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| Our heritage on the cheap |
| Film: "Backroads" (R) |
| Cinema: Longford. |
The most frugal film director can do only so much with a bedrock budget of $23, 000. For example, it cost $30 million to remake "King Kong" and $26 million has been spent on filming "The Deep", Peter Benchly's follow up to "Jaws". Australia's costliest film "Eliza Fraser" devoured $977,000 more that "Backroads". |
How, then can one criticise this "cheapie" – Australian Phil Noyce's first action feature film? Frankly, I can't. But I'm sorry Noyce didn't have the money to add another 40 to 50 minutes to this highly controversial film. If he had, "Backroads" might have been the most important social document filmed in Australia. |
And it certainly would have gained commercial release on the secrets of one of the major exhibitors. This is a pity because "Back roads" is a film which should be seen by every Australian with even a smattering of social conscience. |
Despite his meagre money reserves, Noyce secured the services of Russell Boyd, probably Australia's finest cinema-tographer. Boyd, whose camera work on "Picnic At Hanging Rock" won him and the film international acclaim, fills the screen with sunburnt Australian outback landscapes. |
As the sun paints multicolored lights on Boyd's lens, we see the arid red wastes of the desolate inland of central western NSW. This is the land our forebears stole from the Aboriginals who from being proud dignified people, have degenerated to an existence of shanties, idleness and cheap, flagon wine. |
It is around this hopelessness that Noyce has woven the story of "Backroads." But more than being just a study of idle Aboriginals, it depicts several whites in a state of comparable degeneration. |
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