Published 2016 on Down Under Flix
Director: Russell Mulcahy
Director: Russell Mulcahy
Stars: Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis, Jesse Spencer
First viewing, via DVD
A
quarter of a century ago, Russell Mulcahy’s music video for ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ became the first ever
screened on MTV. As a music video director, Mulcahy helped define the form and
helmed many of the medium’s most iconic, bombastic clips, including Bonnie
Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ and a good portion of
the Duran Duran catalogue. As a filmmaker, he’s best known for genre fare
(action, sci-fi, horror), from Ozploitation gem Razorback and cult
classic Highlander to
recent episodes of TV’s Teen
Wolf.
Suffice
to say, when I think of Russell Mulcahy, I think of smoky visuals, dramatic
backlighting and shafts of light, killer swine hating on humans, sword-fighting
immortals decapitating each other, Christopher Lambert as a Scotsman, Sean
Connery as an Egyptian, and Queen. A modest drama about sibling swimmers
pressured into competition by an abusive, alcoholic father doesn’t spring
to mind, but Mulcahy defies pigeonholing with Swimming Upstream.
Swimming
Upstream is
based on the autobiography of former swimmer Tony Fingleton, who serves as
screenwriter. The film kicks off during Tony’s childhood growing up under a
moody, negligent father (Geoffrey Rush) in a volatile, working class household
held together by his resilient mother (Judy Davis). When Tony and his brother
John show talent in the swimming pool, Harold takes an interest and trains them
to be competitive swimmers. However, Harold favours John over Tony, creating an
irrevocable rift between siblings and within the fragile family unit.
At
first glance Mulcahy doesn’t seem an intuitive match for a biopic squarely
focused on familial drama. The majority of his film work post-Razorback has been done
overseas (though he helmed a well-regarded adaptation of Nevil Shute’s classic
Australian novel On the
Beach in the early noughties) and, as indicated above, his CV
has been genre-centric. He’s sort of like a cheaper, pulpier Ridley Scott (or
maybe an Antipodean Tony Scott, since the late director’s already a cheaper,
pulpier Ridley Scott) and though I don’t subscribe to or take much stock in
“style over substance” branding, I can see why he’s been slapped with that
label. And yet Mulcahy proves a very fine fit for the material, curbing his more
overt stylistic tendencies whilst also deploying his visual skill set to
service and bolster the storytelling in ways not necessarily perceptible on
first viewing.
Take,
by way of example, the swimming sequences. Mulcahy uses panning shots, tracking
shots, quick cutting, and so on to give the scenes energy and propulsion, where
other directors wouldn’t necessarily have treated them with visual panache.
Similarly, in scenes where Harold is heavily intoxicated, there’s an unsteady,
boozy quality to the camerawork and compositions. While there are a few moments
of more overt stylisation – a dream-like moment where Tony floats through the
hallway of his home, a rough altercation between father and son filmed from the
kitchen floor’s vantage point – they’re not counter to the tone or
storytelling.
Mulcahy
also serves his actors well, foregrounding the strong performances. Jesse
Spencer gives a likeable, wounded, empathetic performance as the young adult
Tony. Mitchell Dellevergin is similarly likeable as his younger self, and
the actors comprising both young and old versions of Tony’s siblings also do
nice work. But the gravitational centre of the film is the work of Judy Davis
and Geoffrey Rush as Dora and Harold Fingleton. Swimming Upstream marks
the second of three onscreen pairings of these actors (see also Children of the Revolution and The Eye of the Storm) and
they’re a formidable pair. Davis excels as a matriarch who remains strong for
her children but struggles to muster strength to leave her husband, while
Rush’s patriarch is a monstrous, unsavoury creation. Harold is egocentric,
crippled by liquor & self-pity, and incapable of expressing love for his
children; however, Rush’s innate likability also invests the character with a
tragic dimension.
At
some point in Down Under Flix’s future I plan to do a month of sports movies:
sports flicks are a staple film genre and sport looms large in Australian
culture, and yet local movies about sports are fairly sporadic. While Swimming Upstream is a
familiar sports biopic in some respects – in much the same way that Paradise Found is a somewhat rote artist
biopic – it’s also a pitch black portrait of alcoholism and domestic abuse as
well as a fine recreation of its era (the 1940s and 50s), with impeccable
period detail in décor and wardrobe from the baths to the bars.
Overall, Russell Mulcahy shelves the dry ice and fog here, delivering a
solid human drama and tribute to its subject/author. Random side note for
others of my vintage (namely children of the 90s): Swimming Upstream isn’t the only
film bearing Fingleton’s name as screenwriter: he also co-scripted Drop Dead Fred. Mind. Blown.
Ben Kooyman