Movie review - "In a Savage Land" (1999) **

 Bill Bennett tries something a bit different - a 1930s/40s colonial epic about sexy times among anthropologists.

The location work in the islands are impressive though I don't know why it's shot through a yellow filter. Maya Stange was given a great opportunity but simply feels like a NIDA grad plunked in a big film. She never seems real. In her defence, the character has to spout all these clinky platitudes like "they're not savages" and "I'm an anthropologist too" and talking about her thesis. She takes her clothes off and shaves her head and goes all out but she's simply not up to it.

There is no native character with any dimension.There are just chanting natives. At the end when the Japanese come the whites just wave good bye. And when after the war Stange comes back she seems utterly uninterested in what happened to the New Guineans who were there.

Martin Donovan takes Maya Stange to New Guinea and is a sex anthropologist which is pretty progressive. Then he's controlling. But nice. Then he dies. Then Rufus Sewell comes along and he's perfect.

Look, there's two ways you could've gone. Have Stange and Donovan be this kinky couple who explore sex habits of the locals (have some local characters please not just jabbering extras). Sewell comes along and he can't quite "get" it. Make it sexy. Have her seduce Sewell. 

Or... play it safe, have Stange and Donovan as siblings and Stange get a sexual awakening. 

Either of those would have an arc. This film doesn't know what it wants to be. Or it does but Bennett and Jenneifer Cluff aren't up to it.

I enjoyed Max Cullen's officious officer. Sue Lyons' racist wife is just there to make the leads look less racist. John Howard has an unfortunate accent and Rufus Sewell a worse American one.

Old school Bennett would have sent actors into the jungle and filmed it on 16 mm and got them to ad lib. They couldn't have come up with worse dialogue.

This is a cranky review but they wasted so much money, and wasted a potentially great subject.

Real time in movies vs movie time in movies: some thoughts

I read the script for Saturday Night the other day, a movie which seems to fall into the “good try” category, and is definitely in the “at least 20 years too late for people to care” category (in 2005 people like Bill Murray, Chevy Chase etc were still omnipresent).

It’s written in real time - 90 minutes before the first show - and it got me thinking about the notion of real time in movies versus real time in theatre.

Real time works great in stage plays because, if done well, it creates this extra tension and energy in a work - it’s all happening right there, right then and there, with these people literally right in front of us. It’s also faster because on scene changes slow things down in the theatre: the lights dim, the actors leave, the scene changes, the lights come up, the actors come on. This is usually cumbersome and you have to resort to skill to not slow it down. John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation is an excellent example how to do quick scene changes on stage. But a lot of plays would be better off with longer scenes. Part of the trouble with many of David Williamson’s later plays is he has too many scenes which he'd be better off combining and playing out in real time as much as possible.

Real time works less well in film, where it can slow action down. The audience isn’t as attuned to watching film in real time - it expects time jumps via editing.  I mean, real time movies can work brilliantly (there are exceptions to every rule) - one only has to think of something like High Noon, Run Lola Run or Birdman. 

But you have to be careful picking what specific period of “real time” you are using.

Saturday Night takes place in real time before the first show of Saturday Night Live. That’s a sexy concept and it sounds like a good idea - all the chaos, the madness, etc. You can imagine the colour and movement and feeling of stakes.

But actually it’s not a good idea, not really. Because the last ninety minutes before a script show goes to air are tense for those involved... but not to watch. I mean, the show has already been written and cast and planned and costumed and rehearsed. The key decisions (who to write it, who to star, what jokes to tell) have been made. The ninety minutes before show is for vocal warm ups, props checks and trying not to freak out. It’s exciting but not that exciting, certainly not 90 minutes’ exciting.

Reitman tries to pump it up with some drama like having Lorne Michaels go see a stand up show, be unimpressed by the comic but like the material and hire the writer... which happened... but not just before the first show. Michaels should be on set during that time, to have him run off to a bar and see another show makes him look really incompetent. (I know the event happened, but on another night altogether). Also some things just don’t ring true like hinting Chevy Chase might be the new Johnny Carson before the show goes to air. After the show’s a hit, yes, and that's what happened in real life but it was after the show was the talk of the nation - having this event happen before the first show has aired doesn’t make sense. And all the sketches and bits that people come up with right before the opening show doesn’t feel real. A few lines, yes, a bit of business, certainly - but not to the extent here.

Saturday Night would have been better off focusing on the months, or a week before the show. You could put in the same material, more or less, I just think it would have had more propulsion and felt realer and you could do the countdown to the opening show as a ticking clock throughout.

