Peter Weir

Gallipoli (1981)

Gallipoli (1981)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Google Play Streaming, December 2019) It’s important for a variety of perspectives and people to be reflected in cinema, and that also goes for war films—considering the inherent propaganda in depicting armed conflict and the difficulty of understanding such massive undertakings as a battle, it’s essential to diversify. I don’t think, for instance, that Hollywood would have ever tackled World War I in the same way Australian filmmaker Peter Weir does in Gallipoli, for instance. The film focuses on two friends who find themselves acting as couriers during the battle of Gallipoli. A surprising portion deals with pre-war adventures for the protagonists, giving a credible peek into life in rural Australia in the 1910s—another topic unlikely to be portrayed in Hollywood. But the point of the film is the crucible that war becomes for those young men, and the large-scale (pre-digital) depiction of the fighting at Gallipoli. In the vein of most 1970s war film, it has an unapologetically anti-war tone, with loss of innocence (not to mention loss of life) being a major component, along with a critique of British command. A young Mel Gibson is quite good in one of the lead roles, offering a more modern counterpart to lead Mark Lee’s more idealistic character. I’m not a big fan of some jarring moments in the soundtrack incorporating synth-based music alongside a more orchestral score, but that’s a common-enough complaint for movies of the time. Fortunately, it doesn’t affect much of Gallipoli, which remains not only an interesting war film but also a top pick in the Australian movie pantheon even decades later.

Fearless (1993)

Fearless (1993)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, November 2019) There is something interesting about movies that dare navigate the fine line that separates realism from the extraordinary. Fearless is one of those movies that skirt the edge of a realistic drama by focusing on the survivor of a plane crash who develops some unusual psychological disorders, helped along by ambiguously fantastic events. Played by Jeff Bridges in one of his best roles, our protagonist overcompensates for his survivor’s guilt by becoming convinced that he is already dead, eating allergenic food without consequences and even crashing his car to make a point. His detachment from reality becomes spectacular at times, such as walking away from the crash scene without notifying anyone. His mental health issues are aggravated by the aftermath of the crash—the FBI investigation, the media attention, the legal proceedings, the guilt shared by fellow survivors. Directed by Peter Weir, who has often handled such tricky material, Fearless is an effective character study of someone ordinary in exceptional circumstances. A clever script heavily (but cleverly) relies on flashbacks to show us the before-and-after circumstances of the protagonist. With such skillful touches, Fearless is far more entertaining than expected for such weighty subject matter—and with such interesting actors as Rosie Perez (deservedly nominated for an Oscar), Isabella Rossellini, Benicio del Toro and John Turturro along for the ride, it’s also not a bad choice for anyone looking at the state of mainstream drama movies from the mid-1990s. Even if, at times, Fearless does push much realism as far as it can go.

Green Card (1990)

Green Card (1990)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, August 2019) Part of the point of casting known actors is to transfer some of the emotional impact of earlier films into a new one, and I certainly experienced some of that going into Green Card. The film, a romantic comedy about two strangers technically marrying for personal gain (a green card for him, a coveted apartment for her) features Andie MacDowell and Gerard Depardieu as romantic lead. While I like McDowell a lot (and not necessarily for her average acting skills), I’m not so fond of Depardieu—although some of this may be tainted from his rapidly declining twenty-first century personal image and reputation. As of 1990, however, forty-something Depardieu could still pass an acceptable romantic lead … but it’s up to the film to convince us of that. And while there’s nothing particularly surprising in Green Card, writer-director Peter Weir does know how to handle a movie. As we move through the expected set-pieces (sometimes with cleverly handled expectations—I defy anyone sitting midway through the piano sequence not to expect his character to be a fraud), the film does play the attraction game savvily. The actors also do their best. MacDowell remains limited in her range (although her character here is written as more restrained), but Depardieu does earn audience sympathies, and having Bebe Neuwirth show up for a few scenes certainly helps. It all leads to a conclusion that does manage to reassure Americans about their immigration system (a few lines have unique relevance in 2019), while providing a sufficiently distinctive romantic climax to keep audiences happy. This is not a particularly good movie, but it plays better than I thought it would, and Depardieu does make it work.

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2019) There are a few movies that make more sense when measured against an entire corpus, and while I’m not calling The Year of Living Dangerously an incomplete movie by itself, it does get much of its power when you oppose it to a corpus of adventure films in which a westerner performs heroics in a foreign country, either saving others or having an impact on the events. Here, we get a very young Mel Gibson as an Australian journalist assigned to Indonesia in the months leading to the 1965 attempted coup, learning about the dangerous country, befriending an eccentric character, falling for an English embassy worker, and trying to do his job during a volatile situation. Gibson is fine, Sigourney Weaver is quite good as the British woman but it’s Linda Hunt who steals the movie (and won an Academy Award) as an Asian male—an impressive transformation that adds much to the character. The Year of Living Dangerously may sound like a dull foreign drama, but it works wonders in immediately capturing viewers in its opening moments, thanks to an enigmatic character narrating and taking harsh notes on the protagonist. The atmosphere carries much of the film’s midsection despite a few lulls, with director Peter Weir doing well at showing how much our protagonist is still a neophyte at his job, how far out of his element he is and how he ends up paying for his mistakes. That starkly comes into play during the film’s last act, as the white saviour stereotype is completely defeated in the Graham Greene tradition. Our lead spends much of the film’s climactic events completely unable to do anything, unable to report on the biggest story of his career and having to abandon everything in order to make it out alive. It’s a measure of the film’s success that the film isn’t all that depressing despite the downbeat material, but your mileage may vary—you may have to be exasperated with an entirely different kind of film in order to get the most out of The Year of Living Dangerously.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2018) Sometimes, the real terror comes from not knowing. So it is that Picnic at Hanging Rock first shows itself as a period drama following the disappearance of a few teenage girls in the Australian Wilderness, but ends up being an unnerving quasi-horror film in which there are no answers and no relief. The visual polish and atmosphere of the film will feel familiar to fans of director Sofia Coppola’s work—I was feeling moderately pleased to find the similarity, but then read that Coppola explicitly based the look and feel of a few of her movies on this one and was suitably humbled. Suffice to say that contrast between the carefree nature of the girls at the beginning of the movie and the lurking horror that gradually follows the disappearance of a few of them ends up being one of the film’s driving contrasts. Ably re-creating a historical period seldom seen in films (1900 rural Australia), Picnic at Hanging Rock is a treat to watch and a nightmare to contemplate. Few movies deliver as few answers to their central mysteries. Here, girls disappear and the focus becomes on what happens in the aftermath of that disappearance, never to dwell on the possible reasons for their fate. It’s profoundly unsatisfying and that becomes the point of the film—we feel just as cheated of a release as the characters. (An answer of sort is to be found in literary sources, but the author’s concluding chapter feels too ludicrous to be satisfying.)  I may not like director Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock very much, but I can’t help but respect the power of its intentions—and I almost consider it the best film that Sofia Coppola didn’t direct.