Ruben Guthrie

There has been a trend recently with Australian films that get marketed as comedies, but ultimately end up being quite serious dramas that have light moments, but they ultimately leave you thinking. Brendan Cowell's latest flick Ruben Guthrie is a film that does just that. It is a film with a lot of open ended questions that can either make you hopeful that things will work out for the characters or gives you a hollow feeling that things will never change and just keep going as they always have.

Ruben Guthrie (Patrick Brammall) is on top of the world. He is a young, award-winning advertising executive with a stunning European supermodel girlfriend, Zoya (Abbey Lee), and has all the fun that a guy could have. He also has a crippling alcohol addiction that he can't acknowledge. It's only when Zoya decides to leave him and tells him to give up alcohol for a year to be with her that he decides to do something about it. But Ruben has temptations from all sides. His boss at the advertising company, Ray (Jeremy Sims), tells him the only way he's able to work is drunk, his parents (Jack Thompson and Robyn Nevin) can't admit they have their own problems with alcohol and his best friend Damien (Alex Dimitriades) thinks the only way they can have fun is by getting hammered.

The big statement that Cowell is trying to make with the film is that Australia has a drinking problem, even going so far as to call it an "alcoholic country" many times. All the main characters drink with the main purpose of getting "fucked up", although they don't all describe it as such. Ruben's father constantly sees it as a way of bonding with his son.

Patrick Brammall plays the main character of Guthrie almost as a Van Wilder-esque character, albeit with a darker, tortured soul. At many times throughout out the film I even thought he looked like Ryan Reynolds. Brammall is exquisite at playing Ruben's darker moments, showing deep characterisation (this is also a testament to Cowell's script).

The supporting cast is mainly strong. Abbey Lee does a superb Czech accent, but ultimately plays what she is in real life. Alex Dimitriades is hysterical as Damien, but also makes you laugh in some dark, inappropriate moments. Jeremy Sims is fantastic as Ray, Ruben's boss, and he has a mysterious alcoholic past that is left unanswered, but enough is hinted at to show his character's pain. Even Brenton Thwaites wasn't too annoying in this film, but then again he was playing an annoying idiot.

I feel like Ruben Guthrie is a real triumph of Australian cinema for this year. I would strongly recommend it for our international readers because it is a truly great insight into Australian culture. As for all you Aussies out there, maybe watch this film to reflect on our own drinking habits.

War Movie Month: Beneath Hill 60 (2010)

Why not start off War Movie Month with a modern Australian classic.

"Actually we've been invited to blow up the Red House. Apparently, you blokes keep missing."

Made in 2009 in time for an Anzac Day 2010 release, Jeremy Sims' Beneath Hill 60 is an Australian war drama starring Brendan Cowell as Captain Oliver Woodward, a mining engineer who leads the 1st Australian Tunnelers on the Western Front during World War One.  The script written by David Roach, was adapted from the recently discovered diary of the real life Captain Woodward, and was shot mostly in and around Townsville on a $6 million budget.. The story follows Woodward from his decision to enlist to his leadership of the group of Australian miners charged with creating and exploding the world's largest man-made explosion (at the time) directly underneath the trenches of the German army on the battlefields of Belgium. Woodward leaves behind his young sweetheart Marjorie, played by Isabella Heathcote, a woman ten years his junior and the younger sister of his mate whose wartime death spurs Woodward into enlisting.

The narrative alternates between the wartime struggles of Woody and co., and the story of his betrothal to Marjorie, and with this between rural Queensland and the Front. Much of the film is spent underground as the Tunnelers dig, plan attacks, plant explosives or silently search for German miners. The film emphasises the stakes of a silent war, where a single cough or squeak out of place is the difference between life and death. The supporting cast includes Gyton Grantley, Steve LeMarquand, Harrison Gilbertson and Anthony Hayes, among others. While Brendan Cowell is far-and-away the star, the supporting cast is solid as a as the blue clay they have to mine through.

Very films have succeeded in really capturing the ANZAC spirit through film. BH60 perfectly encapsulates the contemporary ideology of the ANZAC spirit and legend, and it declares this with it's tagline "After Gallipoli there was still a war to be won." Mateship, sacrifice, duty, and all with a laugh. Woody and his men crack jokes, huddle together, play rugby in the mud, and even enjoy a nice cuppa tea in the harsh and desolate warfield, in between bouts of being shelled, monitering the tunnels, and just surviving trench-life. The film treats the characters as imperfect men who did a great deed, but which is welcome and effective. The heroism of that deed, and the many others they perform, is suspect, open to interpretation, as the film more often focuses on the men themselves, rather than their actions and ramifications. The result is dramatic, and allows for enough association and appreciation of the characters and shines away from giving them an air of inherent nobility. It also very rarely portrays them as actual soldiers, more specialists who have to fight on occasion. This dynamic certainly allows for a wider array of emotion, rather than settling on the usual brutality and detachment that many war films force upon their characters.

The film-making style is rarely notable, but still solid, as is the score. There's lots of close-ups and playing with colour, as nearly all of the scenes shown below are lit by lantern or candle-light (within the film), where-as the daytime outside scenes are often blue-tinged. It's a simple and rather common colour contrast, but certainly effective. The close-ups also go a long way to enhance the character-driven claustrophobia. Where this film truly shines is in the production design as converting as small farm near Townsville into a believable WWI battlefield is no small task. And many props and costumes are sourced or directly copied from the real articles present in the Townsville War Museum.

Unfortunately, while the film is well-made, it is rarely particularly outstanding. It has little to nothing that makes it great, though just as little to make it bad. It's certainly on the highest order of Australian war films, and also a very good Aussie flick in general, but far from a great war film.