tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

Peter Weir's comprehensive profile at Senses of Cinema begins with:

Peter Weir helped to define the rebirth of Australian cinema, while addressing some of the most pressing concerns of the nation in the 1970s and 1980s. His intriguing images of Australia, evocative and transcendent, made an impact in the international art house scene, eager for compelling visions of geo-political areas and cultures overlooked by mainstream cinema. After achieving international recognition as an emblematic Australian filmmaker, Weir made his transition to Hollywood while maintaining a sense of experimentation and artistic exploration . . .[ read more ]

I have to say, Peter Weir's films are so diverse, it's hard to pinpoint exactly his focus as a filmmaker. That is, if he has any intention to focus on certain themes. He has done such an impressive list of movies in many genres - dramatic mystery-thrillers (Picnic at Hanging Rock), comedy-romance (Green Card), action-adventure (Master and Commander), science fiction (Truman Show), drama-coming-of-age (Dead Poets' Society).

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After a seven-year absence, the filmmaker has returned via The Way Back. This new film is a fact-based story centered on soldiers who escaped from a Siberian gulag in 1940. It has an impressive cast that includes Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan, Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Gustaf Skarsgård and Sebastian Urzendowsky.

In our way to join the celebration, tMF list down 10 of Peter Weir's most unforgettable movies...

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# 10 - The Mosquito Coast (1986) - I vividly remember this film because I'm a fan of the late River Phoenix and I wanted to see his interaction with Harrison Ford. I know that both actors played important parts in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones adventures and I wanted to watch them in a very different movie. I was a bit surprised to see that it was Helen Mirren who played Mother Fox!

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What the movie is all about: An eccentric and dogmatic inventor (Harrison Ford) sells his house and takes his family to Central America to build an ice factory in the middle of the jungle. Conflicts with his family, a local preacher and with nature are only small obstacles to his obsession. Based upon a Paul Theroux novel.

Critical reception: Romy Sutherland's Senses of Cinema profile of Weir, took note of the critical reviews and said: The Mosquito Coast was the least commercially and critically successful of Weir's Hollywood films. It was a script, adapted from Paul Theroux's novel of the same title, that Weir had been keenly invested in directing for years before it was finally green-lit.

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# 9 - Fearless (1993)- A comment written by an IMDb viewer perfectly describes how I feel about this movie:

Jeff Bridges has been called the most underrated actor of his generation, and 'Fearless' speaks to the truth of such a claim. Equally overlooked is Australian director Peter Weir, who, like Bridges, was snubbed by the Academy Awards for 'Fearless.' The film was almost totally ignored by the Academy, perhaps due to the fact that 1994 was the year of the historical/political epic--'Schindler's List,' 'In the Name of the Father,' and 'The Remains of the Day' were the big winners that year, casting a bit of a shadow over a film about a rich white American suffering from PTSD. [ read more ]

What the movie is all about: After a terrible air disaster, survivor Max Klein emerges a changed person. Unable to connect to his former life or to wife Laura, he feels godlike and invulnerable. When psychologist Bill Perlman is unable to help Max, he has Max meet another survivor, Carla Rodrigo, who is racked with grief and guilt since her baby died in the crash which she and Max survived.

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Featured review/critique:: Says Todd McCarthy at Variety:

As a mainstream film about profound issues and emotions, "Fearless" will deeply affect some viewers who will personally respond to its serious consideration of mortality in a way that combines the psychological, mystical and spiritual. Others, however, will find that Peter Weir's distinctive study of the aftermath of a plane crash breaks apart from undue symbolism and pretension. Warner Bros. appears to be aiming this away from an arthouse niche, and with some top reviews it could get good mileage from discriminating general audiences. In one of his best performances, Jeff Bridges portrays Max Klein, a man who, after walking away from a plane crash that kills his business partner and many other passengers, enters an exalted state in which he feels that he has "passed through death" and believes that nothing can harm him. The crash, he says, is "the best thing that ever happened me," and he is suddenly afraid of nothing and compelled to speak bluntly on every subject. [ read more ]

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# 8 - The Cars that Ate Paris (1974) - Is there any other movie like this? Of course, but for me, it's one-of-a-kind. I have to watch it multiple times to finally decide that I really like it and that I find it extremely fascinating. Hard to put it in words, the best thing to do is watch it, and then decide...