Another script/film it reminded me of was Jobs. (Sidebar: while reading Saturday Night I was constantly thinking of Studio 60 on Sunset and that was much better written than Saturday night though that’s an unfair comparison. Actually I began to wish that instead of making Studio 60 on Sunset Aaron Sorkin had written the Saturday Night Live story like he did for Social Network.. I think he would have done a banger job, packed a script full of zingers, understood the drug addiction, got that backstage showbiz story out of his system, and spared us that three episode arc where the star’s brother was kidnapped in Iraq. End of sidebar.)

With Jobs Aaron Sorkin came up with a (seemingly) sexy way to tackle the life of Steve Jobs: three different product launches. Well, that is different, and better than from cradle to grave storytelling.

But... problem is, nothing much really exciting happened at those product launches. Like Saturday night the key decisions/conflict had happened before/after those launches. I think Sorkin kind of realised it writing the script - he did pretty well with the conflict involving Jobs not identifying his daughter (this was quite well done) but still couldn’t resist flashing back to the big moment in Jobs’ professional life - when Jobs got sacked from Apple. That was a lot more interesting than the product launches and Sorkin knew it.

Also another thing about real life stage versus film. I think on stage you can allude to things you don’t see more - characters, events. Indeed, it can work quite well, discussing what happened, say, “last spring” with “Camilla” can be very evocative on stage. Tennessee Williams uses it brilliantly - having characters recall events that happened off stage. Theatre audiences will use their imaginations a bit more than film audiences. You can stand on a theatre stage and say “we’re on the moon” and audiences will go for it. Film audiences are on the whole far more literal. Absurdism and expressionism works far better on stage than film, as does references to past events. I think discussing Jobs getting fired in Jobs would have worked on stage but it doesn’t on film because when you watch film you are conditioned to use your eye more. And Sorkin and Danny Boyle realised it so they showed it.

Maybe Saturday Night would work on stage because you can have people chatting about all the big events and the audience would go with it. You can recap events via dialogue quite effectively on stage. (I actually think the dialogue on Saturday Night isn’t very good but that’s a separate issue).

So what am I saying?

I guess it’s this: real time can work on film, yes, but think very very carefully about what sort of “real time” you’re going to do.

“24 hours before a big terror attack” - that’s great. You can do 24. “One hour til the noon train comes in with killers”. You can do High Noon. You just have to juggle the stories but it can work.

“90 minutes before the first show”. Actually not a good idea. Ditto “three product launches”.

One thing I think filmmakers should do more of - longer takes. Play out certain scenes in real time. Alphonso Cuaron does this brilliantly. Sometimes scenes are too short when there’s drama to be had playing them out. Again though you have to pick your moment.

Movie review - "Backlash" (1986) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

 Improvised film benefits from an electric performance from David Argue, a tightly wound livewire who constantly seems he's about to explode and often does, jabbering away, strutting around in underwear, brandishing his gun. Gina Carides matches him.- young, gorgeous, a believable law student. Bill Bennett was clearly less sure with Lydia Miller, who admittedly is inexperienced but isn't given the chance to do much.  Brian Syron's pursuer is an ideal threat.

As in many of his movies Bennett runs out of story - it would be better as an hour. Or it needed another subplot. I like that Argue was killed because of what he did in the past but it needed something else, like Carides and her boyfriend, or Miller's kids/husband or something.

The scene where Carides and Argue get the confession out of the publican's wife is a little awkward but it did make me laugh because the cops are so outrageously unethical.

Movie review - "A Street to Die" (1985) ***1/2

 An film that's impossible not to admire. Bill Bennett was fired up by a newspaper article which showed a street of Vietnam vets having major health problems due most likely to Agent Orange. He brought his journalist skills, made it in the street, with the involvement of the family.

Chris Haywood is terrific in the role of a life time as the ocker, irreverent Colin Simpson, who runs, smokes 20 cigs a day, develops a rash and eventually terminal cancer. The best scenes are of him visiting doctors (initially dismissive), then finding out he's really sick (his wife is told twice before he finds out, one time the doctor calls the wife from the next room), then dying. Jennifer Cluff is strong as the wife.

The understated presentation is hugely effective.  Structurally the film has problems because Haywood dies 66 minutes or so into the film. Then there's 25 minutes of funeral and a hearing. Which is kind of interesting but just lacks emotional power.

I sense the material here really ran for 60 minutes and was better as a TV play - the last bit feels like padding, important as it was to society. The other way to have done it would have been to do a subplot.

The evocation of 70s/80s life is strong - union reps, smoking, street cricket, backyard BBQs. This was my childhood so it was moving.

Movie review - "Spider and Rose" (1994) **1/2

 A throwback to the mid 90s - decent budget, AFFC,  it got a lot of publicity. A road movie with Ruth Cracknell who is wonderful and Simon Cossell who has his moments but is a little too inexperienced. Could have done with another subplot maybe - or simply a better male lead. I don't mean to be mean he just goes a little over the top.

Gorgeously shot.