Goodbye Paradise

This minor gem is getting a DVD Release in July 2019 - at last. Smartly written and acted, well worth a look.

No, you don't have to be Australian to enjoy this. I'm an American who was in Oz when this was released, went to see it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. True, there were a few bits I wouldn't have got had not my g.f. told me (the name of the detective's dog was a big political name in Papua New Guinea), but such things numbered fewer than half a dozen, as I recall, and even before I was told the reference it didn't matter. Parts were hilarious, parts were suspenseful, all of it was well acted and directed, and everything added up neatly at the end. I mainly recall the screen going black when the detective fell asleep in an alcoholic stupor. Been trying to find this for years first on VHS, now on DVD. I think Godot will arrive sooner than this one.

Maybe you need to be a Queenslander of a certain age to fully appreciate the subtlety of the Bob Elllis script, as no doubt Ray Barrett playing Michael Stacey (a disgraced former Queensland Assistant Police Commissioner)understood not only the irony of the Ellis screenplay but also the time and place of the setting. While it is believed the film was in part financed by Hoyts Cinemas, it never received wide release given the sensitivity of the time (it was released prior to the Fitzgerald inquiry into police corruption in Queensland, Australia). In short Stacey, recently kicked out of the police force, retires in a drunken fog to the back blocks of the glamorous Gold Coast to write a tell-all memoir. However, greater forces are at work and Stacey is drawn into the search for a Senator's daughter who has disappeared with a famous artwork. While Stacey, the alcoholic, guilt-ridden Catholic, begins a quest with schoolboy innocence he cannot escape his past and former associates from his military service during the communist insurgency in Malaysia. The "cinematic" Gold Coast possesses large off-shore oil reserves, and in a chaotic finale, a military coup is staged to deliver the oil reserves into the hands of an overseas power. No doubt, critics at the time, lacked the vision to see the wit and irony of an Australian state seceding from the rest of the country in pursuit of offshore energy profits and low taxation. The brilliance of the Ellis screenplay and the skepticism of the Barrett character result in some truly memorable lines. While the part, written especially for Barrett, has him as an narrator rather than the protagonist, the resulting film is notable for its understated but pointed humor. e.g. "shadowy military commander: 'this place reminds me of the east coast of Africa' and Barrett's reply: and getting more so every day". Who can forget the Robin Nevin/Ray Barret duet of 'Bye Bye Blackbird'. Other memorable performances come from Lex 'the swine' Marinos, as the proprietor of a bus line specialising in erotic tours for pensioners. The release of this film is limited and obtaining a copy has become a "holy quest". While the film is not widely known, it is a cult classic.

One of the wonderful things about Australians is that they proudly refuse to take themselves seriously. It's there in "The Dish", and it's there in "Goodbye Paradise". But "Goodbye Paradise" had the added ingredient of razor-sharp political satire. This is, without a doubt, one of the great "lost" films of Australian cinema. It combines quintessentially Australian self-parody with a political commentary that is so sharp and so accurate that it only manages to skate over the thin ice of the libel laws due to the hilarious level of absurdity at which it is pitched. The airborne assault on the hippie vegetable patch by helicopter gunships, for example, is remembered fondly by all who saw it back in the early '80s. God, I hope someone releases this on DVD. It richly deserves it.

About almost everything made on the Gold Coast is crap. This isn't. If a lover of this great tourist destination, you'll be trying to guess a lot of the locations used, a couple used in the hinterland, Mt Tamborine territory. In a priceless award winning role, Barrett (it's his movie) plays a down on his luck journalist, Mike Stacey, (Stace as he's commonly referred to), about to investigate one hell of a big conspiracy, involving some corrupt political figures, and their henchies, where they're gonna tear down the Gold Coast. You'd wanna kill em' just for thinking that. As you might of heard a while back, there's talk of actually changing the name of The Gold Coast. How could you? Stacey is a boozer, fu..s young pros, and has many contacts, amongst them a couple of friends, as well as a old nemesis pi dick, (Paul Chubb) I loves Stacey's description of stuff in a film with an excellent script, that flies. Robyn Nevin as an old flame of Stacey's is strong too, as we see various faces of actors we don't see anymore. I love too the finale out on the plantations with Barrett's big army of men, fighting the baddies with machine guns and tanks, it very much takes the away the realism of the film that preceded. Barrett is just fun to watch, bar hopping, making threats while pointing bananas, and we see a few of em', or even punching out a commune member, for being thrown out of an ashram. I must say, I love this movie, every time I see it, carried by a much loved and missed actor who delivers the performance of his life. And again we have that shot of open coastline of endless apartments that stretch for miles. In another scene, there's that big chess board and pieces, on the sand, where Barrett plays with one of his compadres, if showing his strategy of attack in the journalistic world, but being subdued by pally who points out, "You could never see the obvious". A must see ocker view, although it has a dreary title song, though is truly befitting.