A small-budget film about a bickering young Australian couple who try to camp on an isolated and gorgeous strip of beach and don't quite make it.
The husband is Peter, who seems innocent enough, although he flips a cigarette out of his vehicle's window and runs over a kangaroo. Then, too, he has a rifle, drinks beer, and starts shooting things up a little at the desolate camp. Nothing gross. He doesn't shoot at anything but empty bottles that he's flung into the surf. And he has a sense of humor, imitating John Wayne while cocking his rifle. He's glad to be there.
Marcia, his wife, isn't. "Where are the toilets?" she demands. And, "You are not Tarzan and I'm definitely not Jane." She seems spiteful and sulks a lot, but then she's had another man's baby aborted and may be suffering a good deal of guilt. Yet her moodiness doesn't help any. When she finds an "eagle's egg" she smashes it angrily.
Things begin to go wrong in small, strange ways. They stumble upon a dead dugong or sea cow on the beach. Odd noises, moans and pathetic ululations fill the night air. Marcia is stubbornly sleeping in the van. Peter is outside getting stoned and find a cute little possum hitting on the grapes that have been left outside. He chuckles and tries to touch it and the little beast leaps at him and gnaws his hand.
The next day isn't any improvement. The dugong carcass seems closer to the camp than ever. A seagull attacks Peter. A van that had been parked down the beach disappears, though all the camping equipment and the family dog have been left behind.
The arguments become increasingly bitter until Marcia takes off along in the van, with Peter and their dog Cricket left at the camp. (This, by the way, is one of Cricket's best performances as far as I'm concerned. She's a little zaftig but if she lost a few pounds around the hips I could imagine quite a future for her on the silver screen.) The night turns out to be a nightmare -- for both of them.
I presume the message here has something to do with our place in nature. It's not environmentalism in any simple-minded way. A possum is a wild animal and shouldn't be expected to act like a household pet outside of Walt Disney movies or Pogo. And, in the end, we have to take into account the fact that Australia has probably the weirdest animals on earth. It's full of proto- and metatheria. Where else can you find a mammal laying eggs? Its elapid snakes have, cc. for cc., the most potent venom in the world. Its native people had the most simple technology of any known culture.
It's good that Nature wasn't represented by some semi-crocodilian creature in a rubber suit. We've had enough of that lately. And it's good that Peter and Marcia are just ordinary middle-class folk like the rest of us. They're not corporate villains polluting the waters with toxic waste and not land developers looking for a new breeding ground. They don't despise nature. They just take it -- and their superiority over it -- for granted, just like the rest of us.
That's what makes the message as telling as it is. We're not villains at all, only Homo sapiens, another large mammal with a legitimate claim to existence. What are we, after all, compared to other animals. We have no means of defense and we'd be p*** poor predators. We have our much-touted big brains and the free hands to implement the ideas it generates. That combination happens to be a much more powerful instrument than a pair of fangs or a huge hulking body. With power, though, responsibility follows inevitably, and with that, accountability.
I'm about to stand down from the soap box here because I doubt that the world is ready yet for the blinding insights that would come next, were I to continue.
Back to the movie. You know how Peter Weir and Nick Roeg can turn a little something into a whole lot of portent without really putting it all on display? Well that's missing here. The director was on the right track but should have trusted the audience a little more and tightened the reins. There are too MANY night noises that don't make sense. The possum doesn't merely nip Peter's hand -- it grabs it and hangs on! The last scene, in which nature again interferes with the usual scenario, is okay. I can live with that irony.
Should you watch it? I hope you do.
The husband is Peter, who seems innocent enough, although he flips a cigarette out of his vehicle's window and runs over a kangaroo. Then, too, he has a rifle, drinks beer, and starts shooting things up a little at the desolate camp. Nothing gross. He doesn't shoot at anything but empty bottles that he's flung into the surf. And he has a sense of humor, imitating John Wayne while cocking his rifle. He's glad to be there.
Marcia, his wife, isn't. "Where are the toilets?" she demands. And, "You are not Tarzan and I'm definitely not Jane." She seems spiteful and sulks a lot, but then she's had another man's baby aborted and may be suffering a good deal of guilt. Yet her moodiness doesn't help any. When she finds an "eagle's egg" she smashes it angrily.
Things begin to go wrong in small, strange ways. They stumble upon a dead dugong or sea cow on the beach. Odd noises, moans and pathetic ululations fill the night air. Marcia is stubbornly sleeping in the van. Peter is outside getting stoned and find a cute little possum hitting on the grapes that have been left outside. He chuckles and tries to touch it and the little beast leaps at him and gnaws his hand.
The next day isn't any improvement. The dugong carcass seems closer to the camp than ever. A seagull attacks Peter. A van that had been parked down the beach disappears, though all the camping equipment and the family dog have been left behind.
The arguments become increasingly bitter until Marcia takes off along in the van, with Peter and their dog Cricket left at the camp. (This, by the way, is one of Cricket's best performances as far as I'm concerned. She's a little zaftig but if she lost a few pounds around the hips I could imagine quite a future for her on the silver screen.) The night turns out to be a nightmare -- for both of them.
I presume the message here has something to do with our place in nature. It's not environmentalism in any simple-minded way. A possum is a wild animal and shouldn't be expected to act like a household pet outside of Walt Disney movies or Pogo. And, in the end, we have to take into account the fact that Australia has probably the weirdest animals on earth. It's full of proto- and metatheria. Where else can you find a mammal laying eggs? Its elapid snakes have, cc. for cc., the most potent venom in the world. Its native people had the most simple technology of any known culture.
It's good that Nature wasn't represented by some semi-crocodilian creature in a rubber suit. We've had enough of that lately. And it's good that Peter and Marcia are just ordinary middle-class folk like the rest of us. They're not corporate villains polluting the waters with toxic waste and not land developers looking for a new breeding ground. They don't despise nature. They just take it -- and their superiority over it -- for granted, just like the rest of us.
That's what makes the message as telling as it is. We're not villains at all, only Homo sapiens, another large mammal with a legitimate claim to existence. What are we, after all, compared to other animals. We have no means of defense and we'd be p*** poor predators. We have our much-touted big brains and the free hands to implement the ideas it generates. That combination happens to be a much more powerful instrument than a pair of fangs or a huge hulking body. With power, though, responsibility follows inevitably, and with that, accountability.
I'm about to stand down from the soap box here because I doubt that the world is ready yet for the blinding insights that would come next, were I to continue.
Back to the movie. You know how Peter Weir and Nick Roeg can turn a little something into a whole lot of portent without really putting it all on display? Well that's missing here. The director was on the right track but should have trusted the audience a little more and tightened the reins. There are too MANY night noises that don't make sense. The possum doesn't merely nip Peter's hand -- it grabs it and hangs on! The last scene, in which nature again interferes with the usual scenario, is okay. I can live with that irony.
Should you watch it? I hope you do.