Dr Plonk, Once, Shut Up and Sing

With each new film he makes, Australian director Rolf de Heer seems to surprise his audience just a little bit more. Now, during a time when everyone around him seems to be pushing the boundaries of cinema potential, he ploughs backwards through film history to the days of silent comedy. Set in 1907, Dr Plonk is a slapstick romp (reminiscent of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin) that tracks the efforts of scientist/inventor Dr Plonk, as he attempts to prove his theory that the world will end in 101 years time by developing a time machine in order to travel there. While De Heer’s effort to reconstruct the feel of silent film reel is commendable (it was actually a complex process combining old technology with extensive digital post-production), the narrative is unfortunately just as dull as it sounds. Slapstick routines haven’t gotten any funnier than they were to begin with, and while this film will illicit a few laughs here and there, it’s not particularly clever or memorable humour. At best, this film will offer a pleasing amusement for those who enjoy (or nostalgically recall) the slapstick comedy of silent film. At worst, this film could be described as a pallid, two dimensional effort from a director who has previously always hit the spot. Perhaps de Heer should stay away from movies that demand a more overt humour.

Director John Carney always dreamt of making a film that, while bypassing the stale conventions of a traditional musical, would still utilise songs in order to tell a “very modern, very simple love story.” The result is Once, a simple, low budget effort, set in modern Dublin, where a heartbroken busker (Glen Hansard) meets a spirited Czech migrant (Marketa Irglova), and the two fall in love over shared duets and broken vacuum cleaners. With only sixty pages of dialogue, music envelopes practically ever visual gesture in this film, infusing it with a deeper, more intangible emotional quality. Where one would usually find trite romantic dialogue or stifled exchanges, there are instead naturally occurring songs that speak volumes about the gradually developing relationship without the need for tired clichés. Strangely, there is no particularly direct narrative correlation between (most of) the lyrics on the soundtrack and the script itself, yet both share the same musical texture, emotive tone and intimate personal voice. While at times this film digresses onto unbelievable territory (look out for the singing banker, and the slightly overdone recording studio montage), it is redeemed by this indescribable magical quality. The combined impact of Hansard’s composition, the simple cinematography and the actors’ touching sincerity is, quite frankly, monumental.

During a time when documentary has become the new black, Shut Up and Sing stands out because it is harder to classify than your average, being neither strictly political nor strictly musical. It focuses upon the journey of the Dixie Chicks since 2003, when their lead singer spoke out against George Bush’s War on Iraq, and the group became the instant victim of Republican outcry. Unfortunately, the film’s shifting focus, while arguably its most defining feature, is also its most irritating. The film jumps through chronology, skipping from 2003 to 2006 (when the Dixie Chicks are working on their comeback album). Not only do these jumps in time feel awkward and forced, but the contrast in footage is also quite significant. While the scenes from 2003 are compellingly action packed, those set in 2006 focus upon the “personal triumph” of the band (looking at emotions, relationships and so on), and are, ultimately, quite dull and lacklustre. As the film nears its end, it increasingly focuses upon celebrating this personal strength, much to the film’s detriment. Rather than tapping its potential to explore issues of democracy and freedom of speech, the filmmaker has opted to produce yet another story of inspiration and personal struggle. While this may all be indeed quite affecting, it’s hard not to feel a little cheated after the promising potential of the film’s seemingly fresh trailer.

Dr Plonk: 1.5
Once: 9.5
Shut Up and Sing: 6.0

Interview with Glen Hansard

When we meet, Glen Hansard is looking a little battleworn. His hands alternate between rubbing his eyes open and, almost nervously, fiddling with a grey pick, which he twirls through his calloused fingers with acrobatic ease, and occasionally taps against the bench. “To be honest, I’m almost missing all this success, because I am so busy,” he sighs, looking suddenly even more exhausted. “This is not a complaint, but I need to take a break just to get some perspective. Perspective is important, both with great success and great failure. Also, they say that if you don’t take time to celebrate when your ship comes in, it’s just another day at the office.”

Hansard certainly does have cause to celebrate recently. After seventeen years of leading Irish independent band, The Frames, he’s receiving a new kind of media attention. As the lead actor in Once, a touching romance/drama about a Dublin busker who falls in love with a Czech migrant, both his musical and personal profile have received a welcome bolster. This comes just in time for a current tour with Bob Dylan, and the release of his band’s new album, The Cost, a beautifully emotion recording which includes several songs featured in the film.

