Resistance

As a huge 'Mad Max' fan I wanted to see 'Resistance' for some time and finally got a copy shipped over from the US. It was worth the wait. This is a very good movie, dealing with some big political issues, abuse of power chief among them, with maturity and wit. It is also beautifully filmed and the vastness of the outback landscape really comes across.

It feels almost like a prequel to 'Max' in that there is a stage set here for the collapse of 'civilization' and a return to a more feudalistic society.

RESISTANCE is visually an enormous film, MAD MAX 2 and 3 in style and size and made with a fairly healthy budget: $7 million dollars Australian (about $10m USD). It had spectacular set pieces and lots of marauding battling army vs citizens scenes, sort of all ready to go all Braveheart on each other. The post apocalyptic collapse of civilisation theme seemed interesting (again) and many of the MAX movie actors turned up again for duty. But it was never released. No cinema in Australia actually screened the film to the public. Then one week, the producer Pauline Rosenberg hired an inner city art-house and it had a few sessions as some sort of 'write off' season maybe to prove to the now penniless backers that the film saw the arclight and flopped. There is a smelly rat in the production of this film. It cost far too much and I do not even believe was meant to be shown. Plenty of 'fees' gobbled up the production costs and attempts to release it were met with a minefield of dramas, causing every cinema distributor, including myself, to be uneasy about the financial dealings (and dramas to come). Everyone said no and resistance to RESISTANCE was final. However, someone made a lot of money from the production of this film...a sad but common tale of film production in Oz.

Having talked with the director regarding the production of this particular film I am impressed with the ability of the entire production crew to make such a magnificent tribute to the concept of resistance (the title) in the short season they had to get all the filming done in one harvest season and create the realism of human interactions. "Peter" is one of the characters that is particularly well done, the honesty of his reactions and behavior jibes with recognized psychological doctrine and personal experience. All the characters have a honesty to their relations that rings true with such perfect accuracy it sometimes if staggering. Congratulations to all the folks who worked on this fine film.

The writers of "Resistance", if the publicity releases are to believed, seem to think they have produced an important "serious" movie dealing with issues of civilian resistance to the military in a domestic security situation.

I'm sorry to disappoint, but the movie was embarrassing and clearly the writers seemed to have done all their research from a naïve student activist leaflet left over from the 1960s.

The heroes are a bunch of feminist workers following some sort of pacifist 'spiritual" resistance, that for much of the movie comprises sitting around in a circle chanting something that might be a distorted version of Kumbayah, wearing some sort of "native" face-paint.

Their opponents are supposed to be an elite counter-insurgency unit sent to pacify this "resistance".

However, this "elite" unit seems to comprise a gang of incompetent, panic stricken neurotics led by a Rambo wannabe, tooling around the countryside in a "specialist" counter-insurgency vehicle that looks like it escaped from a Monster Truck rally. (Believe me, whatever it is, its not something that any half-sane real-life military would even consider using for such duties, if indeed, anything!)

This movie was made by someone who (a) has no idea how real-life resistance movements, armed or passive, actually work and (b) hasn't the faintest conception what real-life police or military security forces look like, are organised or equipped.

It was made either as a satire or a tax dodge........its very silly.

Compare this film with something by Gillo Pontecorvo, and you'll know exactly what I mean.

This beautiful little Australian film shows how a group of common people overcome an oppressive state & show that resistance is not futile. Against overwhelming odds these people arise to overthrow a group of sadistic military personnel who go beyond the letter of military law while enforcing a state of emergency in a grain farm town in the Australian outback.

The actors perform marvelously, to a person. The cinematography is beautiful. The violence unforgiving. The building of hope which replaces hopelessness paced properly and the ending poetic justice for all who would use their might to unjustifiably attempt to enslave others.

Get this gem and watch it and see if you are not as moved as was I.