(I wrote this a couple of years ago, it’s been sitting in my drafts folder)
Earlier this year, under the cover of winter, we watched a very long series set in provincial France during and after WWII. It was approximately 72 hours long over 7 series and after a while I tired of it. Yet the idea of such affairs is that one becomes addicted to them, losing any capacity for critical thinking, and hey, even if it’s jumped the shark, apparently we are supposed to want to know what happens next…and next….and next. More and more I see friends around me losing their normal faculties as they sit on the sofa, mesmerised by stuff that once upon a time they wouldn’t have watched at all. It’s not that I object to sitting on the sofa watching a screen – it’s the content that’s problematic. I have friends who used to talk about politics and cinema and life, who now can’t seem to get past ‘I watched this crazy Korean reality show…’ or ‘Have you seen the Queen’s Gambit?’ They all seem to be in denial, so when I say ‘We don’t watch Netflix’, I know for sure they will ask the same question a few days later. ‘We don’t watch Netflix’ does not compute.
If you know anybody who is an addict, you will be familiar with the notion that the addict wants you to share their habit. That was the case with a friend of mine, who was constantly wanting to share Netflix rubbish with me. And then when I pointed out she was addicted, she did exactly what addicts do. She cut me off. I am dead to her. [update, she came around, after two years 🙂 ]
Watching A French Village had the unexpected bonus that I took up knitting again in earnest so that I had something to do to pass the time, as every time I questioned something happening on screen the answer was ‘To have a story’. But it also made me undertake an experiment to balance the time I’d fairly mindlessly passed by watching this series, with what would have happened if I’d spent that time watching movies instead. As this is not going to be peer-reviewed, I had no compunction in rounding the series to 72 hours, and I supposed that a movie was two hours, hence I would watch 36 movies and try to get a sense of which had been a better experience. Lots of the movies I saw on SBS On Demand, sitting on the sofa. Some were at the cinema. I wanted lots of them to be online so that I wasn’t comparing a great cinema experience (films) with a bad series experience (small screen, ads).
These are in the order in which they were watched.
(1) Under Cover of the Clouds (Australian) might be the oddest film I’ve ever watched. It has no actors – family is used – no story line, no script. Rather, the camera pointed at the director and his family for some hours and cut the footage down into the presented film. It has been highly praised at a critical level, even suggesting it’s a new genre.
(2) L’Hermine (French) is a very understated look at a standoffish (as they must be) judge and a particular case. After suffering through interminable episodes of the oh-so-staged Spiral (French, police and the legal system), it was a pleasure to watch something that felt real.
(3) Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. I had seen it before and as it’s a fav of my partner’s, I agreed to try it again. Has a more shouty bangy movie ever been made? I still hate it and on top of that, I’ve now read the story of the young girl who starred and suffered horrendously at the hands of the director.
(4) Spoor (Polish) Based on the book Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, which I have not read, it has overtones (at least) of magic realism which is something I try to avoid. But some people will like that, and in any case there is much to appreciate in the film.
(5) Cut Snake (Australian) After that rash of Australian shows years back like Underbelly which glamorised that crime world, it’s always a relief to see one which feels real. This one, twist and all, does. Without wanting to say anything which might be a spoiler, the development of the main character may call upon you to shed a tear.
(6) 45 Years (British) A couple are about to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary. The wife discovers that to some extent or another, their life together has been a lie as her husband is obsessed – still – with a previous relationship, cut short when the other party died. As the onlooker, one might try to interpret that in some way along the lines of ‘He loves you, that doesn’t mean anything’ but in my experience that doesn’t cut it, and by the end of the film nor does it look like it’ll do for the wife. Age is relevant to the film to the extent that when you discover the lie, you have to start life again. Discover it when you are young and that gives you a lot of recovery time. But what does the wife have here? 45 Years isn’t a film about age in that way the comedy capers set in Aged Care are, or the films about putting your demented wife down with a pillow because that’s love. Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay are perfect.
(7) Bait Wiki calls this a British film, but it feels Cornish to me and I wouldn’t want that to get lost. Unlike so many films that rely on striking cinematography this one has a vital story and an interestingly experimental way of telling it.
(8) Bellbird What’s to say about this other than it is apparently impossible for NZers to make movies that rate lower than 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
(9) An Education See Fish Tank #14
(10) Galore I don’t know why critics were down on this. I almost turned this off when I discovered that it was about teenagers being teenagers, but it’s a really thoughtful film that captures Canberra suburbia in all its dreariness. Pleased to recommend it.
(11) Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom In English and Dzongkha, a major Bhutanese language. Saw this at the Piccadilly, it’s heart-warming and life-affirming….but watch it anyway!
