A window into another world: La Danse

Great documentaries are usually challenging more for their content than for their delivery. La Danse: Le Ballet de L’Opera de Paris is entirely unique in that the direct opposite applies. The film, Frederick Wiseman’s 38th in 40 years, follows the company in rehearsal of seven different ballets, information I picked up from the MIFF website. The ballets include Wayne McGregor’s Genus, which I learned from imdb.com, the rehearsal scenes of which I loved, but I only know because I googled his image to figure out who he was while I was watching. The film also features Sasha Waltz’, who’s image I also googled, choreographer of Berlioz’ Romeo et Juliette. The enticing opening scenes feature the images of the city and images of the company's home theatre space the Palais Garnier, I got that from the trailer spiel on YouTube.


The lack of information usually delivered to the audience during a documentary makes Wiseman's style uniquely challenging. There is no dialogue whatsoever with the audience through narrative, explanation or subheadings. Edits and cuts establish context and drama for the audience, but the focus is the subject, the art, and not the commentary explaining it. He is going by the idea that he can set up a camera, click ‘on’ and a film will happen. 

In this way La Dance the documentary parallels beautifully with the art form itself. In dance there is no dialogue or verbal communication between the artist and the audience. Instead we communicate in other ways. It is a highly visual, richly aesthetic art form that can make us laugh out loud, cry, be energised, feel despair and form interpretations likely to differ wildly from the audience member beside us. The way that dance engages with its audience is entirely unique and the film portrayal of one of the world’s best companies demanded similar distinction.  

In La Danse we are voyeurs in the world of artists at their most intense moments of creation and genius. Wiseman opens for us a window into their world from the grueling repetition of rehearsal to their incredible fitness and physical strength combined with the grace and beauty of the art form. He shows to us the process of creating art at the highest level through dialogue between choreographers and dancers and the running of a company of the Paris Opera Ballet’s magnitude through the leadership trials and triumphs of the artistic direction and creative management. 




I came away from this film feeling privileged to have been let into the dancers’ world. To get it, you have to get art, but not particularly dance itself. La Danse is a film for art lovers and dance lovers alike. Like much of Wiseman's work, the film is utterly engaging, completely immersing the viewer in the form.  It will make you want to go out and see some of the beautiful dance we have in Melbourne and you’ll probably have a craving for some French culture as well.

La Danse: Le Ballet de L’Opera de Paris is out this week on limited release. 
For Nova screenings check out http://www.cinemanova.com.au/
For Palace Cinema screenings check out http://www.palacecinemas.com.au/movies/ladanse/

My chat with Jack Charles

When I called Jack Charles Saturday morning to interview him as we had planned he had just called to order a cab. “I’m one that needs reminding you see” he said with a cheeky laugh and I imagined his smile lighting up his rough old face. We subsequently had to stop the interview while I listened to him directing the driver through Collingwood and later paying him at his destination. I was happy to wait. I was thrilled to speak to the figure introduced to me in Amiel Courtin-Wilson ARIA nominated Bastardy and whose significance in the Melbourne arts scene I’d since learned from everyone I spoke to who’d lived in Melbourne during the 70s.

There’s a kind of old school charm about the actor, harking back to a classier era in theatre and film. A man small in stature with a gritty depth in his musical voice who takes surprising command of the stage despite his stature and obvious humility. Perhaps it’s the grace of this humility that makes him so charming.

Walking quietly out onto the stage at the beginning of his show, briefly acknowledging the rapturous applause of his peers Jack sits quietly down at his pottery wheel masterfully working the clay as images from Bastardy are displayed in skewed projection across the raw wooden set. In the audience I am unsuspecting of the impact that the next 90 minutes will have on me.

Through monologues written by Jack throughout his life in response to opportunities lost, masterfully collaborated by his long time friend John Romeril, the piece reveals a story as much about this city as it is about the actor, revealing as much to us about ourselves and our misconceptions as it does about a troubled soul and a hard life.
As if from wonky clay bricks he masterfully works his story and I’m drawn in by the music in the voice of this quirky and cheeky old man. A storyteller as ready to recite a lark and sing a folk routed melody as he is to recite a recent psycho-analysis documenting his difficulty to form human connections and his histories of sexual and physical abuse.