What the movie is all about: A small town in rural Australia (Paris) makes its living by causing car accidents and salvaging any valuables from the wrecks. Into this town come brothers Arthur and George. George is killed when the Parisians cause their car to crash, but Arthur survives and is brought into the community as an orderly at the hospital. But Paris is not problem free. Not only do the Parisians have to be careful of outsiders (such as insurance investigators), but they also have to cope with the young people of the town who are dissatisfied with the status quo.

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Critical reception: I find Marilyn Ferdinand review of the film very interesting, and I quote:

Peter Weir has had a hit-and-miss kind of career for me, but when he made this, his second feature film, he was firing on more than four cylinders. You’re not likely to find a movie quite as quirky as this one that delivers such a potent message at the same time. An article in Pop Matters by Philip Booth says that the continued acceptance in Australia and the United States of the carnage that was the Vietnam War figured prominently in the plot of The Cars that Ate Paris. - - - The Cars that Ate Paris borrows from a number of movie conventions and turns them on their side. On the horror movie side, we have zombies, but they are created through deliberate experimentation and become the equivalent of cuddly Down’s Syndrome children for the townspeople. The evil scientist is a well-respected, well-integrated member of the community. One of the quarter-veggies, let loose in town to work the high-beam lights, gets a tongue-lashing but nothing more when he shoots the town’s minister. He’s left to collect Jaguar hood ornaments, like trophy teeth from any number of war movies

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# 7 - The Last Wave (1977) -  I heard a lot about Richard Chamberlain, and I think in this movie, I began to admire him as an actor and not see him as some adventurer looking for treasures. The movie is eerie, sometimes creepy.

Some viewers even used the word 'claustrophobic' which I find to be quite true.

What the movie is all about: A Sydney lawyer has more to worry about than higher-than-average rainfall when he is called upon to defend five Aboriginals in court. Determined to break their silence and discover the truth behind the hidden society he suspects lives in his city, the Lawyer is drawn further, and more intimately, into a prophesy that threatens a new Armageddon, wherein all the continent shall drown.

Critical reception: Diane Jacob's wrote this insightful film profile at the Criterion:

Visually stunning from start to finish, The Last Wave exudes the excitement of the so-called “new Australian cinema,” which in the 1970s burst onto the international scene. Where the French New Wave auteurs had reacted against their predecessors, the films of Australia were practically suis generis—for a quarter century, Australian movie screens had been completely dominated by imported Hollywood (and sometimes British) product. Australians’ screen idols were John Wayne and Elizabeth Taylor; their movie landscapes were the streets of London and the American West. Then, in 1970, John Gorton’s government legislated an Australian film industry into existence: opening a state-financed film school and underwriting the early works of Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career), Fred Schepisi (The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith), Bruce Beresford (The Getting of Wisdom), and Phillip Noyce (Newsfront) as well as Peter Weir. [ read more ]

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# 6 - The Truman Show (1998) - Jim Carey's comedic skills is extraordinary. It's hard to make people laugh and while Carey has his share of hits and misses, his performance as Truman Burbank remains one of his career highlights. Ed Harris also did a phenomenal performance and matches Carey every step of the way. What a cast!

What the movie is all about: Truman Burbank is a normal man, living in a normal town. He grew up to be a desk clerk for a insurance company, living an ordinary life, having an ordinary wife, an ordinary neighbour and an ordinary bud, who pops in from time to time with a sixpack. But Truman is not happy with his life. He wants to see the world. He wants to get away from his happy-happy, ever tidy, nice'n'shiny little island town at the seaside. In reality, Truman was an unwanted pregnancy. His "father", Christof, a reckless TV-Producer whom he never met, made up the Truman Show - the greatest show on earth - a show in which life is live. So, everyone around poor Truman is an actor with a little headphone in the ear. One day, Truman accidentally bumps into a catering area backstage and gets pretty suspicious. His plan now is: Pretend to be sleeping and steal away...

