Männer ohne Sonntag

One of the few Australian movies that shows the outback and the men who worked there as they really were, without trying to romanticise and play down the brutality of the place and time. Great performance by Jack Thompson as the ageing gun shearer.

Here's a film that feels like it doesn't have a single false note. From the famous opening scene when the hero falls asleep at the wheel and the car rolls over, to his laugh at the end when he realises he's been beaten, this film says just about everything there is to say about shearing - the job that is the main focus here. Now, a film about shearers in the Australian outback may not be everyone's idea of pleasant viewing, but it is much more than that: the shearer's work starts to resemble any job that slowly eats away at the life of the person doing it, even if that person still feels pride in his work. Great moments of humour - e.g. characters like tim and the cocky, pathos (old Garth, and mystery, like the girl interested to watch the shearers, or the cook with a drinking habit and violent streak. The song the films starts and ends with is great too, with suitably melancholic lyrics:

The roads I didn't take I bid them all so long While Sunday warms my blood and cools my mind And the dreams I thought were true Are now moss beneath my footprints

This film is what real cinema should be. A great script, great direction, great photography and great acting. Although the story is simple the character studies from the superb cast keep you glued to the screen.

I recently put this in a competition for a personal top 10 movies of all time. I also included that other Aussie masterpiece "Newsfront".

A great movie reflecting the the lead up to the Shearer's strike of 1955. Jack Thompson leads a group of shearers ( not sheep hearders) and shows life on an outback station just before the 9 month long strike when the "prosperity bonus" was cancelled and shearers pay was cut.

A great movie, made for Australians, showing how Australia was once. Highly recommended

There's a slow moving shot halfway through SUNDAY TOO FAR AWAY taken from inside the shearing shed looking through a window out into the yard. The camera pans across the yard before pulling back into the shearing shed, rising as it continues panning across the shed interior, following the action before settling on a particular character. It's a beautiful shot and a lovely example of the stunning cinematography that gives the film a palpability in which you can really feel the heat, dust and flies.

I watched the film for the first time this evening and was blown away by its lyricism, claustrophobia and grandeur. I grew up on a dairy and sheep farm in 1970s Northern Victoria when the kind of hard working, hard talking, hard drinking labourers who travel where the work is was still very much a cultural tradition in country Australia. The people in this film display an authenticity, brashness, sense of humour, bravado, timidity and mateship that is readily recognisable. It all feels genuine. It's no wonder the film was so readily embraced by Australians on its initial release.

Aspects of the film also reminded me of Tim Burstall's 1979 film, LAST OF THE KNUCKLEMEN in its exploration of class in a tough homosocial workplace culture. There's also a humorous bum-wiggling scene that reminded me of a shot from another Jack Thompson film, THE SUM OF US (Burton 1994) in which he is vigorously stirring a saucepan over a stove. I would not be surprised to learn that the shot in THE SUM OF US is a homage to SUNDAY TOO FAR AWAY.