(12) Capernaum A Lebanese film which caused some controversy. Is it exploitative? In my following of what happens to child actors, especially those who are untrained, I add this as a story which is probably unhappy….
(13) Clash Like When Pomegranates Howl, this was a small budget indie entered by Egypt for the Academy Awards, but also not nominated. Tom Hanks likes it A LOT, but honestly, it’s totally worth watching.
(14) Fish Tank Loved this. In the case of the lead, one can say life follows art. Sad. Impossible not to compare it with An Education (above, #9) Young girls being exploited even as they probably see themselves as the one in charge. Both get away, but one sees a happy ending for Jenny, the lead character in An Education, and more likely unfounded optimism for Mia.
(15) The Last Wave I didn’t love this, but if you care about the history and development of cinema in Australia, it’s one you have to watch. It’s an early Peter Weir film, slots in between Picnic and Gallipoli.
(16) Hive Wonderful Kosovan film about women trying to make something out of nothing – I suppose I should call that a genre. Fighting the men all the way, of course.
(17) Sometimes, Always, Never I play Scrabble for time to time, and it’s irritating to admit, but I’m a common or garden variety Bill Nighy tragic. Checking online, it may be that only Australian readers will understand that expression. It’s explained here.
(18) Jasper Jones Charming Oz film.
(19) Sundown Movies are about rich people’s problems get my hackles up. But the unsettling ambiguity of this film overcomes that cheap criticism. Come out hating or loving it. They are both a fair call.
(20) Silent Night Polish, directed by Piotr Domalewski. I liked this a lot. A Polish friend professed discomfort at how the people in it are portrayed….but maybe I’ve watched Australians as a group be knocked about enough in the cinema that I’m hardened. It felt very real to me.
(21) Boy Eating His Bird’s Food Exquisite, sad Greek film, one of the growing body of films reflecting upon the consequences of what Germany has done to Greece. Watch these in conjunction with reading Yanis Varoufakis.
(22) Last and First Men The opportunities for seeing this are probably limited, maybe if Tilda Swinton dies and there’s a complete retrospective by Criterion? But what a film! It’s based on Stapledon’s 1930 scifi novel of the same name.
(23) Still River (dud)
(24) Charlie and Boots I didn’t expect to like this, but hey, I’ve done worse things than knit my way through this Oz film.
(25) Phantom of the Open Saw this at the Piccadilly, much better than I expected
(26) I am Tempesta If only the Italians and French could stop making comedies.
(27) Operation Mincemeat Another cinema experience, it felt like a very smooth big budget film compared with most on this list.
(28) The Squid and the Whale Now and again a good American movie comes out. As far as I can tell, the quality of a film is generally inversely proportional to the budget and perhaps that applies particularly to US endeavours.
(29) Some Happy Day The 2021 Australian movie set in St Kilda. It used to be my neck of the woods and I was acutely aware that the fucked up homeless people of the area weren’t that much different from me, fucked up and living in other people’s places. The film’s a great account of all of that.
(30) The Interrogation That’s the 2016 account of Höss’s interrogation. In German and Polish. Brought Hannah Arendt to mind.
(31) LA Story Hated this just as much as I expected to. Overblown Hollywood. It’s hard to believe that Steve Martin was once a good standup comedian.
(32) Tangerines Estonian There are some moving portrayals of East European wars which make real what the media reports don’t. This one is about Separatists in Georgia in the Abkhazia area, ethnic Estonians backed by Russia. I thought it was terrific.
(33) Three Thousand Years of Longing Sorry, George Miller, but I hated this. Another one seen in a cinema, under protest, I might add.
(34) When Pomegranates Howl First released at an Adelaide FF, it’s the sort of film that escapes a place on Rotten Tomatoes. Too low budget, too obscure, too far away. But it’s a beautiful film depicting life for an Afghan boy in Kabul, trying to make life out of almost nothing. Curiously, it was Australia’s official entry to the 2022 Academy Awards but was not nominated. That went well.
(35) The Shadow of the Day Saw this at the Italian FF, a drama set in the Fascist period (if we suppose that it had a start and finish, a notion I think is moot). Easy to watch, we liked it.
(36) You Won’t Be Alone Directed by Macedonian-Australian Goran Stolevski, it’s in Macedonian. It’s in the horror fantasy vein, which will apparently appeal to practically everybody in the world, but it’s not for me. That said, I consider it to be a superior example of that tedious genre.
Conclusion: I had an incredibly rich experience, despite the odd (generally predictable) dud. Next time you are thinking of pop-corning your way through some ‘amazing’ Netflix series, try doing this instead.
This and That 
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