The man I speak to on the phone is passionate, articulate, delightful and humble. There is no pretence just as there is none Jack Charles Vs the Crown, just as there is none whatsoever in Bastardy. A man who has discovered himself and what he has give, being given the opportunity by Ilbijerri Theatre Company, and director Rachel Maza Long, to tell his story. As Long put it in her introduction, a story as much a part of Melbourne and as significant to us as it is about Jack himself.

Jack Charles Vs The Crown opens tonight at the Fairfax Theatre, the Arts Centre Melbourne. Part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival.
More at http://www.ilbijerri.org.au/

Above photo: Bindi Cole

Loving Lola

Seen any good films lately? I have and they're all Australian! There have been so many great films from our industry this year. The latest is Aussie director Sean Byrne’s teen pop horror The Loved Ones. Winner of the Siren Award for Best International Feature at the Lund International Fantastik Film Festival last week over some great international films including Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World The Loved ones is finally coming to Australian audiences on the 4th of Nov 2010. I was lucky enough to be at the Melbourne preview screening last week. I laughed, screamed, squirmed and admittedly closed my eyes at times, though when it got really gory I just couldn’t look away. Take your favourite teen horror, mix it with actual real characters and some beautiful Aussie country-side then cross every painful gruesome seat-squirming boundary you thought existed and you will arrive somewhere around this much anticipated film, which also won the Torronto Film Festival’s  People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award.


The Loved Ones harks back to cult horror classics such as The Shining and recalls the monster feminine of films such as the obsessive and gruesome 90s classic Misery. With this horror culture in mind Byrne takes us on journey into the inexplicably disturbed psyche of Lola (or ‘Princess’), played by Robyn McLeavy. Byrne’s journey is compelling and shows incredible breadth of imagination with gory details likely to pop up in your wildest nightmares only this time there’s just no waking up. From scenes of gruesomely painful and bloody gore to hilariously cliched moments The Loved Ones crosses every line and goes right into the unexpected as the threads of Princess’ twisted conquests come together and reveal their psychotic outcomes.


With so many financial barriers up against today’s Aussie films our directors do incredibly well. Hardly a week goes by without news of us winning awards and acclaim at film festivals around the world. In the last few years Australian audiences have been treated to a line up of Aussie stories on film as diverse as the tragic Animal Kingdom, the twistedly arresting Beautiful Kate and the compellingly significant Samson and Delilah.

Robyn McLeavy as Lola chasing down her victims
surrounded by some familiar Australian landscape

There is something exhilarating about seeing Aussie stories, accents and landscape on the big screen. Behind the horror and humour of The Loved Ones are the lives of troubled teenagers reaching a point at which their small country town can no longer provide them with what they need. The image of Xavier Samuel’s character, Brent, sitting on a rocky outcrop under a gnarled candle bark staring out at sweeping Australian country-side as he inhales from his pot pipe and falls back into delirium is poignant to Australian audiences knowing the issues rural youth face in this country and the potential tragedy to which all our lives are subject during our teenage years. This isn’t the point behind Byrne’s film, but such undertones, representing the realities of Australian lives, surely drive the imperative to get our stories out there speaking to Australian audiences in a way no Hollywood blockbuster will ever do.


Funding bodies such as Film Victoria and the MIFF Premiere Fund, supported by Victorian Government funding and responsible for Balibo in 2009 and The Loved Ones, are achieving something great in the funding Australian works that would otherwise have no chance, financially, in reaching us. In a climate that condemns public spending on the arts for concentrating too much on traditional art forms there are still many avenues for our filmmakers to get our stories out there.


The combination of a beautifully shot film such as The Loved Ones with the creative genius of characters such as Lola represent what is exciting about the current Australian film industry’s output. Accolades from TIFF and other major film festivals just make it sweeter knowing the world is starting to realise just how talented our directors, actors and creatives are.


The Loved Ones opens in Australian cinemas on the 4th of November 2010. For more information visit http://www.thelovedonesmovie.com