Out on dvd on the 03/12
3rd of December. Finally get to see it.
shareI finally watched this on DVD myself, having been impressed by Stenders' "Boxing Day". I quite liked it, although it's not without flaws. It was certainly better than I feared, having read more than a few of the most viciously dismissive reviews I've seen in recent memory.
_____
I suppose on a clear day you can see the class struggle from here.
It's really unfortunate in many ways that the crazies came out of the woodwork on this one, basically dismissing it because it was daring to take an alternative look at the idea of 'Australian values', and worse still was written by someone who wasn't born here. Many of the reviewers displayed nothing short of chauvinistic bigotry. What's interesting is that Wake In Fright got exactly the same response 40 years ago (and once again largely because it dared have a less than noble take on the idea of what it means to be an Australian, and it was written by some damn foreigner) and the irony there of course is that Lucky Country was in many ways saying that the subcurrents under what we call our values here never changes or evolves.
What's interesting about the dvd extras is they show what a brave piece of filmmaking this was by Kriv Stenders. I think this film is going to grow significantly in stature as the years go on and rightly so.