“The movie was just a three week bit of fun with some friends, and it never had any significance at all to my career, except now it does,” he reflects, sounding almost a little shocked by his own success. “Now, this film has brought us a huge amount of new audience. In an ideal world, you’d hope that you could write a song and people would respond to it in a certain way, but the world isn’t that simple and the media really doesn’t hasn’t had much to say about us in a while. There is no ‘myth,’ if you like… And now, we haven’t done anything different to how we’ve always done it, but there’s this film, and sometimes people just need something like that to latch onto. And this has just brought a whole new wave of energy around the band. It’s definitely reenergised the audience, which has in turn reenergised the band.”

Initially, Hansard’s role in Once was not as high-profile. Working with director and ex-band member John Carney, he was to produce a set of songs in concurrence with the script. For Hansard, working under Carney’s direction was an unusual power reversal. “I was working on his project, whereas before [in The Frames] he’d always been working on mine,” he explains, “It was such a perspective shift, having to ultimately adhere to John’s vision, and also such a good thing. When you spend a long time being the one who makes the art, you tend to get that ‘I’m right’ attitude happening a lot, so it is good to work on someone else’s art and, even if you don’t agree, they will say ‘well, this is me vision,’ and that’s that.”

Hansard’s role shifted dramatically, though, when Cillian Murphy (arguably a dubious casting choice) pulled out of his role as the lead actor. Given Hansard’s strong connection to the main character, it was suggested that he fill those shoes. “I honestly didn’t feel that comfortable about it,” Hansard confesses, looking slightly awkward, “But John just said, ‘Trust me, I will get a good performance out of you.’ And all I asked was that he promise to fire me if he had to, because I don’t want to be in a shit film. All he said was, ‘I won’t let you be.’ So that was the deal we all struck with each other. In the end, I wasn’t acting very much… John just kept on saying, ‘stop acting, and pull back a bit more.’ Sometimes I would really stop acting altogether and just read the lines and he would say, ‘Now that’s perfect.’ He just wanted us to be ourselves.”

As Murphy departed though, so did the producer and the film’s financing. “We had no lead and no money,” Hansard remembers, “We had to convince all the crew to work for free, meself and Mar [Irglova, the lead actress] worked for free, and we made the film in seventeen days as that was all the crew could give us.” Overnight, Once had become a project financed entirely by love, a factor which definitely shines through the final product. Suddenly, several sharp cost cuts were made; the Dublin scenes were filmed on long lenses without official permits, the musical recordings were done in Hansard’s bedroom rather than in a studio, and the entire film was shot on HD instead of on the intended 16mm film stock.

“It felt really good, though,” Hansard emphasises, “If you’re doing something like this where everyone is working for free – and I’ve been in this situation with my band many times before – you have to get as much out of these people as possible, so there’s a high energy. We were knocking out about four or five scenes a day.”

Perhaps this is the reason why the film feels so natural and organic; although that may also be attributed to the fact that so much of the film was improvised. Hansard clarifies, “What I love most about music is doing it live, when it’s all in the moment, and everything is real and happening right there, so that, when you fuck up, it’s almost part of the beauty of the performance. That’s what a performance is – imperfect…. And I think John understood that really well, that it had to be improvised in order for it to be enjoyable. A lot of directors are really precious about their dialogue, but John said, ‘If you can find a better way to get to that same point, you should do it.’” Naturally, the fact that Hansard is essentially playing himself, and that he is now actually romantically involved Irglova (this is the one point in the conversation during which he looks significantly more awake), helped infuse that improvisation with a poignant sense of reality.

For Hansard though, it seems that Once is about more than the love between two people. “John described the movie as a ‘love song for Ireland’ – but it kind of depicts a Dublin of about fifteen years ago. I mean, it’s all shot on the streets of Dublin now and with no extras, but Dublin now, like Australia, is full of wine bars and cappuccino cafes now, and we’ve got all the high-end designer clothes shops and people are driving around in Range Rovers flaunting their wealth. What we wanted to do was make a film about Ireland before that happened. Also, the Irish were once famous for their friendly welcome… but when we had to deal with immigration we became quite cruel and quite the opposite. My character in the film actually just represents older Ireland, the guy who just accepts the girl, and likes her for who she is, while there’s no real talk about her past and her Czech history or her poverty.”

Significantly, Once did not receive a raving response upon its release in Ireland. (“Irish people don’t see Irish films,” Hansard explains.) Perhaps this is the reason why Hansard, believing the film would never be successful enough to actually warrant a soundtrack, decided to go ahead and record the film’s songs on a separate album, together with Irglova. “We ended up making this record called The Swell Season, which was just a basically an album of the songs from Once,” he reflects, and then laughs, once more recalling that now familiar tone of disbelief, with which he adds, “We figured Once would never be seen by anybody.”

