Going Down

This mirco budget independent film of 1981 is truly one of Australia's lost good films. made over a few nights and almost as a real stagger around town with a bunch of friends who did live like the characters, GOING DOWN has the sort of energy and focus on its time that huge international films strive for. Main young actress Vera Plevnik was killed in an accident days before the premiere, a tragic loss for filmdom in Oz. Magnetic young actor Lou Brown also seen in the equally ignored masterpiece THE IRISHMAN is a handsome screen youth who should have had a huge career. GOING DOWN is more important in 2005 for it's time capsule capture of a wild boozy night of scattered dangerous early 80s fun in the days when there was a change in music and lifestyle in the air, when in Sydney good natured silly 20 somethings like these would often be seen partying on a weeknight. Easily embraced by anyone in any country, GOING DOWN deserves to be re discovered and praised. Just like its eccentric director Haydn Keenan.

This film is set in Sydney's inner-city share house scene in the early 80s, a world of parties, live music, casual sex, unemployment, drink, drugs, wankers, posers, spongers. And lots of dodgy types hanging around in dirty kitchens. The four girlfriends' solidarity is under pressure due to their attraction to a variety of young men, and their different money worries.

This film captures some of the atmosphere of the era, but is a bit chaotic, and the characters act too erratically to make the film more than an innercity fable. Much of the action takes place on darkened streets or in dingy flats, making it hard to make out what was happening.

The best thing about the film was the inclusion of live performances of a number of Sydney bands of the era, such as James Reyne from Australian Crawl, James Black of Mondo Rock, the Dynamic Hepnotics, the New Christs and Pel Mel.

I'm not going to say too much about this, because I don't want to spoil it for you. However I'm pretty confident this is the best ever Australian fringe culture movie.

It may not look as good as "Dogs in Space", but it sure has a much better narrative! It also has actors who are you know, actually acting! And generally they're very good.

It may not be as grimy as "Pure S**t", but it's damn grimy. It's also a lot funnier.

It's also way better than "He died with a felafel in his hand", which is pretty pathetic in comparison.

I don't really have any criticisms but it might be worth pointing out that you can't really get across Sydney as easily as the characters do in this movie. They seem to go from suburb to suburb in mere minutes! (Sydney has appalling transport issues). The other criticism I have is that the narrative gets somewhat abandoned at the very end, and all sense of plausibility gets abandoned especially with regard to one or two characters. Also I don't really like the name - it's terribly bland and it doesn't seem to have any relation to the movie whatsoever.

It's a great shame that this movie is so under-appreciated and apparently has been for so long. I remember seeing a re-release DVD of "pure s**t" not so long ago which claimed that the movie had been "actively repressed". I don't know what happened to "Going Down", but I can only guess it has also been actively repressed, and it deserves to be re-released with some kind of publicity.