Arts & Letters: Film
CULTURE
A Port for the Soul: Aki Kaurismäki’s 'Le Havre'
Helen Garner
A watchman strolling late one night on the wharves of the French port of Le Havre raps his stick on the side of a container, and hears the...
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Let the Bird Sing, Let the Bird Fly: Todd Haynes’s ‘I’m Not There’
Luke Davies
In No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese's 2005 documentary about Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg speaks of that time in the early '60s when...
More ...Paths of Glory: Olivier Assayas’ 'Carlos' and Terrorists in Film
Kate Jennings
Every road leads to a reckoning. In Olivier Assayas’ movie Carlos, the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – AKA Carlos the Jackal...
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CULTURE
Taking to the Woods: Daniel Nettheim’s The Hunter and Anh Hung Tran’s Norwegian Wood
John Collee
Shot in some of Tasmania’s most breathtaking wilderness, The Hunter (in national release) tells the story of an American mercenary (Willem...
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SOCIETY
Shakespeare in Australia: Fred Schepisi’s 'The Eye of the Storm'
Peter Conrad
It’s fortunate that Australia’s new capital was called Canberra not Shakespeare, as a few Empire loyalists proposed at the time of...
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EDITOR'S CHOICE
Broken Communities: Helen Garner on Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown and Brendan Fletcher’s Mad Bastards
Helen Garner
In 1999, in the small South Australian township of Snowtown, police entered the vault of a disused bank and found a serial killer’s stash:...
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WORLD
Triumph of the Kill: Susanne Bier’s 'In a Better World' and Denis Villeneuve’s 'Incendies'
Luke Davies
In Susanne Bier’s In a Better World (in national release on 21 April) – this year’s Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film – there’s a...
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CULTURE
Economies of Scale: Peter Weir’s 'The Way Back' and Leon Ford’s 'Griff the Invisible'
Helen Garner
Epic is one word people resort to when confronted by a tale like the one Peter Weir tackles in his new movie, The Way Back. Seven prisoners...
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SOCIETY
Failure to Communicate: Tom Hooper’s 'The King’s Speech' and Derek Cianfrance’s 'Blue Valentine'
Luke Davies
“Do you know any jokes?” asks a speech pathologist of his newest patient, a stammerer. “Timing is not my strong suit,” the uptight patient...
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SOCIETY
Tools of the Trade: Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis' 'Machete' and Sean Byrne’s 'The Loved Ones'
Luke Davies
“Every time an illegal dances across our border,” says Senator John McLaughlin (Robert de Niro) at a rally, “it is an act of aggression...
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SOCIETY
Roots: 'The Kids Are All Right' and 'The Tree'
Luke Davies
There’s a well-travelled archetype of the American ‘family drama’: we begin with a generic family living in relative harmony, then the...
More ...Father Knows Worst: Taika Waititi's 'Boy' and Mia Hansen-Love's 'Father of My Children'
Luke Davies
A man perches awkwardly on the edge of a single bed talking to his two sons, Boy (James Rolleston) and Rocky (Te Aho Eketone-Whitu). He has...
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SOCIETY
Theatre of Operations: Richard Linklater's 'Me and Orson Welles' and Nadia Tass's 'Matching Jack'
Luke Davies
If you are looking for signs of the apocalypse, you need look no further than High School Musical, the film franchise that began life as a...
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SOCIETY
Births, Deaths and Marriages: Claire McCarthy’s 'The Waiting City' and Mona Achache’s 'The Hedgehog'
Luke Davies
In 2004, the UNICEF report Children on the Brink estimated that there were 35 million orphans in India and that nearly 4 million children...
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My Three Sons: David Michôd’s 'Animal Kingdom' and Banksy’s 'Exit Through the Gift Shop'
Luke Davies
First-time director David Michôd, whose Animal Kingdom is one of the best Australian films in years, served notice in 2007 that something...
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The Music of Time: Gillian Armstrong’s 'Love, Lust & Lies' and Radu Mihaileanu’s 'The Concert'
Luke Davies
In 1975 Gillian Armstrong made the short film Smokes and Lollies, which followed the lives of three 14-year-old girls Armstrong had found...
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As Long As It’s Black : Michael Haneke's 'The White Ribbon' and Jan Kounen's 'Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky'
Luke Davies
Michael Haneke is an unforgiving film-maker who explores suspense in various permutations without ever quite creating a thriller. Yet...
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Through a Glass Brightly: Andrea Arnold’s 'Fish Tank' and Tom Ford’s 'A Single Man'
Luke Davies
“Life’s a bitch ’n’ then you die,” sings the rapper Nas on the soundtrack of Fish Tank (released nationally on 11 March), Andrea Arnold’s...
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Lost Boys: Jacques Audiard's 'A Prophet' and John Hillcoat's 'The Road'
Luke Davies
In A Prophet, a dazzling new film about innocence and power from Jacques Audiard (director of The Beat My Heart Skipped, 2005), 19-year-old...
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Bright Stars: John Keats and Fanny Brawne Revisited
Sophie Gee
John Keats’s last letter is just about his most powerful piece of writing. He was in Rome, dying of tuberculosis. He’d gone there in a...
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