Praise: Film Information
Credits
Gordon Peter Fenton
Cynthia Sacha Horler
Rachel Marta Dusseldorp
Vass Ray Bull
Leo Joel Edgerton
Molly Yvette Duncan
Raymond Gregory (Tex) Perkins
Cathy Leone Carmen
Helen Skye Wansey
Dave Richard Green
Sexual Health
Worker Lynette Curran
Sophie Susan Prior
Darren Paul Lum
Darren's
Girlfriend Fiona Mahl
Skinhead Damon Herriman
Taxi Driver Mick Innes
James Jamie Jackson
Steve Stephen Shanahan
Mary Karen Colston
Frank Jason Clarke
Footless
Old Man Basil Clarke
Male Nurse Ken Shorter
Old Woman Joy Hruby
Director John Curran
Writer Andrew McGahan
Producer Martha Coleman
Original music The Dirty Three
Cinematographer Dion Beebe
Editor Alexandre de Franceschi
Casting Nikki Barrett
Production Designer Michael Philips (I)
Art Director Anne Beauchamp
Costume Designer Emily Seresin
Stylist Paul Pattison
Production Manager Sue MacKay
Second Unit Director/
Assistant Director Jamie Crooks
Second assistant
director Jennifer Rees-Brown
Third assistant
director Geoff Willman
Stand-by props Robert Moxham
Assistant sound
editor Nada Mikas
Co-sound
designer Andrew Plain
Sound mixer Phil Tipene
Continuity Julie Bates
Gaffer Paul Booth
Production runner Jeremy Grogan
Script editor Amanda Higgs
Focus puller Ben Jasper
Still photographer Philip Le Masurier
Key grip Roy Mico
Production secretary Emily Saunders
Production coordinator Clare Shervington
Release Dates
Toronto Film Festival
(World Premiere)
11 SEPT 98
Australia
22 APRIL 99
USA
30 JUNE 00
Box Office USA $30, 432 19 NOV 00
Reviews efilmcritic.com
movie-reviews.collossus.net
calenderlive.com
culturevulture.net
sfgate.com
urbancinefile.com
bzine.bscene.com.au
Online Official site: sirenent.com.au
Awards Andrew McGahan
AFCC Best Screenplay 00
AFI Best Screenplay
Gijon International Film Festival
Best Screenplay
John Curran
AFCC Best Director 00
Interviews John Curran
wlt4.home.mindspring.com
Dion Beebe (by John Curran)
popcorntaxi.com.au
Search Process
In the interests of improving my grasp of web-searching, and as an experiment to discover how much could in fact be learned about Australian film in general and Praise in particular, online, I limited my search to the internet. Imdb.com was the most useful site, with the listing coming from the ReadingRoom site. The engines I used were Google, Metafind and Yahoo.au. I had difficulty finding production information, but no trouble with reviews. I got funding and some awards information off the AFC and FFC site. The official site, sirenent, is very limited.
Praise(1998) is a film based on a Vogel-winning book By Andrew McGahan. The protaganist, Gordon, is an apathetic, socially inept Brisbane twenty-something with a rollie addiction and serious asthma. He quits work at the start of the film to more fully pursue a life of poverty and leisure. Cynthia appears on the scene shortly after, and for a moment it looks as though they'll save each other from dead-end paths. Of course they don't. Cynthia's mad sex addiction alienates Gordon and his comprehensive uselessness drives Cynthia even crazier than she already is. The power in the relationship slowly shifts from Cynthia to Gordon. In the end Gordon exercises the full extent of his passivity to wear her down, and eventually she gives up on him and leaves.
Throughout the relationship, heavy drinking and recreational drug abuse feature regularly. In many ways the time the two main characters spend together is a microcosm of the leisure years experienced by many under the Keating government. The dole was freely available, with very few restrictions, it was even possible to get Austudy and the dole simultaneously, and work full-time. Those were the golden years for slackers, and the novel Praise struck a rich chord with those whose lives had so recently taken a turn for the more difficult, in 1992, with the commencement of the Howard years. The novel won the Vogel that year, and went on to sell extremely well.
Of course, by capturing the zeitgeist so perfectly, Praise was a perfect candidate for a film, and Martha Coleman grabbed the rights. John Curran, an inexplicable choice for director given his prior work Down Rusty Down, which was described by one reviewer as a "profanity filled mess. Why it played at Sundance is beyond me," was Martha Coleman's first pick as director, and of course he ended up winning the AFCC Best Director award in 2000.
Praise in fact went on to win several awards in 2000. Andrew McGahan won three for Best Screenplay, and it played at Toronto and Berlin Film festivals. Critics were effusive in their praise.
"Amongst a mess of films that trade in cheap theatrics and glib ironies, Praise is a bright, shining, jewel of truth." efilmcritic.com
"A rare interweaving of the darkly poetical and raspy, cock-eyed comedy." sfgate.com
"A great film. 5 *****" Peter Castaldi, TripleJ
"Four and half stars - a major achievement." Margaret Pomeranz, The Movie Show.
Particularly in Australia, critics reacted with the joy of those who have at last seen a film that speaks of something new. In this case, the something new was pointlessness, hopelessness and apathy. The critics who disliked Praise objected to exactly that.
"My frustration with this film hinges on the fact that it doesn't go anywhere." urbancinefile.com
"The film's relevance is restricted to lost souls."urbancinefile.com (Andrew L. Urban)
"Praise is problematic; an overly dark, relentless and dour film that seems a pointless exercise in excess."
