. Will John be able to pull himself out before he’s lost forever? Or will he end up just another permanent resident of the Yabba? And, in the end, can anyone ever really leave the Yabba?

It’s quite possible for a film to be both utterly intriguing and fairly repellent and Wake in Fright is certainly both of those things. On a purely narrative level, the film makes imperfect sense, existing somewhere between a fever dream and the French New Wave. Thanks to the editing style, which helps to heighten the sense of disorientation, it’s often difficult to establish continuity or, in some cases, even establish quite what’s going on. More often than not, the film is aggressively unpleasant: ‘roo hunt notwithstanding (and we’ll address that shortly), there’s a groddy, dirty edge to everything that makes a heady stew when combined with the sense of vast, open isolation and personal fatalism. The Yabba definitely appears to be some sort of a stand-in for Purgatory (or perhaps Hell, depending on how you look at it) and any satisfaction wrung from watching poor John Grant descend into its depths is grim, indeed. It’s not so much that John is a really good guy: he seems like a perfectly average guy, which makes his destruction, somehow, more upsetting. We can cheer if a “bad guy” gets his come-uppance and smirk when an unnaturally pure “white knight” fails. When a “normal” person fails, however, especially if they fail thanks to essentially good reasons (John keeps betting because he wants to get out of Tiboonda so he can be reunited with his girlfriend in Sidney), it hits a bit closer to home. John could be any of us, under the right circumstances: his degradation and destruction could be ours.

Despite how unpleasant the film ends up being, it’s a consistently fascinating film, thanks in no small part to the exceptional cast and stellar filmmaking. Donald Pleaseance, in particular, is absolutely amazing: Doc Tydon is the id in flesh and Pleaseance doesn’t so much chew the scenery as immediately become the center of any scene he’s in. Whether standing on his head while drinking a beer, cutting the balls off a dead kangaroo, graphically describing his sex life with Janette or engaging in a little drunken, homoerotic semi-nude wrestling with John, Doc Tydon is a ferociously alive, unrepentant, hedonist. More animal than man, Tydon may actually be the Yabba, a living personification of this hard-scrabble area that grinds men into pulp in the mines and pours the remains straight into the bars. I could practically smell Tydon’s stench through the screen, thanks to Pleaseance’s firebrand performance, and that’s no small compliment.

Gary Bond is good as John Grant but there’s not a whole lot required of his character: he’s a strictly reactive force and spends more time wobbling about in a state of semi-coherence than actually developing in any given direction. While it’s easy to empathize with John, it’s difficult to truly like the guy: he’s given the opportunity to climb out of the hole on multiple occasions but always seems to choose the path of least resistance (which, of course, is usually the worst path). Unlike Tydon, John takes no pleasure in his debauchery: as such, he tends to vacillate between confusion and moral agony.

From a filmmaking standpoint, Wake in Fright is exquisitely crafted. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and shows off the vast, epic emptiness of the Outback to great effect. The opening shot, a slowly revolving wide-shot that shows us the entire, tiny emptiness of Tiboonda in one, smooth 360-degree motion, is an amazing mood setter. Equally impressive is the score, which manages to swing from lighter to oppressive on the drop of a hat: the weird, eerie “sci-fi” theramins that kick in after John loses all of his money and begins his descent are a really nice touch, as are the droning tones that inform the latter half of the score. The score is a perfect example of subtly building atmosphere and mood without resorting to overly obvious musical stingers.

Despite all of the things to recommend here, I must admit that I didn’t really care for Wake in Fright. The film left me cold, which isn’t necessarily a problem, but it also left me queasy on many occasions, which is a more significant issue. One of the main reasons for this, although certainly not the only reason, is the astoundingly awful scene where Tim, Joe, Dick and the Doc take John out kangaroo hunting. I’d heard rumors about this scene, which apparently features actual footage from a real kangaroo hunt, but nothing I imagined could have prepared me for the actual film. The closest thing I can compare the hunt to would be parts of Pier Pasolini’s Salo (1977) or the disgusting animal footage in Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1985). As with those films, I will freely admit to looking away from the screen at times: there’s simply no way that anyone who loves animals (and I’m pretty much a fanatic) could watch the wholesale kangaroo butchery without dying a little inside. This is compounded with a bit (I’m assuming staged but only because I would never want to entertain the alternative) where John Grant graphically stabs a wounded baby kangaroo to death, while the guys cheer him on, hooting and hollering. Wake in Fright is not, technically speaking, a horror film but the kangaroo hunt is easily the most horrific thing that I believe I’ve seen in some 30 years of movie watching…and that says a lot.

Ultimately, I’m not sure whether to recommend Wake in Fright or not. The film will certainly not be for everyone and I can see quite a few people turning it off midway through (for better or worse, the ‘roo hunt really does draw a line in the sand). There was also much about the film that still mystifies me, including the question of what, exactly, happened between John and the Doc. As an important piece of Australia’s New Wave, Wake in Fright certainly bears discussion with films like Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Last Wave (1977), although I’m less fond of it than either of those films. In certain ways, parts of Wake in Fright even prefigure modern-day Aussie exports like Wolf Creek 2 (2013), which features its own variation on the kangaroo slaughter. Australia has always had a vibrant and fascinating film industry and astute viewers could do worse than rummage through their 1970’s back catalog. That being said, Wake in Fright is pretty strong stuff and I can’t honestly see myself revisiting it anytime soon. The Yabba might be an interesting place to visit but I sure as hell don’t wanna live there.