Review | Blind Company
April 6th 2010 12:10
BLIND COMPANY
written and directed by Alkinos Tsilimodos
cast includes Colin Friels, Samuel Johnson
Blind Company is one of those movies that probably looked great as a synopsis; in fact it would be a pretty good short story if it were all put together within say 1500 words.
Blind Company is also one of those films that the film establishment want to call important, and include in Film Festivals. I do not think of it this way. It is neither an important film or even a good film. I think it is a throwback to the dark ages of Australian film making where a long shot of a beach or a wooded coastal terrain is considered to be breathtakingly beautiful and therefore really important. A throwback to the style of critisicm that says We must find reasons why this film is worthy.
The cast is good mostly. The script is weak as water even though it has some tricky ways of delivering. The direction of the actors is an over indulgent mess at times and the acting as good as it is, starts to seem pretty two dimensional. What this film desperately needs is a plumper story along the lines of a Robert Altman or P.T. Anderson film to provide at least a few characters who are engaging, to balance out the pretty dreary collection we are expected to sit with for 90 odd minutes.
SPOILER ALERT
Apart from the tediously slow pace of the film, and the drab cinematography that attempts to idealise a patch of Tasmanian coast (Ooh ahh), the content of the story is too smart for it's own good.
Geoff is a man going blind (Colin Friels) alone, with his three legged dog in a well made luxury house on the remote Tasmanian coast. He takes the dog for a walk along the beach. He sits making confessions to his wife into a tape recorder. The wife (Gloria Ajenstat) comes over on weekends to clean and cook for him. It becomes clear that he is very unwell, and not a very nice sort of person.
When the man's nephew Josh turns up (Nick Barkla) we get to see a string of pretty ugly behaviours acted out demonstrably. The man and his nephew do not like each other it would appear; either that or they are so deeply in love with each other they can not face the mysterious circumstances like adults, so they behave like a pair of singed lovers mid-fight.
All too gradually we learn that Geoff is indeed here to die, of AIDS no less, and it seems he has left a line of young men behind him who he has manipulated into fucking in the ass as Josh eloquently puts it.
One such young man has recently killed himself because he was HIV positive. The inference being he was infected by Geoff. The young man's parents turn up to the hidden away house to deposit their dead son with Geoff in the form of a neatly packaged plastic bag full of ashes which he asked to be scattered on the beach in a note he left before killing himself.
So in a short blunt nudge we discover Geoff, is suffering from AIDS, has a history of seducing gullible young men and has another little secret up his sleeve to drop on his ever stoic wife.
The wife (Ajenstat) keeps pretty steely through the film. There is one scene where she and Josh have a little argument.
Josh : Did you know you married a fag?
Wife : He's bisexual; I knew he experimented when he was younger.
Yeah. Geoff is a bit of a mess. He is basically a paedophile who has been spreading his disease among his victims and is now slowly dying.
That's not the end yet, there's the constantly aggressive Josh. What a thankless character. He spends most of his time completely unable to express any actual feelings; he is just an aggressive, meth smoking, Porsche driving prig who has been coming on sexually to his fag uncle as he puts it, and is now rendered incapable of anything like common sense or tenderness or even polite conversation.
The climax (I wrote SPOILER for a reason) is met when Josh digs a grave for Geoff, brings the now totally blind Geoff to the edge of it and pretends to kill him by slapping a shovel on the ground next to his kneeling-at-graveside uncle. Oh the drama!
I think it is a nasty little film in desperate need of some reality and dare I say it, facts. There needs to be some counterpoint to this story for it to even come close to a great story let alone a good film.
It looks a little like Swiss cheese to me - it is so riddled with holes; for over twenty years we have had a category of male sexuality called men-who-have-sex-with-men-but -don’t-identify-as-gay. Geoff’s wife says he is bisexual. Yet there are no stories of young women he has slept with or infected; I think it is a safe bet that Geoff is a gay man trapped in a heterosexual life (not all that uncommon). The wife just can not cope with that.
Once she explains Geoff started having sex with her wearing a condom after years of not wearing one (so he is aware of safer sex), she accepted that he did not want to get her pregnant? Okay, I think that is a bit thin, but okay...