It seems the same emotions that the novel Praise engendered on its release in 1993, were stimulated again by the film. These can be seen as symptomatic of attitudes to creatures of leisure and general uselessness. Praise was released just prior to the 90's wave of heroin chic, and the characters in the novel and their lack of action slipped neatly into the cultural consciousness as a valid response to a set of valid and understandable realities. Ten years later it is difficult to watch the film without thinking how much things have changed in Australia and in the world.
The responses of critics wavered between getting the point of the pointlessness, and rejecting the pointlessness entirely, as an option in life, or as a suitable subject for a film. Nowadays, grunge lit, of which Praise is the poster child, is well over. The objections that some film critics had to the film are the same that literary critics have to the genre. It reflects a particular time, and has very little to offer in the way of universal truth, unless one is an unreconstructed pessimist.
This leads to a consideration of what Australian and American audiences expected from Praise.
Those stalwarts of Australian criticism, Margaret Pomeranz and Peter Castaldi, loved the film and their reviews were used on the promotional material for the film. The World Socialist Website review of the film suggests the propensity of critics to over-praise a film such as this is symptomatic of the tendencies in national cinemas to lionise first-time directors, and to be always on the lookout for freshness and rawness and newness, over and above experience, depth and theoretical considerations.
American critics, who were fairly evenly split on whether Praise was a good or bad film, were, to my mind, split over whether they were watching a universal film or an Australian film. The Australian critics were well aware of watching an Australian film, and critiqued it accordingly.
Praise is a typical product of Australian cinema. Its quirky. The Spanish music in the film, described by some critics as a distraction, particularly when contrasted with the prevalance of 50's music, is entirely quirky, "an unexpected, peculiar…flourish," as is the final sequence of Vass and his new girlfriend ball-room dancing. Cynthia's excema and Gordon's sexual passivity are also quirky, in the sense of being unexpected characteristics.
Praise is also ugly. There's a history in recent Australian film of female actors exploring the boundaries of weight and beauty in film. The Monkey's Mask, which has just been released, is remarkable for the physical and sexualised presence of a chubby, ordinary-girl, Susie Porter. Both Sascha Horler in Praise and Susie Porter owe a debt to Toni Collette in Muriel's Wedding. These films are in stark contrast to Hollywood product where the female actors are uniformly buff and gorgeous. The critiques of Horler's performance all used the word 'brave' in them, and this braveness, combined with a powerful performance, was obviously enough to win her the Best Actress award at the 99 AFI's. culturevulture.net said the "one compelling reason to see Praise is Sascha Horler." It would be hard to see this boundary-pushing as anything other than a stand against Hollywood. We are recolonising the female body.
Peter Fenton's character, Gordon, is equally unusual as a male protagonist, but while we are quite willing to laud a female actor pushing limits and taking charge (so long as she is marginalised by the end), we don't like useless fellers, unless they change. The overwhelming response to his performance was ennui. "Fenton seems to slip in and out of focus as we're staring at him. He has a formless, fuzzy screen presence, but its the point of the movie, in a way." Those who got the point of Praise's pointlessness got the point of Gordon. Those who were bored and depressed by the film, blamed his low-key performance and the failure of the character to develop. "He appears so unchanged at the end that you begin to wonder what the point was."
What is interesting about Peter Fenton is what is most interesting about Praise. It is at the nexus of writing, (the Vogel) music (Crow, Fenton's band) and film in Australia, another characteristic of recent Australian film. Of course Hollywood uses films-from-books and singers-turned-actors, but Australia does it better. There is such a small (comparatively) pool of talent and creative product in Australia that when a film like Praise is released, it shows into sharp relief the excellence engendered by Australian creative practise.
This in turn leads to effusive praise from Australian critics overwhelmed at the power and beauty of Australian culture.|
But is Praise any good?
Well, no. Its excruciating to watch. The general feeling before it was released was that the book was so ugly that the film would be unwatchable. John Curran did what he could with what he had, coaxing moments of beauty out of the dodgy scenery. There is one carefully highlighted sequence in the film of light through a curtain, and Cynthia gently lit by it. Its beautiful. He could obviously do little with the physical persons of the two actors, but then, that was the point. They are so overwhelmingly awful, and their lives so completely unredeemable, that the viewer is left feeling fairly battered and hopeless.
Some critics, particularly Americans, described Praise as "compelling precisely because it stays focussed on the characters and their dysfunctional, psychologically complex relationship." This may be the case, but the stultifying, claustrophobic atmosphere generated by this close focus on two appalling people, is also what makes Praise so difficult to enjoy. It is typically Australian, once more, (a factor, perhaps of low budgets?) to keep the frame of reference very tight. The Boys, for example, conveyed the strangest feeling that outside the house, there was nothing. An abyss. All the action in the world was in the mother's house. Praise suggests that all the action (well, behaviour) in the world is in the characters of Gordon and Cynthia. Hollywood films fairly uniformly place their characters in the world. Australian films tend to place the world into their characters.
Praise, on its release as a novel in 1993, captured a zeitgeist. The film version, coming five years later, reflected on a historical period, and therefore failed to spark as brightly as the text version. Critical reviews reflected this. Its a film that speaks of Australian cinema and of the relationship between Australian cinema and Hollywood, but in the end, Praise is a small film, with a small focus, and it is no fun at all to watch.