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Featured review/critique: Aint it Cool commented, with a certain reference to Forrest Gump:

I love this film, I hope for the best for it. But I have to admit I'm completely in the dark as to what this film will do. Hopefully all of you will go out and support it this Friday, hopefully it'll hit that mark in you that it hit in me. Maybe it will be as big as Gump, and maybe we'll question the ever present eye of the media, this voyeuristic joy we all have watching the lives of others, because our own lives are no longer enough. Maybe... just maybe this film will kick all the big budget 'summer' films around. Or maybe it's just the second great film of the summer (first being Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas) and the first successful great film of the summer. Then we can pray that Saving Private Ryan, X-Files, Armageddon and the others all are equally great in their own specified genres. Maybe this summer will rise above Godzilla and Deep Impact. Well this film is definately a curve in the right direction. I hope the film 'gets' to you. It did me.

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# 5 - Dead Poets' Society (1989) - Carpe diem! Seize the day! Definitely one of my favorite lines. But Dead Poets' Society is more than just a coming-of-age film - there are so many issues tackled by the film which remains valid to this day - how parents can influence their children's future career, the need for self-expression and poetry and arts even for men, the thrill of teen romances and discovering the opposite sex. For me I consider it as a very personal film.

Featuring Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard, as the two young leads and Robin Williams in a role unlike any other.

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What the movie is all about: Painfully shy Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke) has been sent to the school where his popular older brother was valedictorian. His room-mate, Neil (Robert Sean Leonard), although exceedingly bright and popular, is very much under the thumb of his overbearing father. The two, along with their other friends, meet Professor Keating (Robin Williams), their new English teacher, who tells them of the Dead Poets Society, and encourages them to go against the status quo. Each, in their own way, does this, and are changed for life.

Some very memorable scenes from the movie:

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Featured film review/critique: Eye for Film's James Benefield did this fantastic review, which I definitely agree:

The clear highlight of the film, whichever way your opinion swings concerning the extent of its potential emotional manipulation, is Robin Williams’ turn as the inspirational Professor. Although commanding less screen time than the central teenage characters, while retaining top billing in the credits and on the marketing material, his performance dominates. It’s not exactly subtle, but it's what he does best, and he is a lot of fun. The young Ethan Hawke is strangely underwhelming, possibly because his role requires him to mumble and look sheepish for most of the film’s duration. However, it’s hard to see why Robert Sean Leonard has not become a bigger star; his charisma and boyish good looks should have marked him out as a bit of a tortured matinee idol. Instead he can be found nowadays in pseudo-arty endeavours like Richard Linklater’s irritating Tape. [ read more ]

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# 4 - Master and Commander (2003) - This is the film that stars Russell Crowe right after his enormous success in Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind. I know many moviegoers will remember Crowe in Gladiator, but I think he was equally impressive in this movie as Captain Jack Aubrey. Says Ebert: Aubrey, captain of HMS Surprise, is played by Russell Crowe as a strong but fair leader of men, a brilliant strategist who is also a student, but not a coddler, of his men. He doesn't go by the books; his ability to think outside the envelope saves the Surprise at one crucial moment and wins a battle at another.

I may have put the spotlight on Crowe, but the entire movie and the cast are equally impressive, and Master and Commander will remain one of my most favorite Peter Weir films.

