Australian Rules

An amazing movie very different from the usual Australian "Feel good" movie. It is great to see a film that comments on contemporary relations between Black and White Australia - Showing faults on both sides. This film deserved a much larger audience than it got but I guess everyone was too busy watching Spiderman.

I have just returned from an advanced preview screening of this powerful film and was happy to have the opportunity for a Q & A session with the three young stars of the film.

Aboriginal actress, Lisa Flanagan, was moved to tears as she spoke about the emotional turmoil that making this film caused her. Her mob is from South Australia and are closely linked to the real-life events on which this film is based.

Lisa is off to Edinburgh to promote the film in a few days.

Melbourne-born Nathan Phillips, who plays Blacky, was asked what he wanted audiences to get from the film. He pointed to Lisa and said "I want audiences to feel for even one minute the emotions you just saw from Lisa." And we do!

All three stars spoke of the film as a journey - and it is a journey well-worth experiencing.

Sydney indigenous actor Luke Phillips has plenty of TV experience but has made his first foray into feature films - and it won't be his last. A first-class performance!

International audiences have reported some problems in the early stages of the film understanding the local dialect and pronunciation but felt it was well worth the effort. I couldn't agree more. See it.

I should add that the film-makers did make attempts to discuss the film with the local indigenous communities. The cast even attempted to show them the script. For reasons of their own, maybe understandable, they didn't take that opportunity.

OK, being Aussie Rules, it's actually a game of four quarters, but let's come back to that. It drew on clear dramatic links with commedia dell'arte and ancient classical theatre, and the comedy masks of the first half were rapidly replaced by the tragedy masks of the second. It has its obvious connections with Romeo and Juliet / West Side Story, depicting a love affair across a supposedly unbridgeable divide, which survives despite the girls' brother/kinsman being murdered by a friend/kinsman of the boy, in this case his sadistic racist bully of a father.

The first half is pure Boy's Own book stuff. First quarter, the underdog footy team of a small coastal town on the Eyre Peninsula has just won its way through to the regional Grand Final despite the stupidity of its cardboard cut-out coach, and his mindless `tactics'. The Pantaloon clown act of old man Darcy links to the second quarter, the final itself, where the team's progress towards annihilation by brutally tough opponents is suddenly halted and reversed when the young hero Blacky (who is white) has his moment of inspired brilliance, in this case by listening to his footy-mad mum, who tells him to ignore the coach's directions. Yes, it's straight out of the comic books, with Thumper the opposing ruckman truly larger than life, and Pickle's incredible sheep-shagging imitation just one of many well-shot moments of slapstick visual comedy.

The underlying element of racial tension, whilst made plain in the first half, provides no real presentiment of how suddenly it is about to explode from the moment when rising footy star Dumby Red (who is aboriginal), clearly the best player on field in the final, is overlooked at the medal presentation in favour of the coach's uninspired and uninspiring son. The violent third quarter is where Blacky finds himself embarking upon his hero's journey, no less complicated by him also having to cope with a whole raft of strange new emotions in his innocent teenage romance with aboriginal girl Clarence. This comes as an equally sudden development, despite being semaphored like a goal umpire's flags, as one sees her transformed in a couple of brief shots from the nameless `girl from the mission' into the love of his life.

We shouldn't be too critical if the final quarter fails to bring any real resolution, and certainly no evidence of redemption, prior to the siren. Outside Hollywood that's what life is like. But at 95 minutes, the movie is not overly long, and another ten minutes of developing and rounding out characters and relationships, perhaps also at the expense of a couple of shots of first half slapstick, might have helped. I'd like to have seen a couple more minutes given to a sensitive handling of the recognition and communication of mutual boy-girl attraction, and some dimension given to the aggressive black activist, whom I found to be another cardboard cut-out, merely remaining in the same peripheral category as the racist publican, played by `Beau'.

I came out of `The Tracker' feeling breathless at what I had just seen. I came out of `Aussie Rules' thinking I was glad I'd seen it, but that whilst they had kicked a good few goals, they also hit the post a couple of times (explanation for non-Aussies: hitting the post scores just one point, whilst a goal, if you kick the ball clean through between the main goal posts, scores six).

I gave it 7/10, and might well raise that to 8 on a second viewing.

This film kept me interested the whole 95 minutes. I thought that it dealt

brilliantly with the racial issues it talked about. My only disagreement was the aboriginal girl. I think that the relationship between Blacky and her was a bit unneccesary. Apart from that, an excellent film. 8/10.

Paul Goldman's debut feature film 'australian rules' is a thought-provoking film about racism and relationships. It is an accomplished work, with beautiful but never flashy cinematography by DOP Mandy Walker (Lantana, Love Serenade) and strong performances by its cast, including Nathan Phillips as the young protagonist Blacky, Luke Carroll as his Aboriginal best mate Dumby Red, and Celia Ireland as Blacky's mother.

Sadly, the film-makers' lack of consultation with the indigenous community of the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia has resulted in significant - and to my mind well-founded - criticism of the film. Based on the young adult novel 'Deadly, Unna' by Phillip Gwynne, the film is based on actual events - the deaths of two young Aboriginal youths in 1977, shot and killed by the publican of a hotel they were attempting to rob. No mention of this is made in the credits of 'australian rules'.

The film contains characters and scenes recognisable and identifiable to the families of the dead youths. Consultation with these families should have taken place from the moment the book was mooted as a film, not - as happened - when the film was already in production. This lack of consultation/awareness of Aboriginal culture and its sensitivities concerning death, mars what is otherwise a good film, leaving the film-makers open to allegations of racism.

Is 'australian rules' a racist film? I don't think so. Racist characters and phrases in the film go unchallenged, yes, but hopefully audiences are intelligent enough to see the truth for themselves, without needing clumsy and obvious cinematic signposting from characters or the film-makers saying 'this is bad'.

Overall, I recommend 'australian rules' to viewers, but I wish that the film-makers had shown more respect towards our indigenous culture rather than riding roughshod over the grief of the families involved.