Interview with Tony Ayres

Tony Ayres, the enthusiastic writer/director of Home Song Stories, seems unusually jumping for a weekday breakfast. He speaks at an accelerated pace, as if riding aboard a morning wave of caffeine, or (more likely) simply bursting with ideas and feelings regarding his latest cinematic effort. It comes as no surprise that Ayres has so much to say. After all, Home Song Stories is a film about his own childhood experiences and about a difficult time when, just after his family’s move from China to Australia, his mother’s lifestyle escalated out of control.

“Personally, this was obviously a set of events that shaped my life and profoundly moved me,” he explains happily, obviously now quite used to discussing this difficult past, “As a starting point, as a filmmaker, you have to be affected by your own story. The challenge of making the movie was about taking this profound event, which seems very powerful to me, and turning it into something that would also affect others. I also find it so fascinating how, when you have something that comes from the truth, you can kind of bend the story out of shape. It gives you a bit of tolerance, in terms of the way in which it fits in, because real life doesn’t fit into conventional narrative.”

While certainly not revolutionary, the narrative of Home Song Stories does indeed twist its way through time in an imaginative fashion. This is a chronological collage of memories, viewed through a child’s perspective, but retold and collated by the adult version of that child (based on Ayres himself), who makes fleeting appearances in brief cut-aways and voice-overs. Seen typing the story onto his computer, he is obviously, like Ayres, in search of catharsis. “I was trying to emphasise that the film is being told from later,” Ayres comments, “If there is a theme to the film, it is about a little boy falling out of love with his mother because of her behaviour, and trying to, as an adult, revisit that behaviour and try and find a sense of forgiveness.”

As eager as he is to discuss his mother, Ayres seems taken aback when I steer conversation towards his representation of women. “I think that in terms of her representation there is a truth to her character, which I know to be true because my mother experienced it, but there was definitely no underlying political thesis,” he stresses, “I think that if you want a film to resonate with your audience, you have to find a contradictory truth. If you want to communicate a thesis, you’re better off writing it. I wasn’t making the film as a statement about women, or about the Asian diaspora, or Chinese representations.”

Alive with contradiction, complexity and humanity, Home Song Stories is without question far removed from the predictability of dogmatic cinema. While Ayres still seems weary about accidentally suggesting that his film belongs in such a category, he does add that his film’s very existence reflects a huge shift in attitudes from the 1970s in which it is set. “When the population changes, inevitably more stories like mine will be told, and they will hopefully provide a human face to these diaspora stories,” he suggests, “There will be more stories like Romulus My Father, or Clubland. Those are three stories all about mothers, and all about migrants, and they’ve all come out this year. That’s a reflection of our shifting culture.”

We can only hope that, as our culture continues to shift, it will also continue to reveal more precious tales such as this one, concerned as they are with capturing poignantly subjective memories rather than with pushing trite political agendas. This film makes a perfect addition our ever-expanding treasure trove of recently uncovered Australian stories.

Interview with Rolf de Heer

Rolf de Heer has never been one to linger on the lighter side of life. With a portfolio that encompasses Bad Boy Bubby, Alexandria’s Project and, most recently, Ten Canoes, de Heer has always layered his projects in heavy themes or politically charged messages. His latest directorial effort, however, symbolises a break in this pattern. Dr Plonk, a black and white silent film about a mad scientist, is a light-hearted comedic romp through time and through genre. There is nothing serious about this film; Dr Plonk merely offers audiences an excuse to laugh at some traditional slapstick humour.

The natural lightness of this film makes it remarkably easy to digest, and there is an accompanying sense that the entire production process was similarly organic. Indeed, de Heer describes the creative process as “a series of lightbulb moments.” He was first struck by the concept of silent film after stumbling across some old, unused film stick in his office fridge during the post-production of Ten Canoes. Then, barely an hour later, he recalled local street performer, Nigel Lunghi, who he’d seen busking in the Adelaide city streets, realising that he would be ideal for the role of the main character. “These things are very peculiar in how they happen. Often they don’t happen so quickly, but in this case they did,” he remembers, “I [found that film stock] and it was old and out of date and useless for anything, but in that moment I saw unspool in front of my eyes, in all its likely imperfections; silent black and white comedy. And in that moment, what was probably just two or three seconds, I went ‘Ha! I know what we’re doing next.’”