Doctors, even in Tasmania, would be very quick to refer a young man with newly diagnosed HIV to a counsellor wouldn’t they?
A young man who is sexually involved with his uncle is going to turn up and harass said uncle as he becomes more decrepit from a terminal disease isn't he; I mean that's the best strategy to deal with such a complex situation isn't it?
Well if he's a meth smoking twenty-something it's the obvious way to deal with it surely. That would be a closeted young gay man wouldn’t it?
For sure he is going to be nothing but aggro towards this man he loves who is dying - makes sense doesn’t it?
After all he is a young gay man of the 21st Century.
I could scream.
Every once in a while a movie comes along that deals with HIV/AIDS and love triangles in a really interesting and engaging way; no one ends up completely demonised or giving the audience so little information they walk away with a whole set of perspectives that are based on some writer's ill informed fantasy of what it must be like to be in this situation.
I hate it when someone, anyone, important film maker or not, makes something that just basically says this is a really awful man and these are the really awful people around him, and isn’t it all so horrible?
I hated it. The script has a few moments where it's tricky and well written, if you are willing to accept a whole lot of crap. That it has come out of Tasmania is no excuse either. Maybe 30 years ago we would expect this sort of dross to spew forth from a remote and some say backward place, but not now.
For heaven’s sake some of the most politically active gay men in this country are in Tasmania.
So, Blind Company for what it is worth, is a crap little film made in a way that some film academics bolt to call it challenging, and some critics say it makes the audience squirm in their seats - well maybe it is the content that is making them squirm; it plays into so many ill-advised myths surrounding HIV/AIDS and ah hem Bisexuality. I think it's most likely the audience are squuirming because we've all seen a bit of beach and we don't really need to sit through this much nonsensical scenery. How about a few more stories, characters, points of view?
I definately think it's the bloody tedious pace, the ridiculous story and the misinformed characters who would be just as cosy in a 1950’s Douglas Sirk film that make the audience squirm. For crying out loud.
Pity it was ever made, hope it gets buried in the mire. What a load of rubbish.
David Jobling
written and directed by Alkinos Tsilimodos
cast includes Colin Friels, Samuel Johnson
Blind Company is one of those movies that probably looked great as a synopsis; in fact it would be a pretty good short story if it were all put together within say 1500 words.
Blind Company is also one of those films that the film establishment want to call important, and include in Film Festivals. I do not think of it this way. It is neither an important film or even a good film. I think it is a throwback to the dark ages of Australian film making where a long shot of a beach or a wooded coastal terrain is considered to be breathtakingly beautiful and therefore really important. A throwback to the style of critisicm that says We must find reasons why this film is worthy.
The cast is good mostly. The script is weak as water even though it has some tricky ways of delivering. The direction of the actors is an over indulgent mess at times and the acting as good as it is, starts to seem pretty two dimensional. What this film desperately needs is a plumper story along the lines of a Robert Altman or P.T. Anderson film to provide at least a few characters who are engaging, to balance out the pretty dreary collection we are expected to sit with for 90 odd minutes.
SPOILER ALERT
Apart from the tediously slow pace of the film, and the drab cinematography that attempts to idealise a patch of Tasmanian coast (Ooh ahh), the content of the story is too smart for it's own good.
Geoff is a man going blind (Colin Friels) alone, with his three legged dog in a well made luxury house on the remote Tasmanian coast. He takes the dog for a walk along the beach. He sits making confessions to his wife into a tape recorder. The wife (Gloria Ajenstat) comes over on weekends to clean and cook for him. It becomes clear that he is very unwell, and not a very nice sort of person.
When the man's nephew Josh turns up (Nick Barkla) we get to see a string of pretty ugly behaviours acted out demonstrably. The man and his nephew do not like each other it would appear; either that or they are so deeply in love with each other they can not face the mysterious circumstances like adults, so they behave like a pair of singed lovers mid-fight.
All too gradually we learn that Geoff is indeed here to die, of AIDS no less, and it seems he has left a line of young men behind him who he has manipulated into fucking in the ass as Josh eloquently puts it.
