Australian Film in 2009: An Overview
© Bernard Hemingway, 2010 Cannot be reprinted without permission of the author*.
In a record-breaking year in which Australians spent over $1bn at the cinema for the first time ever, Australian films managed to corral about 5% of that haul. Whilst in absolute terms it is but a small slice of the take, the good news is that it is the biggest share since 2001 and comes hard on the heels of desultory figures for the previous two years. The good news is slightly skewed by the fact that the top grossing film, Bruce Beresford's best-seller-based biopic, Mao’s Last Dancer had very little actual Australian content Privately financed to the tune of $25 million it took nearly $15 million in domestic ticket sales putting it a good few lengths in front of its closest rivals Dean Murphy's likeable ocker comedy Charlie & Boots ($3.9m ) and Warwick Thornton's Samson & Delilah ( $3.2m). Given however that Samson & Delilah cost a modest $1.6m to make and promises to have a lot of commercial mileage left in it, combined with its enthusiastic critical reception, it was without doubt the success story of 2009.
Two other films that came close to Samson & Delilah in terms of bagging critical plaudits, Mary & Max and Balibo, which won the Australian Film Critics' Association Award of Best Film for 2009, failed to win over the public. Realizing combined sales of only some $1.5m they fell far short of their budgets of $8m and $4.5m respectively.
Box office success is a rarity for Australian films (Samson & Delilah was the only Australian film to go into the black in 2009 on ticket sales alone) but this year's wooden spoon goes to the soft-peddling slasher horror/thriller exploitation movie, Prey, starring pop celebrity Natalie Bassingthwaighte. It left its investors $3.5m out of pocket, garnering official ticket sales of $774. Ouch!
Another pop singer, Natalie Imbruglia, fared only marginally better in James Bogle's much superior, Closed For Winter. Unfortunately the film, which dealt with a young woman's grief for her dead sister was too dour and in the lead role Ms Imbruglia was too out of her depth for the film to generate much warmth with either the critics or the public. Surprisingly Sarah Watt's My Year Without Sex, despite taking just over $1m disappointed expectations, whilst Steve Jacobs fared only marginally better in tickets sales for Disgrace. Other films which received critical plaudits but obly lukewarm responses from the film-going public were Blessed, Last Ride and Two Fists, One Heart. One of the most undeservedly neglected films of the year was Lake Mungo a clever supernatural/psychological thriller which has been picked up for a Hollywood remake.
On the other hand, Rachel Ward's debut feature, Beautiful Kate, which also dealt with family dysfunctionality scored encouragingly well in both critical and public opinion, its ticket sales of $1.5m making it the 5th highest grossing Australian film of 2009 (Jane Campion's Bright Star was released at the very tail end of 2009 and will be counted in 2010 results), not far behind Scott Hick's The Boys Are Back which also dealt with a popular subject this year, bereavement.
Bereavement of a very different kind was the subject of one of the most impressive and challenging Australian films of the year Jonathan auf der Heide Van Dieman's Land, the year's only period piece. Dealing with a true story of cannibalism during Tasmania's convict days and made on a very modest budget of $800,000 on the back of a very limited release it found an understandably small but appreciative audience.
Coincidentally, two films which also had relatively small budgets ($1.2m and $1.4m) and which both dealt with the Lebanese community of Sydney's Western suburbs, The Combination and Cedar Boys stood out as amongst the strongest independent features of the year. Taking $700,000 in theatrical sales The Combination lay just outside the group of 2009's top grossing films, a handsome result given its limited release and a misguided advertising campaign. Although a strong debut, Cedar Boys fared far less well with sales of only $200,000.
One film that was easy to market was Eric Bana's homage to 1970s Aussie car culture, Love The Beast, which took nearly $800,000 in theatrical sales. Documentaries did not feature prominently this year. Shadows Of The Past, The Chifleys Of Busby Street and Bastardy all made valuable contribution to our cultural archive whilst The Burning Season took on the destruction of forests in Indonesia.
David Ceasar's Prime Mover stalled before it left the yard, Sue Brooks's Subdivision failed to attract bidders and after slow business in NSW and Queensland was pulled by it distributors, Disney, whilst Matthew Newton's smartly written comedy-drama Three Blind Mice, despite making many critics best-of lists for the year did negligible business on a patchy release.
Chris Moon's low budget comedy The Marriage Of Figaro did nearly as same amount of business ($88,000) as Richard Franklin's Aboriginal comedy Stone Bros despite have only a fraction of the latter's $3.3m budget. Few people agreed with the title of Dean O'Flaherty's Beautiful and Kriv Stender's Lucky Country with ticket sales of $27,000 was for the director decidedly not.
Bringing up the rear for 2009 were entrants in the fright market, Bad Bush, Coffin Rock and Crush, the latter managing only a one week theatrical release in its home town of Perth although reportedly its cable, TV and DVD rights sales have been healthy. The Australian-Iranian co-production My Tehran For Sale did negligible business whilst from Australia's veteran auteur, Paul Cox's Salvation barely saw the light of a projector before going into storage.
Finally, one of the highpoints of the year was the theatrical release of the fully restored Wake In Fright (originally released in 1971), an event which gave audiences a chance to see one of the best Australian films ever made (ironically, directed by a Canadian).
2009 was in once sense a very good year with the quality of the films heartening a domestic audience dispirited by the lacklustre offerings of recent times. The resultant 5% share of the total box office is marginally better than the 10 year average of 4.4%. Yet whilst there may be individual triumphs like Warwick Thornton's Samson & Delilah, there are still not many reasons to be cheerful in general. Piecemeal distribution continues to dog Australian film unable to compete with the Hollywood monster whilst Government funding increasingly becomes tied to track record in an attempt to reduce risk. In such a climate it is only to be wondered at that we produce so many fine films as we do. Here's to 2010!
*Box Office figure courtesy of Inside Film