Beneath Hill 60
Cinema Nova, 01/04/2010
Status: What’s with the third degree?! I’m behind, alright!
I’m currently re-watching Changi, the 2001 mini-series written by JOHN DOYLE (aka Rampaging Roy Slaven) about the Australian soldiers waiting out WWII in Changi prison. I adore it. I think it’s wonderful and I follow the actors around the bit parts they have in really crap tv dramas hoping to see glimpses of their awesomeness again. Two of the actors (LEON FORD and ANTHONY HAYES) pop up in Beneath Hill 60, so I was all over it. Except, Beneath Hill 60 is not about either Ford or Hayes and their bit parts are fairly uninspiring. Lucky the rest of it wasn’t too bad, or I would’ve tantrummed all up in their face.
Beneath Hill 60 follows Oliver Woodward (BRENDAN COWELL, Noise), a mining engineer who joins a special tunneling brigade stationed in France in WWI. They tunnel, listen to Germans tunnelling and blow stuff up. Although there is a familiar feeling to most of the bit characters (Aussie larrikins in a foreign country a la Gallipoli), it’s a different kind of war story to ones I’d heard before.
I very much liked the way the film looked. Director JEREMY HARTLEY SIMS (Last Train to Freo) gets over the eternal question of “how do we make it look like our actors are covered in mud and wet through” by covering the actors in mud and wetting them right through. The problems start to arise when the film over-reaches: it gets unsure about whether it’s about the horrors of war, or the glories of war, about the people who are fighting, or the lives they might have had if the war weren’t on, or whether it’s just an action movie set in the trenches.
The performances, in general, are very good. Cowell, in particular, is very very great. On the strength of his performance I might actually pay money to see his next release I Love You, Too even though I am allergic to Megan Gale.