Casting a street performer rather than an actor would seem a risk to any conventional director, but de Heer rightly insists that he made the correct choice. “He has great physical skills, and he was the first person who I thought of when I thought of the film,” de Heer explains, “I thought, ‘I will use him somehow,’ and the character was formed once he was cast.” Additionally, Lunghi brought a whole range of physical skills to the set, which ideally complimented the acting prowess of Paul Blackwell and Magda Szubanski in supporting roles. De Heer confirms, “All three of them are quite different in the way they approach things, but in terms of character that worked and they were really able to help each other. Magda would suggest something and then Paul would take that further and then Nigel would suggest something out of left field. And it was a really great process, just collaborating with actors to get to where we got to.”

A greater challenge would be injecting contemporary relevance into a form that does feel quite archaic, although de Heer insists that comedy transcends history. “Anything that makes me laugh, does not feel dated,” he stresses, “You get some romantic dramas from that time and they do feel dated, because the attitudes are so different and so sentimental. But the comedies are composed of classic comedic routines, and these make people laugh then, and still do now.”

De Heer then adds the point that silent film is not necessarily a “dated” form for all Australia’s cinema-goers. He emphasises the film’s success at Brisbane’s recent film festival, where it screened for an audience of school children. “At the end of the film there was a ‘Q&A’ and they started asking why nobody had talked in it,” he recalls, “And I realised that they had no history or knowledge of silent films, and so what I had to do was basically explain the history of film… I had made something that was completely new to them.” Perhaps cinema, like fashion, can only ever decorate recycled tropes, offering these as new products to generations who missed them the last time. Perhaps Dr Plonk really is to cinema what high waisted skirts are to fashion, except with more title cards.

Spanish Film Festival comes to Perth

Spanish cinema is more than a casual interest for Natalia Ortiz, the director of the Spanish Film Festival, which this week makes its way to Perth for the fourth time. For Ortiz, Spanish cinema is more than an art form, more than an industry and more than a passion. It is a link to her past.

“I arrived in Australia [from Spain] about 12 years ago,” she explains, “And this festival is a way for me to stay connected to my country, as well as to film. I always thought that if there existed a way to connect those two interests then I would be a very, very happy woman. And I have, so it’s all happening!”

Ortiz laughs at this point, and, with the festival now in its tenth year over East, she has plenty to smile about. While the festival is doing its bit to strengthen Spanish communities within the country, it is also helping to spread the word about Spanish cinema and culture amongst other Australians – and to contribute to Ortiz’s dream vision of a multicultural Australia.

“Despite any political agendas, these kind of festivals are important,” she asserts, “It’s one thing to talk about multiculturalism, but if you don’t actually see it reflected in culture, in music or books or in any part or form of art, then it doesn’t really exist. And I like to feel that, with the festival, I am achieving that. For me that’s what multiculturalism is all about – accepting people who come to Australia with a different outlook and a different way of telling stories.”

Reflecting on her first days in Australia, Ortiz comments, “The one thing that surprised me was that there were not many Spanish films in the cinema, and if there were they were the usual suspects like Pedro Almodovar.” Again, Ortiz laughs at commonly held expectations that Spanish cinema is “all about comedies and Flamenco and hysterical Spanish stereotypes.”

She continues, “I think that things, in this regard, have changed, perhaps because the distributors and the television companies are looking for something different… And it’s also the fact that the audience has changed… now they see that the stories are so different from one film to another that to define them as one is like summarising gastronomy with paella only.” Ortiz then adds, with a cheeky grin, “I don’t know if the festival is totally responsible… but I’d say we’re maybe 75% responsible for this change?”

She suggests that another cause for this shift could well be the concurrent change in film policy with Spain itself. “I’ve watched quite a few films over the past years, and I think finally we are deciding to be a bit more…” she hesitates momentarily, before finally hitting the right word, “honest with our stories. We’re not so worried about selling the films…Finally, directors and, more importantly, the Spanish funding boards are applying more freedom. They’re happy to risk it more. “

This risk-taking extends to increased support for first and second time directors, which, according to Ortiz, is inspiring the development of a “very young and vibrant film industry,” as well as to co-productions with other countries in Europe and in Latin America (a few of which make their way onto the festival programme.) Spanish filmmakers of all ages and origins are opening up now, and finally telling “the stories that they have always needed and wanted to tell,” with a satirical irreverence marking films across the board. Honesty has been on the table since the end of Franco, but now, filmmakers are finally being encouraged to embrace it.

And what this means, for Ortiz, is that the industry is able to share distinctly Spanish stories with people across the world. For her, such film festivals should always be driven precisely by the notion of shared storytelling.

“It would be an interesting exercise to give the same script to, say, a German a French person and an Aussie, and see how each of them would tell the story,” she suggests, “The interesting thing, and the good thing, about it is that we would all tell the story in a different way, but it would essentially remain the story. And that for me is the most interesting part of it all.”


Published in Drum Media Perth, May 2006