Matt Shea
RubySoho
Morgan Bell
Cibbuano
David O'Connell
Mountain Fog
Tail of a Tiger
January 6th 2010 05:50
Rolf de Heer is often regarded as one of Australia’s most experimental filmmakers. It’s a worthy claim, but perhaps a touch misleading, sidelining the fact that de Heer is also a fantastic storyteller.
It’s this storytelling elegance that came to the fore with de Heer’s first feature, Tail of a Tiger. Essentially a tale for children, the 1984 film is almost as worthy of an adult audience as it dances and glides like the machine at the centre of its narrative – a 1930s Tiger Moth biplane.
Young Orville Ryan (Grant Navin) loves planes. Each night he skives off his homework to sit in his room and build models of flying machines past. And when he’s not at home or at school, Orville is down at the local parking lot watching school bully Stan (Walter Sullivan) and cronies fly their radio-controlled planes.
The boys are predictably nasty to the bookish Orville, despite the fact he helps fix their planes, and they soon drive him away. But over the school holidays Orville learns of a neighbourhood secret: in an old flour factory sits a decrepit pre-war DeHavilland Tiger Moth, closely guarded by its cantankerous former pilot, Harry (a fantastic Gordon Poole).
Of course, a restoration job is the perfect summer holiday project for Orville, and soon both he and Harry are working hard to make the old plane flight-worthy, all the while keeping it a secret from Stan and his increasingly hostile young posse who’d like nothing better than to pull apart the tired old Tiger Moth once and for all.
It’s fleet-footed stuff, de Heer’s screenplay understanding exactly what makes a young lad tick. It’s like a trip into one’s own childhood with Orville, his room an organised chaos of models, mobiles and oil paint. He’s an instantly believable young character, a soft nature peppered by the innocent bouts of know-it-all comments that see him fall foul of Stan.
But the story also possesses enough meat to entertain adults who may be sitting on the couch with their young ones. Harry is an engaging old curmudgeon, obviously haunted by his past and looking for redemption through the project he shares with young Orville. The Ryans’ family life is also given an admirably natural tone, Orville’s young mother ably played by an excellent Lydia Ryan.
Technically, things are sometimes obviously thrifty, but the young crew still spin some admirably sharp scenes. The bullies’ raid on the flour mill is handled particularly well, Richard Michalak’s photography fizzing with the action while de Heer never lets his sense of geography desert him. Suresh Ayyar’s editing is also fine, skimming off any fat that the rough cut may have carried.
This is skilfully made stuff, and it’s easy to see how de Heer used Tail of a Tiger to fuel a fully-fledged feature career. There’s not a lot to it – the film going easy on subplot and featuring an honest subtext about staying true to your dreams – but what Tail of a Tiger does do, it does very well. A perfect film for children, and not nearly a bad one for adults either.
I say: Need a film to watch with your children? This would be better than most of the options out there.
See it for: Stan and his bullies getting a dusty comeuppance.
*This image is from N57.com
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