I really wanted to enjoy this show but I couldn't get past the poor cinematography, editing and average acting. It almost felt lazy, like it was too much effort to set up and film more shots for each scene.
I really did not feel like the cast were in any danger in the battle scenes. I can imagine that the real soldiers would have been constantly wondering if they would be the next to take a shot- I didn't feel any of that at all. Maybe my expectations were too high.
Totally agree with you there. The image is so obviously digital and there has been no attempt made to create any visual atmosphere with filters or colour manipulation. It just looks like a bunch of kids playing war games out on the Mornington peninsula. Oh wait, that is exactly what it is anyway. Whole thing should have been shot on film for a start. I think for the 100 year remembrances I will just re-watch ANZACS from 1985.
shareExactly! It was like they were just playing paintball, you would expect that the first time in battle would be so shocking for the new soldiers and so emotional when their mates went down on that first day especially.
shareAgreed again. What is more frustrating is that the fear and oppressive atmosphere of war was portrayed better in ANZAC GIRLS or the BBC's the CRIMSON FIELD and that wasn't even centred on the action of the front line.
Basically just another disappointing production from channel 9.
Disagree.
O lawdy, how I disagree.
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Well I now feel I need to take back my observation with adjustments. I initially had my photography hat on, and was viewing it with that sense of criticism. I have re- watched it today with the playback monitor (television) adjusted to higher contrast and less colour and the visual effect is now quite astonishing. And re-reading the source material also indicates that the initial landing and trek up the hill was less like war at the start than what ended that disastrous first day, so with that in mind the depiction here was very good.
On second viewing I also noted the music score which seems to closely follow the use of music in Malicks Thin Red Line which was immensely effective also. Certainly in that film the sense of war being 'banal and terrifying' was the key element.
Looking forward to the second episode now.
Good to hear, wolfgirv-1.
I mean, I do definitely agree that shooting on film stock would have yielded a better image (I'm one of the biggest film enthusiasts you'll meet), but nevertheless I never felt that the series looked cheap at all. The production design and attention to detail is absolutely staggering.
Just watched episode two and this series is quickly becoming the best major tv event I've seen for years. Again the Malick influence is noticeable, not so much in the poetic way he tells his stories, but the emotional use of music and memories reflected by Tolly. I find it personally a very resonating emotional story telling device, that can briefly overcome what most would call cliché moments but gives us a satisfying link to the life before the Gallipoli carnage. Just what is a cliché anyway? Something that is used all the time because every single person recognises it and has experienced it?
What is most distressing now is the rating failure that it has quickly become. Audience halved by episode two, and criticism about the whole ANZAC "legend" beginning to surface. It seems to me now that this show does more to put the ANZAC myth into perspective than anything else.
I can only be thankful it will all be available on Blu-ray by April
Audience halved by episode two, and criticism about the whole ANZAC "legend" beginning to surface. It seems to me now that this show does more to put the ANZAC myth into perspective than anything else.
Very true. I don't think that the multicultural population of Australia in 2015 can relate at all to the character of young Australian men in 1915 who lived off the land and had a far more carefree attitude to life and discipline than their British parents who migrated to this land only a generation before.
Another killer of the success of this show is advertising. The amount of ads is appalling and it really destroys the momentum of the story telling. If it had been shown on the ABC like Anzac Girls it would have had a better run.
But like you, I think it will find its audience on Blu-ray for sure.
Yeah we pink skins are exclusively manly men, and really are the only people who now what war's like. That mollycoddled 'multicultural' bunch - I mean, what do Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese etc - what do any of them know of war?
Yeah bugger those PC wimps. White power!
While I sympathize with your attempt at sarcasm, I do think you missed my point. The whole Anzac legend is based on the very "qualities' that I mentioned. There is no nation on earth that hasn't experienced the horror of war in some shape or form, but the mechanized advancements of World War One exposed idealistic young men to a horror unlike anything they had ever seen, and yet the larrikin character of Australian soldiers made them well known at that time and their lack of discipline and disregard for aristocratic British commanders made them an embarrassment to the British empire and the British command. That didn't make them any more or less manly men, but it did make them memorable, it made the Anzac legend which was something recognized by both the Turkish defenders, and later by the French people they encountered at Pozieres, so don't attempt to turn my observations into some politically correct left wing racist rant.
shareI thought it showed quite well how banal it would have been in one sense but simultaneously terrifyingSpot on
Sure you did not leave the 100MHz function of your tv switched on? The quality is hardly worse than anything else on internation standard.
In fact I like that the grading avoids falling too much into some retro-look, which while selling that this occured a long time ago would also have created some distance to the characters. And if this show manages to achieve perfectly, it is avoiding that distance to the degree that we have to cope with a lack of information, as the characters don't spill out their "origin story" one by one as we are used to on tv.