Matt Shea
RubySoho
Morgan Bell
Cibbuano
David O'Connell
Mountain Fog
Dingo
January 8th 2010 06:16
“I’ve been to a lot of interesting places, but I don’t think I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting Poona Flat.”
It’s not the most jaw-dropping line in cinema history, but then Miles Davis always had an ability to spin around the mundane and turn it into the extraordinary.
It’s virtually the opening dialogue in Rolf de Heer’s Dingo, uttered by Davis in the guise of Billy Cross, a travelling jazz trumpeter whose Australian tour gets waylaid in the small outback town. Cross and his musicians arrive on a jet, and to the baffled locals seem like technicoloured extra terrestrials as they kickstart an impromptu concert on the runway.
One young lad is particularly taken with the music. "You seemed tuned into it," Billy tells the star-struck 10-year-old, John Anderson. "If you ever come to Paris, look me up."
It’s a striking opening sequence, the ethereal and slightly otherworldly quality of the setup providing a template for the rest of the film to follow.
20 years later, and things perhaps haven’t gone to plan for John ‘Dingo’ Anderson (Colin Friels). A dogger by trade, the young husband and father of two still lives on the outskirts of Poona Flat, playing his own trumpet each night to the primordial landscape that surrounds his caravan, but continues to dream of making it to Paris to join Cross, corresponding with the jazzman’s agent and quietly saving money if the opportunity ever arises.
Dingo turns out to be constructed of ideas de Heer explored repeatedly in the early part of his career: the fertile minds of young children, the importance of acknowledging your talents and addressing your dreams, and later, when Dingo makes it to Paris, the premise of an exotic stranger in a fresh environment.
And it can be a discombobulating experience, the film switching back and forth between the alien landscape of outback Australia and the urbane surrounds of inner city Paris. Along the way there’s an ill-advised, tacked-on subplot involving Dingo’s wife (Helen Buday) falling for a rich childhood pal (Joe Petruzzi) that almost threatens to derail the film entirely. It’s a glaring fault in Rosenberg’s screenplay, but thankfully the rest of the film tends to stick like glue to Colin Friels’s frustrated dreamer.
Another major hurdle for some viewers will be Miles Davis. In one of the great displays of non-acting, Davis’s massive charisma almost totally annihilates his character of Billy Cross. It creates a fault in the film’s logic, but most modern audiences will just think of it as being Davis in the first place, curing this problem somewhat. Indeed, if the movie had been made in these post-modern days it probably would have just been written that way.
Throughout, de Heer’s direction is typically spacious, allowing his players to let their work oxygenate effectively. Frenchman Denis Lenoir’s cinematography is also engaging, floating on cranes and surging with steadycams to the delirious music scored by Davis and Michel Legrand.
In fact, it’s the music that ultimately holds the whole enterprise together and lets you roll with Dingo’s slightly wonky nature. This is an essential film for jazz fans (Davis passed away soon after it was completed) and an important one for followers of de Heer’s career also – it was the last he directed from someone else’s original script. For anybody else it’s probably just a curiosity, but so full of charm and joie de vivre that it’s a hard one to resist.
I say: A curio that deserves to be seen by a wider audience.
See it for: Miles Davis in a pair of crazy cool gold-studded sunglasses.
*This image is from We Can't Stop the Dancing Chicken
It’s virtually the opening dialogue in Rolf de Heer’s Dingo, uttered by Davis in the guise of Billy Cross, a travelling jazz trumpeter whose Australian tour gets waylaid in the small outback town. Cross and his musicians arrive on a jet, and to the baffled locals seem like technicoloured extra terrestrials as they kickstart an impromptu concert on the runway.
One young lad is particularly taken with the music. "You seemed tuned into it," Billy tells the star-struck 10-year-old, John Anderson. "If you ever come to Paris, look me up."
It’s a striking opening sequence, the ethereal and slightly otherworldly quality of the setup providing a template for the rest of the film to follow.
20 years later, and things perhaps haven’t gone to plan for John ‘Dingo’ Anderson (Colin Friels). A dogger by trade, the young husband and father of two still lives on the outskirts of Poona Flat, playing his own trumpet each night to the primordial landscape that surrounds his caravan, but continues to dream of making it to Paris to join Cross, corresponding with the jazzman’s agent and quietly saving money if the opportunity ever arises.
Dingo turns out to be constructed of ideas de Heer explored repeatedly in the early part of his career: the fertile minds of young children, the importance of acknowledging your talents and addressing your dreams, and later, when Dingo makes it to Paris, the premise of an exotic stranger in a fresh environment.
And it can be a discombobulating experience, the film switching back and forth between the alien landscape of outback Australia and the urbane surrounds of inner city Paris. Along the way there’s an ill-advised, tacked-on subplot involving Dingo’s wife (Helen Buday) falling for a rich childhood pal (Joe Petruzzi) that almost threatens to derail the film entirely. It’s a glaring fault in Rosenberg’s screenplay, but thankfully the rest of the film tends to stick like glue to Colin Friels’s frustrated dreamer.
Another major hurdle for some viewers will be Miles Davis. In one of the great displays of non-acting, Davis’s massive charisma almost totally annihilates his character of Billy Cross. It creates a fault in the film’s logic, but most modern audiences will just think of it as being Davis in the first place, curing this problem somewhat. Indeed, if the movie had been made in these post-modern days it probably would have just been written that way.
Throughout, de Heer’s direction is typically spacious, allowing his players to let their work oxygenate effectively. Frenchman Denis Lenoir’s cinematography is also engaging, floating on cranes and surging with steadycams to the delirious music scored by Davis and Michel Legrand.
In fact, it’s the music that ultimately holds the whole enterprise together and lets you roll with Dingo’s slightly wonky nature. This is an essential film for jazz fans (Davis passed away soon after it was completed) and an important one for followers of de Heer’s career also – it was the last he directed from someone else’s original script. For anybody else it’s probably just a curiosity, but so full of charm and joie de vivre that it’s a hard one to resist.
I say: A curio that deserves to be seen by a wider audience.
See it for: Miles Davis in a pair of crazy cool gold-studded sunglasses.
*This image is from We Can't Stop the Dancing Chicken
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Comment by Mountain Fog
Anyhoo, must track this down as have not seen it, nice pithy review Matt.
cheers
fog
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight