Lion

Up and coming directors can only hope for a powerful story to tell through their directorial debut, but Garth Davis was one of those lucky few, transposing Saroo Brierley’s incredible story A Long Way Home into his first film, Lion.

Saroo (Sunny Pawar) is a young but precocious and adventurous child who looks up to his older brother Guddu (Abhisek Bharate). Saroo wants to work the night shifts with Guddu so he can contribute more to his family, and Guddu reluctantly lets him come along. By the time they’ve reached the train station, Saroo is exhausted and falling asleep. Guddu asks him to wait whilst he tries to find work, but Guddu doesn’t return. 

Searching the nearby trains for his brother, Saroo falls asleep again and wakes up on the travelling, empty train, many miles from wherever his home is. Lost in a faraway city and unable to point the authorities to his local town, Saroo is soon adopted by an Australian couple, Sue (Nicole Kidman) and John (David Wenham). Twenty years later Saroo (Dev Patel) wants to find his family, and one of his University friends tells him about a new program, Google Earth, that might be able to help him in his search.

The biographical films that soar during Oscars season are a bit hit and miss, often too concerned with glorifying a historical personality than telling a unique, incredible story, but that’s certainly not the case with Lion. Told in a linear style - not regularly seen in the modern era of flashback obsessives - we pick up Saroo’s story just before his separation from his family and his devastating experience as a homeless sojourner. The human cost of overpopulation and a very different parental culture becomes evident when he has to spend the night sleeping with other displaced children on sheets of cardboard in the Calcutta train station and narrowly avoids abduction. A sobering passage of the film - underscored by the message of Lion’s final titled card, over 80,000 children go missing in India each year - This first half of Lion is defined by the tragic, Dickensian performance of young Sunny Pawar. Truly if ever there was a child actor deserving of an Academy Award nomination, Sunny is the one.

Saroo’s troubles take a different turn when he’s adopted by a loving Australian couple who he meets in Hobart. Before long we’ve jumped forward twenty years and the now grown-up Saroo finds himself opening up old wounds as he begins his search for his family. The film slows in pace but it’s certainly not the dramatic bottleneck that some critics claim. In many ways the second half of Lion is just as painfully engaging as the first, and if anything the conclusion could have done with more time and space to complete the story without the hint of emotional overreach that somewhat emerges. Otherwise, Lion manages its pace and linear technique in a thorough and satisfying way.

Whilst it’s difficult to meet the challenge that Pawar’s performance sets in the first half, Dev Patel still delivers what might be his best performance to date, and Kidman, who has struggled to match the quality of some of her earlier Roles in recent years, puts all of that behind her with a very strong portrayal as the patiently nurturing Sue. Rooney Mara plays Saroo’s gentle and tolerant girlfriend, Lucy, and continues to firmly cement her position as an awards season regular, whilst David Wenham does what he can with his relatively little screen time. Apart from a slightly jarring wrap-up song from Sia, the gentle and contemplative soundtrack works with the often stunning visuals to bring all of these elements together into a film worthy of its story and of the international audience attention its receiving. 

Lion could have so easily fallen into the bottomless pit of cliched Oscar-bait that we have to suffer through each year, but its writing is so engaging, its performances so enticing, and it's directing so delicate that it certainly does justice to Saroo's riveting odyssey.

Goldstone

“Are you a cop? Sometimes.”

Ivan Sen has found recognition both at home in Australia and abroad, particularly with his features that draw on his Indigenous heritage; Beneath Clouds, Toomelah and Mystery Road. His latest feature, Goldstone is a sequel to the last of those and once again follows Indigenous Detective Jay Swan.

We open with a montage of sepia pictures from the gold rush as strings soar over the top. We see a society that’s divided by both race and class - a very deliberate foreshadowing to open the film. Many years later, we see Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen) driving along an open road in a desolate outback. He’s pulled over by Josh (Alex Russell), the local cop from nearby town/roadstop Goldstone. Obviously drunk, Josh takes the detective into the precinct. Soon it becomes clear that Jay’s in Goldstone on federal business, to follow up on a missing persons report. However that is far from the only suspicious occurrence happening in this small desert outcrop, and soon Jay’s detective skills are put to the test.

