Domenica, troppo lontano

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

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

A delightful Australian film produced in the 1970's that captures the true essence of the Australian character and Australian bush in the 1950's. This is an unashamedly "male" film that results in the cry "Ducks on the Pond" when female's venture into their domain.

Sunday Too Far Away is almost a documentary of one 1955 shearing run in outback South Australia. Minor events like the coming and going of the first Chef become immensely interesting when viewed through the lives of these characters.

If you are interested in Australian film, this one is not to be missed.

I am glad that I can sometimes revisit Australia as it once was through films like "Sunday Too Far Away" and "Newsfront". At the time of their making, we still had the faces and voices that rang true to the 50's - 60's prior to the influence of television that forever changed the way we talk and even the way we walk. Jack Thompson and the rest of the male cast moved in the way Australian men and, in particular, shearers moved. Compare this with the cast of "Kokoda". As my mother commented, Australian men of the 1940's just didn't look so muscular or move with such rigidity. They were a Depression generation - wiry with a casual slouch born of being raised on lean rabbits and fish and hardships that knocked pretentiousness sideways.

However, "Sunday Too Far Away" is far more than a sentimental journey. It is a view of life that is at once tragic and humorous. It also has genuinely touching moments when seemingly hard and practical men display their concern for each other in an understated manner that is indicative of their rejection of overt displays of sentimentality. They all know that they are probably going to end up like old Garth if they remain shearers. "That's shearing for you, Foley" says Garth as he muses about the fact that he has hardly seen his wife and son for over 30 years. Garth's death is symbolic for all the shearers and their indignation at the undertaker not providing "the proper vehicle" to bear his body on his final journey reflects their insistence upon their dignity as shearers. As in the strike action, "it wasn't so much about the money as the bloody insult."

But I intellectualize too much. I love this film for many reasons but most of all because it could have been made for people like me in mind. It is about yarns that my uncles told and characters who were like my father who had been a "rousie" on a shearing floor after leaving school at the end of year eight even though he had been the dux! Times were such that work was valued above all else - life was work.

In the 1980's, I once rented a farmhouse when I taught in rural Australia. One of the conditions of my tenancy was that shearers would share the house in the shearing season. These shearers were tough, smelled of lanolin no matter how they washed and ate mountains of food all cooked up in a giant iron skillet. And they argued about everything - who was a gun and who was not, which cocky had treated them the worst, which type of sheep were the easiest to shear. However, when I asked them about the authenticity of "Sunday Too Far Away", they always agreed that it was the best evocation of the life of a shearer they had ever seen - praise indeed for the film.(Not that they would have used the word "evocation")

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".