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The Turning embodies everything that ever wrong with Australian films

posted 10 years ago by imcfadyen
17 replies | jump to latest

I saw this film in its cut down version on television recently. I thought it would never end. I was even more alarmed when I found that the theatrical version was even longer. The Turning manages to incorporate (I won’t say encapsulate because that implies something concise) almost everything that was ever wrong with Australian films. It is boring, unstructured, inconclusive and preferences imagery over narrative as if the makers believed that shots of sunsets can somehow signify human emotion. Almost every shot is too long, the extended silences are unbearable, characters are incommunicative and nothing is ever resolved for the better. It is impossible to find any consistent theme or linking idea between the different stories (if they even qualify as stories) except a vague idea that life is depressing, people live in private hells and just when you think you think it’s all going to change, it doesn’t. In an effort to enliven things, the producers hit on the idea of having different directors for each of the short stories. Remarkably, despite this, there is almost no discernible stylistic variation - no light and shade - across the production. Overall, watching it was like attending a screening of films by final-year film school students which might be explained by the fact that many of the directors of The Turning were comparatively inexperienced. Whatever visual sense they might have, they did not have the skill to tackle the formidable task of turning written words into film.

The Turning is a salutary lesson in the problems of filming novels and short stories. Simply showing the same images that are described in the book does not imbue those images with the same significance they have when presented in written sentences. And the mood and pace of many books are simply not suitable for film treatment.

There have been many successful films made in Australia over the last forty years, but we can never forget the hundreds of slow, indulgent, obscure, naïve, depressing and boring films which never made their production costs back and which are the main reason Australia does not have a viable film industry today. To rub salt into the wound, The Turning features some of the most internationally renowned and expensive actors Australia has produced. The film should have set as a final year project for film school students. It probably would have produced a better result

[–] hovee77 10 years ago

Some of the stories were incredibly boring (the ballet one in particular) and some were really good but they all suffered from being inconclusive and unfulfilling. Just as you started to get hooked in they ended, and another tale would commence only to leave the viewer hanging again. The actors and cinematography were great but overall this was a big disappointment for me.

[–] hovee77 10 years ago

It was also very pretentious to have some characters played by different actors. I didn't even know this until reading about the film afterwards. This has a bearing on the film as a whole as the stories interwine and not knowing reduces the overall effect and point of the stories.

[–] cinesimonj 10 years ago

Yes we must all be told exactly what to think - otherwise, Australian films will NEVER be as brilliant as American films! We.Must.Assimilate.

[–] hovee77 10 years ago

I love Australian films but doing this with the actors is just pretentious.

[–] Siamois 10 years ago

This will come as a shocker but not everyone who finds drivel like this boring is a Hollywood lover.

[–] St_Anus 10 years ago

Agree, but i think Aussies are pretty lazy film watches really, and they aren't as open minded as people from other countries. For us American film is it, and we don't mind films from other countries as long as they are in English.

Australians are not particularly good at making art films though. I'm not sure if it's because the culture isn't sophisticated and that lack of sophistication comes across on film, or if it's an issue of education and training and/or a lack of vision, but they just aren't that great.

Australians don't excel in the arts though, regardless of field. I think most of our writers are quite overrated and you don't hear much about them outside of Australia and the U.K.

[–] Fusion72 10 years ago

Well the actors do.

[–] benman46 9 years ago

What is an art film though? It is a very non-specific term. My brother thinks an art film is a foreign one with subtitles, forgetting that the reason it is subtitled is because it's in a foreign language. He is a simpleton though. Does anybody still use the term?

[–] dreamingofdharma 8 years ago

Like others have mentioned here, it was glaringly obvious to me the amateur nature of the majority of this film. The execution of this idea is just off; it didn't work, but it was a good effort and you don't get better by not making mistakes. The OP is right in saying this film embodies everything "wrong" with australian film as it is a product of the unsophisticated industry that made it, but that is primarily a result of being a relatively new country, and by new i mean the white settlers who stole their voice from the aborigines who, by contrast, do not have an unsophisticated culture, but there is not much we can do about it now other than continue to acknowledge the appalling barbarity committed against an entire society and culture of people and lets hope aborigine and australian culture are solidified as we move forward, as the aborigine voice is still largely unheard, but thats another discussion altogether. Australian cinema is still trying to find its place, it's trying to find its voice and exactly what it wants that voice to say, which puts Australian filmmakers in a very exciting place as it's a lot easier to dictate that voice when there isn't already a voice you are trying to replace, and as they are finding their feet there are bound to be a few mistakes made along the way, and because the industry is not yet thriving it is not a solid investment like hollywood is, resulting in less films being made and less opportunity for the industry to 'hone their craft' so to speak. This is the story for every industry ever, and until more money is being funnelled into the industry, which will be a slow burn, australian film will continue to be amateur until it is not. Which is not to say that australian film is "worse" than british film for example, but it is just at a different place on the same trajectory that more experienced industries were once at too.

also "or if it's an issue of education and training." Australia is a well-resourced wealthy privileged country not Ethiopia, stop making excuses for a culture behaving in exactly the way that sociology would dictate. And please, "and/or a lack of vision, but they just aren't that great" this is just stupid.

[–] haggar 10 years ago

I do have to agree about the non-communicative characters. That bothered me a lot. It looks so odd and totally unnatural.

[–] globalist 10 years ago

Exactly my sentiments - for the entire 20 minutes I could bear watching this drivel I kept thinking "are the makers of these shorts some film-school sophomores"? Pretentious to the max...

1/10

- don't worry, that's just my signature there.

[–] Jamal-Nazreddin 10 years ago

This bore-fest tells us that the PC Brigade are in charge of the government purse-strings.

[–] benman46 9 years ago

You obviously don't know what PC means, which is why your comment makes no sense.

[–] Jamal-Nazreddin 9 years ago

^ It means "political correctness" which is self-censorship.

[–] benman46 9 years ago

Yes I know what it means, but your comment doesn't make sense.

[–] spookyrat1 9 years ago

The Turning is a salutary lesson in the problems of filming novels and short stories.

The fact that at some cinema/festival screenings the audience were handed extensive summaries of the stories, presumably to make the narrative easier to connect, does appear to reflect a collective self-indulgence on the part of the producers.🐭

[–] jname967 8 years ago

I don't know anything about Australian film history, but I came to this board to voice my innate dislike of this film upon viewing the first few "vignettes". The first one was quite simplistic, but I figured the plot lent itself to that—everything was literally described to us, and foretold what wasn't seen... The second one was just too precious and "coy" for its own good. It wasn't so much tongue-in-cheek as sledgehammer-on-toe.

And the third one that turned me off completely from viewing the rest of this apparently lengthy film was the contrived tale of a near-middle-aged man feeling compelled—appropo to nothing that we saw at all—to visit a recent scene of a young child's death—and then crying at the end, after (re-imagining? speculating?) on how it occurred. This struck me as blatant schlock, sentimentality, and utterly contrived. Are we supposed to feel something, because he's crying over a stranger's death? There is nothing new being portrayed here, nothing insightful or earned.

That's when I though: Hmm... there's something wrong with this film.

Then I came to this board, and this thread confirmed all that. Thanks for validating what I felt, and shedding insight into the apparent plight of Australia's film and arts scene.