Review: The Eternity Man

The Eternity Man
Dir. Julien Temple
Year: 2008
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 63mins

Julien Temple's The Eternity is a not a movie one should watch if they enjoy the delights of plot, dialogue or subtlety. If, instead, you enjoy your movies to be all pyrotechnics and razzle dazzle mise-en-scène then perhaps it is for you. And even then you will have to get past the singing. Oh yes, there will be singing. I will be the first to admit that opera isn't exactly "my thing", but I can handle it all well and good in small doses and if, ya know, performed well. And yet while I can't call myself a particularly good judge of what makes one opera good and another bad, I must say I found the nauseating operatic warblings in The Eternity Man to be an insufferable mess.

Starting with a ten minute long sequence that recalls the opening passages of Baz Luhrmann's equally radical musical Moulin Rouge! that features Christa Hughes decked out as a 1920s flapper gal in Sydney's Luna Park, Temple's film feels as if it is trying to assault your senses with as many bizarre images as possible. At only 65 minutes in length the film has less time than usual to show its images, and yet there are enough shoved in here to last a good half an hour more. I actually enjoyed this opening stretch. I found myself admiring the beautiful costume work of Wendy Cork (this being her first foray into period costumes) and the production design by Felicity Abbott. It was crazy and vaudeville, but I liked it nonetheless.


Unfortunately, then the story kicked in. The Eternity Man follows the story of Arthur Stace, a reckless drunk, who converts to a life of God and, for the rest of his days, writes the word "eternity" in chalk all over Sydney. International readers would be surprised - and perhaps even a few locals too - to learn that this is actually a true story and that the mysterious graffiti (as it was called) was once seen as a pest to the city until in the year 2000 when it was emblazoned on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in New Years Eve fireworks.

To say there's not much plot to the film is putting it lightly, but Temple more than makes up for that with his bravura visual design. Cinematographer Mark Wareham (Clubland) does a wonderful job in recreating eras and atmospheres, however it is the visual conceit of projecting classic stock footage upon buildings, surfaces and people that gives the movie it's visual edge. Sure, it's a very theatrical idea that would have worked just as well for the stage version (it is an adaptation after all), but it works equally well on film. The insertion of stock footage into the narrative, too, helps to create a dynamic energy. One particular scene that condenses the horrors of war into a brief but explosive couple of minutes is especially well done.


However, the one aspect that brings the film crushing down to Earth is its very reason for existence; the opera itself. As I said before, I can't claim to be an expert on this style of performance, but the singing on display within here is quite excruciating. Star Grant Doyle is responsible for most of it and his deep croaky voice does the material no favour, allowing a good large portion of the lyrics to become incoherent. Christa Hughes, as Arthur's sister Myrtle, fares little better especially during her big climactic scene at the docks during which she sounds like a cat being put through a mixer.

The story of Arthur Stace is perhaps one that could have been very fascinating, and without the music The Eternity Man would have been a beguiling visual exploration of a period of Australian life that is rarely, if ever, portrayed on screen. However, the film's sole reason for being is the music and so I think it is fair that this music should be the ultimate basis of the film's success or failure. At only a fraction over an hour in running time there isn't even all that long a time to have to grin and bare it. And yet as the film continues on exploring the decades that Stace was active as the graffiti artist of Sydney I could not overcome the frustration that boiled out of the score and its meandering nittying. On that basis I can't give a grade based on anything else. C-

Review: Beautiful

Beautiful
Dir. Dean O'Flaherty
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 97mins

Sometimes I watch a movie and can immediately tell what the pitch would have been. Disturbia was "Rear Window, but with teenagers!" or Australia was "Gone with the Wind, but with Aussie accents!" Such it was with Dean O'Flaherty's debut film as writer and director, Beautiful. I can picture the meeting now. "So guy, it's Blue Velvet, but with teenagers... and Aussie accents!" Which just makes the movie even more of a disappointment.

There is a good movie tucked away inside Beautiful and it occasionally rears it's head from time to time to perk the viewer's interest whenever it begins to slide due to unnecessary subplots and ridiculous flights of fancy. It is just that it never sticks around long enough to build towards a successful film. In fact, watching the film is a very bizarre experience, indeed. A bizarro-world mish-mash of ideas and images. Not once does O'Flaherty feel the need to explain why every household in the idyllic neighbourhood that the film is set in seem to have 1950s television sets and antique furniture or why characters watch INXS videos of VHS. Nor does he feel the need to rein himself in when in one odd scene his characters appear to enter a silent black and white movie with mock Grindhouse aesthetics.


