20/20 Filmsight - Film Criticism by David O'Connell

In 2009, despite serious misgivings, filmmaker Tony Krawitz decided to venture onto Palm Island, off the Queensland coast, with a mission – to reverse a coin of common perception; to tell the lesser known side of a tragic story that began on November 19, 2004.

On an ordinary day, a drunken Aboriginal man, Cameron Doomadgee, was arrested for a minor infraction by towering white police officer Christopher Hurley, referred to by the locals as "the tall man". Some 45 minutes later Doomadgee was dead in the local police station.

A subsequent post mortem report made reference to a slew of internal injuries – including an almost split liver - that are usually equated with those suffered by car-crash victims. In the ensuing weeks these startling medical facts reached the wider community. The reaction from the locals was a predictably primal encore. Both Hurley’s house and the police station were effectively reduced to cinders.

The Tall Man is compiled of affecting interviews with family, friends and other figures pertaining to the court cases that contorted the Queensland courts over a number of years. A sobering context, which details the blighted history of Palm Island, is also provided as a necessary counterpoint.

The director, using Chloe Hooper‘s book of the same name as the basis for his investigation, may be seen as blatant proselytising in orchestrating a campaign that refutes the innocence of Hurley. But by broadening the coverage of this tragedy, he confronts the ambiguities, allowing room for conclusions that any average person would naturally arrive at. Till now, it’s been the simplified newsworthy outcomes that form the basis of public knowledge - a flawed, semi-blind perception reducing nuance to footnotes requiring hard work to identity.

The murky morality surrounding the guilt or innocence of this officer is complicated by dubious testimony from a drunken local, Hurley’s own untainted past record working in Aboriginal communities and the high probability of conspiratorial manipulation by the Palm Island officers and their superiors – the kind of behaviour that magnetically draws suspicion when brought to light.

The Tall Man (2011) is a superb documentary offering an impassioned, humane perspective of Doomadgee’s story whilst keeping away from the emotional fuse that, once lit, might unnaturally skewer audience reaction. The failings of the legal system are rightfully put under the microscope: who does it really serve and why? Krawitz has produced a compelling real life tale that, reduced down to its basic components, whether factual or inferential, underlines only a sense of its pervasive sadness.



I say: An absorbing look, from a new perspective, at a truly tragic case which saw the pointless, totally preventable pointless loss of a human life.

See it for: The humanistic angle, eliminating legal jargon and court rulings to the true cost of tragedy.

An early figure from the career of Nick Cave and his seminal band, The Birthday Party, guitarist Rowland S. Howard would later leave his own mark on the local music scene. Beginning in the wild days of Melbourne pub rock of the 1970's with Cave and their earliest collaborators, Autoluminescent delves into the promising beginnings, the overseas ventures, the falling out with friends and lovers, and the late career renaissance before illness claimed Howard at the age of 50 in 2009.

Interspersed with fascinating archival footage of performances, a series of interview snapshots with Howard provides compelling insights into the man's own perspective. The numerous ebbs and flows of his professional and personal life are likewise appraised by talking heads – family, friends, and admirers - relating colourful anecdotes from those potent years of full-throttled hedonism.

This detailed documentary by Richard Lowenstein and Lynn-Maree Milburn presents its subject in the glowing light of acclaim he’s received from influential industry figures both at home and abroad. Cave and fellow Birthday Party member Mick Harvey contribute heavily in the first half, adding texture to the sketch of a literate, difficult but essentially sweet man who raged against fickle fate most of his life.

Howard’s departure from the band saw him forge a separate path – one littered with disappointments but also a steady accumulation of praise and admiration for his unique guitar playing and idiosyncratic lyrical style that drew heavily on literary and other influences. Of course, detours into troubled relationships and drug addiction are paid more than just lip service for the part they played in shaping both Howard the artist and man.

Autoluminescent (2011) provides moments of genuine poignancy amid its examination of talent spurned for the inherent excesses attached to the rock lifestyle. It's also illustrative of personal demons releasing an artist to his turmoil – an extended state of self-pity and denial that Howard, like greater and lesser men before him, proved he was not immune to.

Most importantly, Howard himself is an ever fascinating figure, trapped though he may have been in a sporadically successful quest for that elusive quota of artistic divinity. The many interviews, from multiple eras, cast him as a haunted figure often retreating into the curative realms of solitude; but a man whose integrity is evoked like an inner luminescence.

Perhaps the directors have been lenient on their subject, but either way, this can be regarded as one of the best rock docs made in this country, both informative and compelling even for those with little interest or knowledge of the subject matter it explores.



I say: A fascinating portrait and welcome tribute to a marginal but still influential figure in Australian rock.

See it for: The music - and the man who gave it life.

The new decade is in danger of turning into a brilliant one for aboriginal filmmaking. Last year’s potent Samson & Delilah turned the heads of critics worldwide, and it’s been followed just this past month by the lightly-sprung Mad Bastards, which is receiving a similar reception.

First time feature director Brendan Fletcher has been receiving plenty of praise for Mad Bastards, and rightly so. But this story about the dark side of male machismo couldn’t really be called auteur filmmaking: Fletcher co-wrote the screenplay with two of the film’s charismatic Aboriginal stars – Dean Daley Jones and Greg Tait – who drew heavily on personal experience to help mould their troubled characters.

It’s the little flick that could. Mad Bastards is small even by local standards: produced on a limited budget in the depths of the Kimberly region of Western Australia and using only amateur actors, it’s the ultimate in independent filmmaking. But that hasn’t stopped it from gathering significant critical steam across the globe – and some rapturous audience applause at Sundance – before its release in Australian cinemas this week.

It took Wolf Creek to revive the idea – lost since the mid 80s – of the locally made genre film. Since then there’s been something close to an onslaught. Rogue, Dying Breed, Prey, The Loved Ones, The Horseman, Beneath Hill 60, and Sanctum have all appeared in the last few years. Thankfully, the industry hasn’t gotten lazy, either, with pictures such as Animal Kingdom and Red Hill attempting to do something a little different to the routine of their type.

James Cameron’s name is plastered all over the advertising material for Sanctum (he acted as executive producer) but precious few of the filmmaker’s signature touches have made it into this Australian adventure thriller. There’s no sci-fi, no strong female characters, and little in the way of dependable dialogue. Even the script could have done with CamBam’s workmanlike groove to sort out its deficiencies.

You’ll lose your lunch about a half hour into The Killing of Angel Street. The film is stamped in its opening credits as a work of fiction, with any resemblance to real characters being purely coincidental, so when someone mentions the disappearance of an anti-development campaigner named Juanita Nielsen, the film suddenly feels laughably disingenuous.

Racism may be the latest news story tied to the ongoing saga that is The Hobbit, but both the filmmakers and the Red Digital Camera Company would prefer to focus on the positive, which is Sir Peter Jackson’s decision to use the brand new RED EPIC camera for his 3D adaptation. EPIC is the successor to RED’s game changing RED ONE, and packs a 5K resolution as well as a new HDRx mode for high dynamic range image capture. Jackson plans on using thirty of the cameras, with principal photography of The Hobbit due to start early next year. Of course, what really makes the RED cameras so spectacular is their affordable price – relatively speaking: becoming an EPIC early adopter will set you back somewhere in the region of $58,000. In any case, after labour disputes and store fires, this is a nice slice of positive news for both Jackson and the millions of Hobbit fans eagerly awaiting a film adaptation. It also means that he can knock this off and get on with that Dam Busters remake.