Film Reviews
#1 Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
My parents came to age at the height of American McCarthyism, so growing up I was indoctrinated with a healthy fear of communism and nuclear annihilation. I used to lay in bed at night wondering if the bombs were about to rain down, waking in a sweat at the sound of every overheard jet or backfiring car.
Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb envisages such a scenario. Out of fear for his “precious bodily fluids”, General Jack D. Ripper (masterfully played by Sterling Hayden) orders an air strike on critical Russian targets; leaving the world on the brink of nuclear war.
What makes this film work, given it’s sensitive material (it was shot only a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis), is the direction of Stanley Kubrick and performance/s by chameleon Peter Sellers. While the film might lack the technical mastery of 2001 or the philosophical questioning of A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick brings his intelligence and wit in a way that turns the most serious situation into possibly the funniest film ever made.
A remarkable ensemble cast, including career best performances by George C. Scott and Sterling Hayden, combine with electrifying timing and dialogue. Peter Sellers is nothing short of brilliant in his portrayals of American president Merkin Muffley and Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, but it is his performance as Dr Strangelove that will forever live in the minds of cinema lovers.
Notable Quotes:
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. – General Jack D. Ripper
Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room. – President Merkin Muffley
Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines. – General ‘Buck’ Turgidson
Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap! – General ‘Buck’ Turgidson
Mein Führer! I can walk! – Dr. Stranglove
#2 Citizen Kane
Rosebud…..
With this one word, Orson Wells launched an institution. Although his subsequent career failed to meet the dizzying heights of Citizen Kane, this one picture confirms his place in history as the archetypal Hollywood Renaissance man: as writer, actor and director.
It is hard to define what makes Citizen Kane a great film. So much of its content and style now seem cliché and outdated. However, it is this very observation that highlights how unique and innovative a prophet Wells was. This is a film-maker that has inspired narrative and cinematic technique perhaps more than any other.
In following the life of Charles Foster Kane, we are drawn into a story that explores a myriad of topics from the American Dream through philosophical idealism to the corruption of wealth and power. In many ways, the story of C.F. Kane is an allegory for the modern West. From the industrial revolution to nihilism and the decay of Capitalism.
In Kane we can easily track the transition from the young man with almost naive ideals, to the ‘despotic’ older man corrupted totally by sex, money and power. Despite this, the older Kane betrays himself with the dying word ‘Rosebud’. It is the search for the meaning of this epiphany that drives the narrative of Citizen Kane, and poses the oldest of all philosophical questions, “Why are we here?”
Indecently:
Citizen Kane is said to be based on the life of wealthy industrialist and media magnate William Randolph Hearst. The rumour goes that ‘Rosebud’ was the nickname that Hearst gave to his mistress’ ……… let’s say her hat. Needless to say, Hearst prohibited any mention of Citizen Kane in his newspapers.
#3 The PropositionSome might criticise this selection as being biased as this is one of two titles in my Top 10 that is scored by Nick Cave. However the genius of The Proposition appeals well beyond the haunting score and sublime writing (the film was also written by Cave) to reveal an ensemble of powerful performances exploring philosophical themes as wide ranging as love, death, ethics, alienation, Darwinism and colonialization. Not to mention that is is a cinematographic masterpiece.
The Proposition is the second in a ‘trilogy’ of films created by director John Hillcoat and writer/composer Nick Cave. While Ghosts of the Civil Dead is a remarkable and bold first feature and The Road a haunting portrayal of survival and family devotion, it is The Proposition that shines brightest from their creative partnership.
The film is set in rural Australia in the late 19th century and follows the classic western formula where lawman Captain Stanley (played by the always endearing Ray Winstone) is sent to apprehend the Burns gang for the heinous crimes. After capturing younger brothers Mike (Richard Wilson) and Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce), Stanley offers a proposition:
Captain Stanley: I wish to present you with a proposition. I know where Arthur Burns is. It is a God-forsaken place. The blacks won’t go there, not the tracks; not even wild men. I suppose, in time, the bounty hunters will get him. But I have other plans, I aim to bring him down – I aim to show that he’s a man like any other. I aim to hurt him.
Sergeant Lawrence: When you’re ready, sir…
Captain Stanley: And what will most hurt him? Well I thought long and hard about that, and I’ve realized Mr. Burns, that I must become more inventive in my methods. But those be my words listen to me now, *don’t* say a word. Now suppose I told there was a way to save your little brother Mikey from the noose. Suppose I gave you a horse, and a gun. Suppose Mr. Burns, I was to give you and your young brother Mikey here a pardon. Suppose I said that I could give you a chance to expunge the guilt, beneath which you so clearly labor. Suppose I gave you ’til Christmas. Now, suppose you tell me what it is I want from you.
Charlie Burns: You want me to kill me brother.
Captain Stanley: I want you to kill your brother.
What follows is probably the most honest portrait of colonial Australia ever committed to film. The audience is dragged along by anti-hero Charlie Burns, both through Pearce’s hypnotizing performance and by the ethical choices his character is forced to make. There are times when you feel oppressed by the heat and vast loneliness of the country and other times when you are lured in (like many of Cave’s songs) to a place of pain, suffering and alienation. This is not a modern alienation (like that described so poignantly by Radiohead in OK Computer), but one which is played out under the spectre of colonialization, where the cultivating of hostile land and being separated from place and people left the British feeling alone and betrayed, causing Captain Stanley to openly mourn; “What fresh hell is this?”
On the other side of the colonial coin sit the ‘blacks’, accurately depicted as not even second class citizens but as animals that can be mistreated, enslaved and murdered: surely the saddest tale in our nation’s history.
In The Propostition, Cave and Hillcoat have surely produced an historical epic worthy of praise in itself. However, by framing their narrative in this way they have subtly, yet brilliantly, used their [our] story as an allegory for modern Australia; one where both our bourgeois city and rural dwellers live in relative alienation, and our indigenous population remain second class citizens, both thorough cultural and physical oppression (the aboriginal health crisis is a perfect example of this: see Closing the Gap).
By simultaneously making The Proposition the story of our past and our present, Cave and Hillcoat have isolated a number of key themes which explore what is means to be Australian. In alluding to modern issues such as ethical choice, alienation, post-colonialism, indigenous welfare and reconciliation (of which we have only made a few tentative steps), the writer and director have drawn our attention to the diversity, loneliness and inequality inherent in our current society.
This thematic depth, combined with cave’s haunting score & poetry and Hillcoat’s mesmerizing cinematography & editing, poises The Proposition to lay claim the greatest Australian film ever produced.