Let's enjoy the ride! says one IMDb viewer:

Master and Commander succeeds not so much in the fact that it has an exceptional plot, but in the fact that it carries the viewer along on its voyage exceptionally. It follows the voyage of Captain "Lucky Jack" Aubrey sailing for the English empire while being chased by a French vessel during the Napoleonic Wars. It's not an entirely innovative or original plot, but it's the experience rather than the plot that drives this movie. The chemistry between the characters and strong performances by all is what make it an exceptional movie. Rather than casting good-looking Hollywood types as crew members, Peter Weir went after people who look like believable seamen who are also great actors in their own right. [ read more ]

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What the movie is all about: The year is 1805. Europe has fallen to Napoleon, and only the Royal Navy stands in his way to total victory. Off the cost of South America, a new conflict is brewing. Captain Jack "Lucky Jack" Aubrey (Russel Crowe) of the Man-of-War HMS Surprise is under orders to sink or capture the French privateer Acheron, which has been deployed to the region. After seven weeks of uneventful sailing, the Acheron strikes first, all but crippling the Surprise in an engagement in which Aubrey realizes his enemy's ship is nautically superior to his own. Along with his close friend and confidant Stephan Maturin (Paul Bettany) who also happens to be the ship's surgeon, Aubrey is now faced with the choice of retreating to England and admitting defeat or remaining at the Acheron's mercy. Aubrey must now do the impossible if he is to survive, repair his ship, catch up to his enemy and defeat the Acheron--somehow.

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# 3 - Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) - I can only describe this film by one term - magnificent! I love the story, the setting, the music and the pace from start to finish. I read this amazing commentary, which I think would be a good intro...

If there must be a meaning, it is that nothingness is the biggest threat of all. "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" We fear our disappearance. We'd like to believe that our little lives, our little comments, our little film lists will endure forever. But they won't. Nothing will.

What the movie is all about: Three students and a school teacher disappear on an excursion to Hanging Rock, in Victoria, on Valentine's Day, 1900. Widely (and incorrectly) regarded as being based on a true story, the movie follows those that disappeared, and those that stayed behind, but it delights in the asking of questions, not the answering of them.

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Featured film review/critique: Here's Australia's Urban cinefile:

Etched into the Australian consciousness and an iconic film that helps buttress Australian cinema in its claim to international standing, Peter Weir's Picnic At Hanging Rock was a trailblazer in 1975, in the early stage of the renaissance of local filmmaking. The film captures the mysterious ambiance that the novel sets up, and with Russell Boyd's fluid, sensual cinematography, takes us into a world where the other is unsettlingly close - whatever the other is. Subdued but intense, the film's mood, impeccably aided by Judy Dorsman's wonderful costumes, seeps into our subconscious. The scene, for example, in which the four girls stop in a plateau within the Rock and simply, gently lay down to sleep, carries a subtle yet powerful sense of intangible foreboding, created simply by the actors precise actions, the images and the sound design. Dow below at the base of the Rock, the other girls and Miss McCraw are also taking an afternoon nap in the summer heat. But here, the atmosphere is simply lazy; there is no ominous mood. It's with such subtleties that Peter Weir achieves this magnificent result. [ read more ]

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# 2 - The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) - I have to say TYLD remains one of my most unforgettable Peter Weir movies ever. (at #2, it has to be!) I have a couple of reasons - (1.) the exciting, engaging and intriguing story made more special under Peter Weir's hands. (2.) the extra-ordinary performance of Linda Hunt. (3.) Mel Gibson at his finest! (4.) Sigourney Weaver!

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What the movie is all about: Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) is a journalist on his first job as a foreign correspondent. His apparently humdrum assignment to Indonesia soon turns hot as President Sukarno electrifies the populace and frightens foreign powers. Guy soon is the hottest reporter on the story with the help of his photographer, half- Chinese dwarf Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt), who has gone native. Guy's affair with diplomat Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver) also helps. Eventually Guy must face some major moral choices and the relationship between Billy and him reaches a crisis at the same time the politics of Indonesia does.