I’d been looking forward to Goldstone for quite a while now, not just because it feels that we’re still in a quality film drought as we move into the second half of the year, but also because I appreciate great films that come out of our own industry. Goldstone looked to me to fit both those bills, but in the end I left decidedly underwhelmed. I think Ivan Sen is a talented writer/director and obviously has immense skills in other areas (more on that later) but unfortunately Goldstone falls into the familiar Australian crime/drama trap of overburdening the story with stereotyped characters. Be it the creepy mine manager with a bad haircut and outdated glasses who bribes his way through life with wads of $50 notes (David Wenham), the equally corrupt mayor who avoids suspicion with sweet talk and baked goods; “I’m just an old lady who likes to bake pies” (Jacki Weaver), or the redneck hermit who’s incapable of stringing a sentence together without a handful of f-bombs (Max Cullen). It’s difficult to take a film seriously when the lead - and Aaron Pedersen is extremely good - stands out like a sore thumb in a sea of caricatures.

The core elements of the plot, the missing persons inquiry and the prostitution ring, I thought were interesting and worked to flip some of the preconceptions people may have about the outback. However, its execution was a bit hit and miss. The conversations between May (Michelle Lim Davidson) and Josh were some of the best scenes in Goldstone and was where Sen’s dialogue peaked, however in other parts it had a tendency to fall into cliched phrases - as always, test this by seeing how many sentences you can finish. The other side-stories/happenings - as few as there were - just didn’t work as well, and there’s not much mystery involved either, just a constant tension. The story picks up speed in the final act but can’t make up for the up-and-down pacing that dominates the first part of the film.

Parts of Goldstone are helped along by the superb performances from Aaron Pederson and Alex Russell, with the relationship between the two cops one of the better takeaways from it. David Gulpilil also manages to do a lot with his relatively small screen time. However, you can’t escape the aforementioned stereotypes, and the ridiculous, pretentious portrayals from some of the supporting cast are really the worst parts of Goldstone, Jacki Weaver in particular. I normally really like her performances but her Mayor here just felt like a reincarnation of her homely psychopath ‘Smurf’ from Animal Kingdom, only on overdrive. Beyond that, the character actually just doesn’t feel like she fits in with the rest of the Goldstone community.

Others have suggested that Sen - who as usual also shot, edited and composed on top of his directorial duties - should have taken a step back and reeled in some of these issues, and perhaps we need to have a discussion about how much the multiple roles of filmmakers like Sen (Robert Rodriguez does a similar thing) actually affects the end result of their films. As an amateur filmmaker myself I can appreciate the desire to put your stamp on each part of the process, but that doesn’t rule out the process of collaboration. I also thought personally that whilst the film is very beautiful, there could be more done creatively with such a stunning backdrop, and perhaps a dedicated cinematographer could have given the film an extra edge - although of course the aesthetics are always subjective and what I might yearn for, could turn away other audience members.

If you’re a fan of Mystery Road, then Goldstone is probably worth checking out, and it’s far from a terrible film. It’s just not as exciting, not as moving, and not as mysterious as it could have been.

Blinky Bill movie? Take my money already.

So I have no idea how I hadn't heard that a Blinky Bill movie was in production, but now I've found out. And we have a cast list for the animated movie too.

For our international readers, Blinky Bill is an Australian character from a series of books and a very popular cartoon series from the early 90s. He is an anthropomorphic koala who has adventures in the bush with his other animal friends. The TV series was a staple for many kids who grew up in the 90s.

By the look of the cast, this is going to be a fun movie. Blinky will be voiced by Ryan Kwanten (True Blood) and the other cast members include Robin McLeavy (Hell On Wheels), Toni Collette (Little Miss Sunshine), Rufus Sewell (Hercules), David Wenham (The Lord Of The Rings), Richard Roxburgh, Deborah Mailman, Barry Humphries and Barry Otto.

From that cast and the source material of the film, they can take my money already.