One such young man has recently killed himself because he was HIV positive. The inference being he was infected by Geoff. The young man's parents turn up to the hidden away house to deposit their dead son with Geoff in the form of a neatly packaged plastic bag full of ashes which he asked to be scattered on the beach in a note he left before killing himself.
So in a short blunt nudge we discover Geoff, is suffering from AIDS, has a history of seducing gullible young men and has another little secret up his sleeve to drop on his ever stoic wife.
The wife (Ajenstat) keeps pretty steely through the film. There is one scene where she and Josh have a little argument.
Wife : He's bisexual; I knew he experimented when he was younger.
Yeah. Geoff is a bit of a mess. He is basically a paedophile who has been spreading his disease among his victims and is now slowly dying.
That's not the end yet, there's the constantly aggressive Josh. What a thankless character. He spends most of his time completely unable to express any actual feelings; he is just an aggressive, meth smoking, Porsche driving prig who has been coming on sexually to his fag uncle as he puts it, and is now rendered incapable of anything like common sense or tenderness or even polite conversation.
The climax (I wrote SPOILER for a reason) is met when Josh digs a grave for Geoff, brings the now totally blind Geoff to the edge of it and pretends to kill him by slapping a shovel on the ground next to his kneeling-at-graveside uncle. Oh the drama!
I think it is a nasty little film in desperate need of some reality and dare I say it, facts. There needs to be some counterpoint to this story for it to even come close to a great story let alone a good film.
It looks a little like Swiss cheese to me - it is so riddled with holes; for over twenty years we have had a category of male sexuality called men-who-have-sex-with-men-but -don’t-identify-as-gay. Geoff’s wife says he is bisexual. Yet there are no stories of young women he has slept with or infected; I think it is a safe bet that Geoff is a gay man trapped in a heterosexual life (not all that uncommon). The wife just can not cope with that.
Once she explains Geoff started having sex with her wearing a condom after years of not wearing one (so he is aware of safer sex), she accepted that he did not want to get her pregnant? Okay, I think that is a bit thin, but okay...
Doctors, even in Tasmania, would be very quick to refer a young man with newly diagnosed HIV to a counsellor wouldn’t they?
A young man who is sexually involved with his uncle is going to turn up and harass said uncle as he becomes more decrepit from a terminal disease isn't he; I mean that's the best strategy to deal with such a complex situation isn't it?
Well if he's a meth smoking twenty-something it's the obvious way to deal with it surely. That would be a closeted young gay man wouldn’t it?
For sure he is going to be nothing but aggro towards this man he loves who is dying - makes sense doesn’t it?
After all he is a young gay man of the 21st Century.
I could scream.
Every once in a while a movie comes along that deals with HIV/AIDS and love triangles in a really interesting and engaging way; no one ends up completely demonised or giving the audience so little information they walk away with a whole set of perspectives that are based on some writer's ill informed fantasy of what it must be like to be in this situation.
I hate it when someone, anyone, important film maker or not, makes something that just basically says this is a really awful man and these are the really awful people around him, and isn’t it all so horrible?
I hated it. The script has a few moments where it's tricky and well written, if you are willing to accept a whole lot of crap. That it has come out of Tasmania is no excuse either. Maybe 30 years ago we would expect this sort of dross to spew forth from a remote and some say backward place, but not now.
For heaven’s sake some of the most politically active gay men in this country are in Tasmania.
So, Blind Company for what it is worth, is a crap little film made in a way that some film academics bolt to call it challenging, and some critics say it makes the audience squirm in their seats - well maybe it is the content that is making them squirm; it plays into so many ill-advised myths surrounding HIV/AIDS and ah hem Bisexuality. I think it's most likely the audience are squuirming because we've all seen a bit of beach and we don't really need to sit through this much nonsensical scenery. How about a few more stories, characters, points of view?
I definately think it's the bloody tedious pace, the ridiculous story and the misinformed characters who would be just as cosy in a 1950’s Douglas Sirk film that make the audience squirm. For crying out loud.
Pity it was ever made, hope it gets buried in the mire. What a load of rubbish.
David Jobling
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