Published 2017 on Down Under Flix
With 1982’s Barbarosa, Fred Schepisi became the first of the Australian New Wave directors to make the pilgrimage overseas, kickstarting a trend of Australian directors selling their wares abroad. George Miller followed with his contribution to 1983’s Twilight Zone: The Movie, Gillian Armstrong with 1984’s Mrs Soffel, Peter Weir with 1985’s Witness, and so on. The trend continues to this day (seen most recently with David Michod’s Netflix film War Machine and the Spierig Brothers’ Jigsaw), with directors pursuing bigger budgets and diverse opportunities outside the confines of the Australian film industry. This article is the first in an ongoing series that will highlight some of the lesser-known or neglected ventures of Australian filmmakers working overseas. And given my established fascination with Bruce Beresford’s work—as discussed here and here and here—I’ll kick off by looking at three of his lesser known overseas productions: King David (1985), Crimes of the Heart (1986), and Last Dance (1996).
King David
Starring: Richard Gere, Edward Woodward, Alice Krige, Jean-Marc Barr
One
of Bruce Beresford’s strengths as a director, particularly in his adaptation of
books and plays to screen, is his unobtrusiveness. Beresford’s own style
doesn’t get in the way of the material; rather, he translates the material with
as much clarity as possible and finds ways to amplify what’s on the page, a
quality evident in films like Breaker Morant or Driving Miss Daisy or his David Williamson adaptations. However, that doesn’t
quite work in favour of King David.
King
David chronicles
the life of David from his youth to his deathbed, recounting the King’s triumphs
and struggles. David is played by Richard Gere—then at the height of his
matinee idolatry following American Gigolo and An Officer and a Gentlemen—who was unfairly maligned for his performance.
Gere is an underrated actor and he’s fine here, though I’ll concede his
strengths lie with contemporary subject matter and material that exploits the
friction between his copious charisma and moral shades of grey.
The
Biblical story of David is compelling on the page regardless of one’s faith,
but doesn’t quite conform to an innately cinematic shape. Consequently,
Beresford’s unobtrusiveness makes for a very straight, somewhat flavourless
retelling of the tale, with none of the romance or bombast or theatricality or
corn of the great 1950s Biblical epics, nor the grit or curious (and often
misguided) postmodernist choices of recent films like Noah or Exodus: Gods and Kings. With production design from
James Bond and Stanley Kubrick go-to Ken Adam and photography by Don McAlpine—a
regular Beresford collaborator who also shot the likes of Predator, Moulin Rouge! and The Dressmaker—the film is visually
excellent. It just resides at the blander end of the Biblical adaptation
spectrum.
Crimes of the Heart
Starring: Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepard
Following King David’s critical and commercial
disappointment, two new Beresford films debuted in 1986: the Australian
film The
Fringe Dwellers, reviewed here,
and Crimes of
the Heart.
While both films depict women’s struggles in small-town communities, in terms
of tone and cultural milieus the films are chalk and cheese. Crimes of the Heart centres on three
disparate sisters reunited following a shocking incident: Lenny (Diane Keaton)
is their grandfather’s primary care, mousy and endangered with spinsterhood;
Meg (Jessica Lange) is a rising star back from the big smoke; and Babe (Sissy
Spacek) just shot her abusive husband. Or as the film’s poster nicely recaps:
Meg just left one, Lenny never had one, Babe just shot one. With the sisters reunited,
dirty laundry is aired and interpersonal conflict ensues, not unlike Radiance (reviewed here), another film dealing with
disparate sisters reunited but, once again, presenting a very different
cultural milieu.
Crimes of
the Heart is
an adaptation of Beth Henley’s Pulitzer-winning play, a relationship drama with
a streak of dark comedy. With adaptations of Don’s Party, Breaker Morant, and The Club (reviewed here)
on his CV and with Driving Miss Daisy in the wings, Beresford is an old hand when it comes to
adapting stage plays to film, and on this project he had a trio of powerhouse
actresses at his disposal, all Oscar winners within the last decade (Keaton
for Annie
Hall,
Spacek for The Coal
Miner’s Daughter, Lange for Tootsie). But some of the performers found the experience frustrating:
in an interview with Joe Queenan, Lange reported that “I had difficulties with
Beresford… He didn’t give us any direction” (If you’re talking to me, your career must be in
trouble, p.
229). Based on interviews I’ve seen with the director, I’m tempted to think
that Lange was mistaking Australian nonchalance for lack of direction.
Having
said that, when watching Crimes of the Heart, it frequently feels like the material and performances haven’t
quite been modulated from stage to screen: Keaton in particular performs much
of the film at a broad, melodramatic pitch that is, at times, a bit much.
Consequently, your enjoyment of the film will hinge on your tolerance for
watching angsty and affluent Southern belles running around a large house
yelling at each other. Personally, I’m fine with that and was very entertained,
but mileages will vary.
Last Dance
Starring: Sharon Stone, Rob Morrow, Peter Gallagher, Jack Thompson,
Randy Quaid
Actress
Elizabeth Banks recently took director Steven Spielberg to task for directing very few films with female
leads, in the process providing a broader indictment of the film industry. While
Spielberg’s filmography is lacking in this department, Beresford’s isn’t too
shabby; he’s directed a number of films with female leads or co-loads,
including the abovementioned Crimes of the Heart, The Getting of Wisdom, Puberty Blues, The Fringe Dwellers, Driving Miss Daisy, Paradise Road, Double Jeapordy, and 1996’s Last Dance. That’s not the only common thread linking the largely
forgotten Last
Dance to
other corners of Beresford’s filmography: it’s his third film starring Jack
Thompson (following Breaker Morant and The Club), the first of three consecutive films featuring women in
prison (preceding Paradise Road and Double Jeapordy), his second film featuring characters sentenced to execution
(following Breaker
Morant),
and the first of two films featuring Dance in the title (followed by Mao’s Last Dancer).
Cindy
(Sharon Stone) is on death row for double homicide and her execution date is
fast approaching. Rick (Rob Morrow), a new recruit at the Governor’s office,
takes on her clemency case. Beresford’s film peels back the onion on Cindy’s
case, with Rick uncovering new facts and evidence which throw the circumstances
of her arrest and incarceration into doubt, as Cindy grapples with her looming
execution.
The
1990s saw a whole spate of American films about death row—see Dead Man Walking, Just Cause, The Chamber, True Crime, The Green Mile—clearly capitalising on
topical debates about the ethics of the death sentence. If Dead Man Walking and The Green Mile occupy the upper tier
of this list, Last Dance is firmly on the middle tier: it’s a solid, efficient, but
fairly generic drama. Morrow’s a somewhat vanilla leading man, but the rest of
the cast do sturdy work. Stone, transitioning from the erotic thrillers that
made her a household name, is de-glamourised and sells Cindy’s humanity, her
tough exterior concealing a vulnerable interior. The actress was undeservedly
nominated for a Razzie for her performance, as was Richard Gere for King David, both proof positive that
the Razzies are an innately misguided institution. A pre-bonkers Randy Quaid
acquits himself well as Rick’s manager, while Jack Thompson continues his
streak in the mid-1990s playing American men of influence as the film’s
Governor.
Ben Kooyman