New to Streaming: The Australian New Wave on Criterion

By Glenn Dunks

The Criterion Channel recently added a whole bunch of Australian movies from well-known directors like Peter Weir, Gillian Armstrong and Phillip Noyce onto their service. While some titles from the “Australian New Wave” series were (I think?) already on there, there are many that are not only new to the service but new to American streaming full stop.

The series features 21 titles that range from 1971 to 1982, several of which are stone cold masterpieces. In a funny little merging of cinematic timelines, a few of these movies have more historically been ignored by the prestigious banner of the new wave era as their genre elements meant they often get lumped less nobly into the “Ozploitation” sidebar of exploitation, sex comedies and horror movies. Whatever it took, however, I’m happy to see some of my favourites find a streaming home internationally.

Now if only Criterion would add more of them to the damned collection!

I thought it would be fun to list the titles—because who doesn’t love a list?—but base it not on their quality. Rather, how much they speak to Australia, the country, the people, and its identity both then and now as we look at them nearly 40 years removed. Subjective, of course, and it's been many years between viewings of many of these, but I feel if you want an education on Australia, then there are some films here that would do a better job than others...

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Beauty vs Beast: Burbank in the Bubble

Jason from MNPP here - just this morning I wished director Peter Weir (one of my favorites) a happy 73rd birthday on my own site, and it struck me that hitting up his 1998 classic The Truman Show (which at almost 20 years old can rightly be considered a "classic" now, can't it? God I am old) would make for a very fine installment of our "Beauty vs Beast" series. On the left we have Jim Carrey's second greatest performance as the manic man in the bubble Truman Burbank, and on the right we have one of Laura Linney's funniest supporting turns as his pretend wife turned hostage Meryl. And I know you all lean Lovely Linney (as a religion) but it's awfully hard to root for Meryl if you ask me...

PREVIOUSLY I'm actually a little bit surprised that you guys gave last week's Strangers on a Train competion to Farley Granger's Guy over Robert Walker's Bruno with 56% of the vote - Walker's sinister flamboyance is like oxygen to me personally! Said forever1267:

"That is a toughie, as this might be my favorite Hitchcock. I went with Team Guy, who's delusional in not reciprocating Bruno's desires, at least in the bedroom, but not at the carnival. Naughty Naughty! Ruth Roman is just sort of there, but Patricia Hitchcock and Teresa Wright should have teamed up to make a movie together where they solve mysteries while going Boy Crazy! Make it retro so!"

The Act of Seeing in "Witness"

Peter Weir's Oscar nominated Witness (1985) was not chosen for our Best Shot series for its title, though that's as apt a logline for this series as any. The title refers to young Samuel Lapp (Lukas Hass, in a sterling child performance) but it neatly doubles as a surprisingly hushed command to the audience out there in the dark.

Lukas Haas figures it out at the police station

The story may spring from an abrupt violent murder in a public bathroom which Samuel sees, wide-eyed, from a bathroom stall but there's very little about the hit drama that is as in your face as its story beats and genre might otherwise suggest. From its earliest longshot of Amish villagers coming into view above a field of grass, to its sublimely casual farewell of its last shot (with two men crossing paths outside the home of the woman they both love), the movie is surprisingly gentle and patient.

Though violence bookends the events and the movie's sheer quality grants it that Oscar ready "Best" scale, Witness is actually something of a miniature. Weir focuses nearly all our energy on watching our good cop hero John Book (Harrison Ford, perfection), live among the Amish as he hides from the bad guys, figuring out his next move, rather than hunting them down. That atypical reserve gives the cop drama a unique contemplative charge within its genre. And Peter Weir and John Seale's beautiful work in composition and lighting keeps you entranced throughout whether you're watching barn raising, peach canning, or cow milking, or a very odd couple (city cop and Amish widow) hoping the other isn't seeing their longing. The light through windows and from sun or (often) lamps is always artfully caressing these marvelous faces (kudos to casting director Diane Crittendon for going with unknowns or barely knowns for the Amish characters and giving Viggo Mortensen his first feature film role). In another amazing shot about seeing, the Amish father finds his daughter and the cop dancing in the barn and they're lit behind by the lamp and the headlights from Book's car. It's one of the only shots that feel theatrically staged but it works because it's so heightened, the father's distorted suspicious understanding and the couple feeling guilty about sins they haven't yet committed.

But it's an atypical shot, in which we're essentially barred from looking, that emerges as one of this great film's most potent images

Harrison Ford earns this Oscar nomination.

In this phone call sequence, John Book realizes that his partner has been murdered. He hangs up the phone and the camera waits behind him as he processes and makes a second far more impulsive call. Though we're not seeing our star in the traditional sense his character and the details of his current situation are laid bare. The barely surpressed rage in his voice and his slew of profanities and threats paired with the camera angle seem to be protecting Book from himself, the way Book self-edits and is careful to behave as a guest in Rachel's home. The crisp details of the image (the textures of that borrowed Amish hat, the sweat on his hair, the minute shifting in his knotted neck) all add indelibly to this frightening flash of a good man letting the beast out.

Tellingly the very next shot of John Book, has him back in the horse and buggy, head bowed momentarily as if with shame. And then he explodes again when he sees a tourist taunting his new Amish friend (Alexander Godunov). Book may not be truly assimilating but his alien experiences are forcefully reshaping him in this exquisitely judged movie. 

Tomorrow Night

Tomorrow night at The Film Experience - Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Witness (1985). Peter Weir's 80s classic (nominated for 8 Oscars, and not undeservedly) is currently available on Netflix. Revisit and join us.

Love Scenes: An Ode to St. Valentine

Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr here, providing one more love scene to close out Valentine's Day.

The opening credits sequence of Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock takes place, fittingly enough, exactly 111 years ago. To the tune of Gheorghe Zamfir's doleful panpipe, the pupils of Appleyard College in late-Victorian Australia rush around, preparing for their Valentine's Day excursion—washing their faces, tying on corsets, brushing their hair, and in one special case, declaring their undying love through poetry.

The poet is Sara (Margaret Nelson), an introverted orphan who feels a deep but ill-fated love for her achingly beautiful classmate Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), a girl later compared by a teacher to "a Botticelli angel." Sara's affections may be obsessive and naïve, most likely stemming from both her loneliness and the lure of Miranda's divine, ethereal beauty, but they manifest themselves in a long, painfully sincere poem she calls "An Ode to St. Valentine," which contains lines like these:

I love thee not because thou art fair,
softer than down, smoother than air,
nor for the cupids that do lie
in either corner of thine eye.
Wouldst thou then know what it might be?
'Tis I love thee 'cause thou lovest me.

Miranda reads it aloud from a card while Sara gazes out into space and swoons. Then, as the morning progresses, Russell Boyd's camera drifts around the girls' rooms, across a sea of blond hair and white nightgowns. It's an entrancing sequence that, by focusing so heavily on Sara's intense, unreciprocated love, sets up the longing and anguished curiosity that drive the film after Miranda and three other girls disappear at Hanging Rock.

Poor Sara never has a chance. Miranda is just too mystical and airy of a creature to stay in this world, and Sara never learns to follow her instructions: "You must learn to love someone else apart from me, Sara. I won't be here much longer." She waves Miranda goodbye as the carriage drives off and never sees her again, then spends the rest of the film pining for her before meeting a tragic fate.

But Sara, in that quiet, wispy opening sequence, is still there to remind us of what love can be like in adolescence, before we're mature enough to know what's wise or appropriate. She may not be mature and she may not be a great poet, but at the very least, Sara is a romantic.