In the upper-class suburb of Sunshine Hills two beautiful teenage girls have been gruesomely murdered and another is missing. Such is the launching pad for the movie and it's a good one, especially with the incredibly lush cinematography by Kent Smith, in his first feature outing, filling the screen with bright colours with immaculate close-ups and angles. The loner kid of the street is Danny (Sebastian Gregory) who always carries a camera gets tangled up with his not-so-girl-next-door sexual fantasy, Suzy (Tahyna Tozzi), and begins to investigate the goings on at creepy number 46. And all this while dealing with an is-he-isn't-he abusive father (Aaron Jeffreys) and stepmother (Peta Wilson).

If it sounds straight forward enough then you're wrong. Subplots come and go - one involving Wilson's character is particularly awkward - and the lines between myth and reality blur to almost inconceivable levels. The big climax of a twist ending especially feels forced and like a dead weight compared to the quite delicious coda that follows it. That Deborra-Lee Furness has the most interesting character and is really the entire force behind the movie is seemingly not of any worth to O'Flaherty.


Like a lot of Australian genre films the acting is hit and miss. Furness is impressive in her small role while newcomer Gregory has definitely improved since his role in Acolytes last year. Tozzi gives the film's strangest performance, seemingly a mix of five different characters none of which are in the same universe as Beautiful. There's also no denying that there's something frighteningly about her. The hair, the tan, the everything. "Sex bomb" for the Ralph set, I suppose.

The film's biggest strength is it's aforementioned aesthetics. It's so nice to see an Australian film filled with such vibrant images. They are images that deserve better than the screenplay they are servicing. A screenplay that deliberately presents a sort of hyper-stylised version of Australian suburbia, yet one that never connects the dots it laid out in fascinating and beautiful fashion. It's the most disappointing of misfires; One that really coulda been something. As it is, however, Beautiful is a big pretty mess. D+

Review: Dying Breed

Dying Breed
Dir. Jody Dwyer
Year: 2008
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 92mins

I had the distinct misfortune of watching Jody Dwyer's Dying Breed yesterday. An ugly and washed out horror movie that commits cardinal horror sins. Despite being filled with horrible unlikable characters, it's also incredibly boring. Barely one fright in an entire 90 minute running time is not good and there was only one moment that I would say I was surprised and "shocked!" (as the poster art would say and it involves a character in a tree and that's all I'll say).

It's plot is one you've seen a hundred times before (or more if you're a horror aficionado) wherein a bunch of city kids travel through the deep south and come across the locals who like to use said city slickers not only as bait to keep the bush-bound cannibals at bay, but also as breeding factories. Don't eat the meat pies if you ever visit rural Tasmania, okay! The actors are all boring and if one of them wasn't played by a recognisable actor I would be hard pressed to remember anything about any of them. They all play characters you wouldn't want to associate with in the real world and yet the movie plays it so dull that there is not even any satisfaction - if that's the word - in seeing them become Cannibal meat. And when they do become a meal it's like an afterthought. So much time was spent on making the locals look dirty and disfigured that they didn't spend enough time actually making the horror appear scary.


And that brings me to Nathan Phillips. He is a blight on the Australian film industry. Routinely making arsehole characters even worse with his arsehole performances. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that Dying Breed is the worst Australian film ever made - I saw two at AFI last year that were worse - it is a fair guess to assume that Phillips' "Jack" is the most reprehensibly vile and excruciating character to ever be vomited up from the depths of these filmmaking hells. I understand that he was meant to be a prick, but that doesn't mean I want to spend 90 minutes with him.

To come up with positives is to dig deep. I liked that, for a change of pace, an Australian horror movie decided to not use the outback as it's setting. And, in all honesty, the final act had some moments of genuine tension, even if you can't forgive the characters splitting up right in the middle of being chased down by ravenous cannibals. Unfortunately for the film after having sat through feet being eaten off, women being raped by bogans and faces being ripped apart it was all a bit "too little, too late". It's a snooze. D-