Says Ebert on the cast:

Billy Kwan is played, astonishingly, by a woman -- Linda Hunt, a New York stage actress who enters the role so fully that it never occurs to us that she is not a man. This is what great acting is, a magical transformation of one person into another. Mel Gibson (of "The Road Warrior") is just right as a basically conventional guy with an obsessive streak of risk-taking. Sigourney Weaver has a less interesting role but is always an interesting actress. This is a wonderfully absorbing film. [ read more ]

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# 1 - Gallipoli (1981) - In depicting the lessons of war, a filmmaker need not bombard his audience with lots of gore. A war movie can be subtle but shocking, with a message anyone can understand. Gallipoli is that kind of film. It is also a coming-of-age movie, telling the story of two young sprinters who join the war effort in Turkey during World War I. We get to know these two youngsters intimately and as they enter the war zone, we are reminded that in any war, there are really no victors...

What the movie is all about: Starring Mel Gibson and Mark Lee, Gallipoli is about several young men from rural Western Australia who enlist in the Australian Army during the First World War. They are sent to Turkey, where they take part in the Gallipoli Campaign. During the course of the movie, the young men slowly lose their innocence about the purpose of war. The climax of the movie occurs on the Anzac battlefield at Gallipoli and depicts the futile attack at the Battle of the Nek on 7 August 1915.

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Gallipoli provides a faithful portrayal of life in Australia in the 1910s - reminiscent of Weir's 1975 film Picnic at Hanging Rock set in 1900 - and captures the ideals and character of the Australians who joined up to fight, and the conditions they endured on the battlefield. It does, however, modify events for dramatic purposes and contains a number of significant historical inaccuracies. In particular the officers responsible for Entente command of the attack are depicted in the film as being British, when in fact most British historians agree that the blame for the failure falls at the feet of the two Australian Commanding Officers.

In any case, Colonel Robinson's character equates to the brigade-major of the 3rd Brigade, Colonel J.M. Antill, an Australian Boer War veteran. Indeed very little British command and control was exercised at the Nek. In his best-selling history, Gallipoli (2001) Les Carlyon agrees that the film unfairly portrays the English during the battle and Carlyon lays the blame squarely at the feet of Antill and 3rd Australian Light Horse Brigade commander Brigadier General Frederic Hughes - "The scale of the tragedy of the Nek was mostly the work of two Australian incompetents, Hughes and Antill."

The film implies that the fictional and benevolent General Gardiner called off the attack, when in reality the attack petered out when half of the 4th wave charged without orders whilst the surviving regimental commander in the trenches, Lieutenant Colonel Noel Brazier, attempted to get the attack called off.

Other critics, Carlyon included, have pointed out that the Australian attack at the Nek was a diversion for the New Zealanders' attack on Sari Bair, not the British landing at Suvla. The British were therefore not 'drinking tea on the beach' while Australians died for them. Moreover two companies of a British regiment, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, in fact suffered very heavy losses trying to support the Australian attack at the Nek once it was realized that the offensive was in trouble. Some have also criticized the film for its portrayal of British officers and their disdain for Australian discipline behind the lines. According to Robert R James, no evidence for any such disdain on the part of British commanders for their Australian troops actually exists; however, British command's low regard for the discipline level of Australian troops behind the lines has been widely documented by old historians (such as C.W. Bean) and new ones (Les Carlyon) alike and by oral tradition of the survivors.

Interesting topic: A young Mel Gibson leads the cast of this extra-ordinary war film. I read a number of articles discussing Gibson's work as director and how he managed to get it 'wrong' - in so far as historical accuracies of his films. Says Alex von Tunzelmann at the Guardian:

... this film debunks what was fast becoming the Reel History Curse of Mel Gibson. So far, all historical films he has directed or appeared in have been sent straight to the bottom of the class. Gallipoli, on the other hand, richly deserves its place at the top.

Interesting link: Read this very fine article about Gallipoli from Peter Weir's cave, discussing a lot about the movie - Weir's thoughts and views, the cast and the story. Peter Weir's Cave is a definite site for all fans of the filmmaker.

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What's on your mind? Are you a fan of Peter Weir? Are there other movies which should be on the list? Let us know what you think!

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