Sunday Too Far Away

The first time I saw this film was in my capacity as a projectionist on board a Royal Naval Warship. By the end of the first reel the dining hall (Cinema) was deserted except for myself and one other everyone having been put off by the lack of action. Because there was one remaining viewer I was obliged to show the entire movie. We were richly rewarded because this film is full of finely crafted observation well portrayed by fine actors expertly directed. A rich vein of understated comedy runs just beneath the surface occasionally erupting most notably in the hand laundry scene and again in the undertaker scene. Altogether a worthy film which should have received greater acclaim

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

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")

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.

Sunday Too Far Away (STFA) is one of those movies that all but disappeared on its initial release in the UK during the late 70s in spite of the late resurgence of Aussie films at that time which included Picnic At Hanging Rock.

STFA is hard, tough & grim movie, set on a sheep shearing farming community in the Australian Outback. The little town is dependant on sheep to keep their bleak economy ticking over but when for the men who have to spend 9 or 10 hours a day in back-breaking conditions shearing the sheep life is tough and the money relatively poor.

So when the leader of the shearing gang, Foley (a truly brilliant performance by the much underrated Jack Thomson) demands a pay increase for his team the owners try to bring in scab labour from out of town, which only causes friction amongst the shearing crews, the owners and the townspeople.

So that's the story, but what is so marvellous about the film is the conditions the men have to work in; that they have to compete with each other with scoreboards kept on display so that rivals can see who has shorn how many sheep per day. Foley is the Sheep King but he has to fight to retain the crown with up & coming farmers ready to take it from him.

And then once their work is finished there's very little left for them to do apart from drinking beer in the bar or sitting out in the shade swatting flies and talking about women or a better life.

It truly is a bleak suffocating film, especially with the hot sun & the stifling heat the men work under. Just watching the movie made me feel clammy & tense. And yet the movie is excellent on all levels, not only with the routine storyline, but also with the characters and the cinematography.

Director, Ken Hannam, does a superb job moving the film the along at either a very lethargic pace (to suit the mood & feel at the time) or he steps up a gear when the men are at their work shearing the bemused sheep.

With this kind of simple storyline you'd be forgiven for thinking it could ever be interesting. But think again because this is the old Australia where life was tough in the Outback.

I recommend it highly.

****/*****