indiglo_syd

The simplest ideas are the best.

From the rawest of raw materials something wonderful has been fashioned.

The sequencing of images is hypnotic.

The music is highly evocative and not intrusive, working away quietly to stitch the footage together and give shape to the material..

This film (is it a doco? is it a tone poem?) is clearly a labour of love. But it's also immensely skillful and discerning in its construction.

It seems to have arrived with little in the way of fanfare on the ABC and I'm sure will get gradual rotation over the years as it will not age. But what a great transformation of a host inchoate archival material. Material we are so lucky to have as a consequence of a long period of effort by the ABC, Film Australia, other organisations and a large number of individuals.

All hail to the makers, backers and the ABC.

This is a sombre, muted, melancholy revisiting of territory not too far removed from The Godfather. It's a highly moral, even intellectual take on the way business blurs into crime and back again. The pace is rather even so that it never shoots up into the stratosphere of a crime melodrama, but that's a deliberate choice. And one I came to appreciate as the story unfolded. It's the story of one man's struggle to say afloat amid a sea of troubles as difficulty piles upon difficulty. And that's where the capacity of the viewer to identify with this very specific time and place comes powerfully into play. I hope lots of people investigate the subtle pleasures of this minor-key masterpiece.

This is a deceptively simple morality tale that punches well above its weight. It's a short film that nonetheless unfolds at an unhurried pace, building by degrees to a sad and beautiful close. The final scene -- an exquisite coda to this clear-eyed essay on human behaviour -- is worth the price of admission alone. The director has handsomely acquitted his debt to Kieslowski's script. It's a great shame that the movie is not currently available on video/DVD.