Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Ken Hannam, Umbrella Entertainment.
Set on a sheep station in the Australian outback in 1955, this gutsy drama belongs to the Australian Film Renaissance or the ‘Australian New Wave’, which occurred during that decade.
We share the journey of knock-about Foley (Jack Thompson, High Ground, The Sum of Us), who plays a heavy drinking gun shearer in the late stage of his career (talented professional sheep shearer). He makes a play for the station owner’s daughter Sheila (Lisa Peers).
At an outback station, seconded by the contractor Tim King (Max Cullen), Foley joins a new team for one last job. The film then focuses on the day-to-day lives of the shearers, the dynamics of the group and also on external threats.
Released in 1975, the film’s action concentrates on the shearers’ reactions to a threat to their bonuses, going on strike and the arrival of non-union labour.
The film is about ‘male culture, and Aussie men who work, drink and gamble’. It showcases the realities of shearing life, where we see not only the demanding nature of the work and the intense competition, but also the camaraderie.
All of this imagery is rooted in social-realist cinema and consistently conveys the skill, speed and physicality of the work. Adding to the film’s uncompromising realism is the lax naturalistic dialogue. It highlights a sense of adventure and the great Australian loneliness.
Acclaimed for its understated realism of the work, the film’s title is reputedly the lament of an Australian shearer’s wife: “Friday night [he’s] too tired; Saturday night too drunk; Sunday, too far away”.
You could be the winner of one Blu-ray copy of Sunday Too Far Away if you tell us the year of the film’s release. Entries should be sent to [email protected] by Monday, 15 March 2021. Names of the winners will be announced in Frank Cassidy’s PS-sssst…! column on 16 March 2021.
