alex-278

This is a story that needed telling just to remind us of what the war was like and the maltreatment of prisoners of war by the Japanese. You can't watch without understand the hatred it built up during those early post war years by the people that suffered through it.

That being I just wish that the cinematography and narrative could have been approached in a more balanced way. It is a dark and moody thing that makes it very hard to know what on earth is going on, but worse still who is who. And understanding the characters is made more challenging by the style of the narrative. It is almost like a endless series of vignettes jumping forward and back to reflect the moodiness of the main character. All in all it downright depressing and very hard to becoming engaged. After the first episode it took me a few days to want to watch the next episode and so it goes. It is a pity. The story is worth telling, but someone not from the school of Baz Luhrmann.

I thought this documentary was superb and much of this is due to the structuring of the film and the absence of talking heads. Without the talking heads we had Bogart and his co-stars on screen the whole time and it was blessed to watch his evolution from a very bad and almost self conscious actor, to a supremely confident one. The commentary was very cleverly done with an actor capturing his voice and contributions from others as voice overs, so there was no interruption to the flow of the narrative.

You can witness these transition yourself when viewing Casablanca, the Maltese Falcon and the African Queen - and Casablanca does it for me.

I have never been to the Franklin River, but I am still very happy that it exists and runs to sea. I am also very grateful that we have part of our psyche (thanks to Bob Brown) that we should protect our native forests.

This is a moving documentary that captures everything he has achieved for the environment but also aims to help us understand how the native forests are crucial to our existence and their contribution is destroyed when they are cut down for something as trivial as woodchips.

Regarding the format of the documentary, I have to praise the producers and directors for not giving up a single Talking Head. All narrative contribution is done through an innovative style of just voice overs - with a caption as to who the person was. It is a thoroughly captivating style and does not destroy the experience that normal talking heads do.