Wake in Fright
Wake in Fright, then go back to sleep before you remember what you did
1971
Jeez, what a bunch of stinking flaming mongrels us Aussies were.
Wake in Fright in no uncertain terms establishes what a bunch of drunks and wasters populated the country before the quality children of the baby boomers came along and improved things immeasurably in the 80s and 90s.
Before that, well, fucking hell. Hell on earth both literally and figuratively. The place the wretched go in order to get their divine punishment.
I wanted to start this review by trying to argue that this isn’t really an Australian film anyway, but I feel like my argument ran out of steam before it started. I was going to argue that a film directed by a Canadian starring a British guy (Gary Bond) and co-starring another British guy (Donald Pleasance) was about as Australian as Madonna trying to do a Queensland accent, or Kylie Minogue trying to do a genteel English accent. But I can’t get past the fact that it’s based on a book written by an Australian author, being Kenneth Cook, who clearly saw how wretched the people of Broken Hill were back in the day. Certainly not now. I’m sure all Broken Hill’s residents are driving around in convertibles wearing monocles and top hats while smoking cigarettes out of fancy cigarette holders.
Or maybe it’s all meth and vaping these days, hard to know for sure.
This flick feels like it’s filmed on an alien planet, even to someone who’s been to these kinds of places, and been thrown out of those kinds of salt of the earth pubs, who’s never spent a cent on two-up or the pokies, but who’s drunk a fair few million pots of beer, and even, to my admitted shame, gone spotlighting and shot at the local fauna.
But even I watch this flick unable to believe what I’m watching, even as I’ve seen this kind of lifestyle firsthand.
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