Kate CowlingNow and Then - Rolf De Heer
September 3rd 2007 13:59
Welcome to the second installment of 'Now and Then', looking at the old and the new from directors and writers who've got both current work showing in cinemas and a tasty back catalogue to get stuck in to. In my last post I reviewed Dr Plonk, the silent film from Rolf De Heer. In this piece, I've gone back to his 1992 film Dingo. Read on for more...
Dingo (1992)
Written and Directed by Rolf De Heer
Starring Colin Friels and Miles Davis
Dingo begins with an image of beautiful incongruity, the titular character John 'Dingo' Anderson, perched above a panorama of dry Australian landscape playing sparse trumpet lines that reverberate through the desolate bush scene, swirling through the expanse like animal cries. It's a strangely primal experience, an exhilarating clash of the very ancient and the very modern, and one instance of the striking juxtapositions that are pulled off so skilfully throughout this unusual film. Colin Friels plays the titular character, John 'Dingo' Anderson, who in a chance boyhood encounter meets the world famous jazz trumpeter Billy Cross (Miles Davis in his only film role) when he and his entourage are forced to land their jumbo jet on the airstrip at Poona Flat, a tin-pot outback town. Dingo is enraptured by the impromptu performance delivered by Cross and his band, and when this strange visitor implores the boy to "look him up" if he ever comes to Paris, Dingo's dream is sparked into passionate life. After this initial encounter, we cut to Dingo in adulthood - married with two kids, working as a dingo trapper and playing trumpet in a country-meets-rock-meets-jazz -meets-rubbish band, still holding on desperately to his childhood dream. Dingo's individualism is clearly spelt out in his first transcendent experience of jazz music - while he watches and listens in awe, his childhood friends and the rest of the community stare like a school of stunned mullet. As the banality of ordinary outback Australian life becomes more ingrained into Dingo's experience, the pressure to conform and provide for his family threatens to dispel his dreams of greatness, forcing him decide whether to take that final leap, or let it all go forever.
The metaphor at the heart of Dingo - it takes courage to make dreams a reality - is universal, but it's power lies in the fact that it is a specifically Australian story. As Dingo plays at the front of his band for a tin-pot benefit event, he's carried away into a sublime fantasy, playing side by side with his hero in a virtuosic display of musicality. He returns to earth to see the assembled crowd gaping at him in bewilderment, the cultural cringe in motion. In another blatant juxtaposition, Dingo is out in the bush hunting down the "educated dingo", a three-legged dog that has experienced and understands the tricks with traps, and has eluded him for awhile. He gets his chance to take his shot, but is visited by a vision of Billy Cross and his band beckoning him to join them. The visual effect is a bad reminder of the garish excesses of 80s video clips -a picture in picture, Vaseline-on-the-lens moment - but like many of Rolf De Heer's unfashionable choices (because he is an admirably unfashionable director in my opinion), it seems to fit amongst the peculiarities that define this film.
Colin Friels puts in a good performance as the naive adventurer Dingo, and Miles' Davis turn at acting, while not really comparable to the wonderful score he has contributed, is engaging if only on the level of demystifying a figure who was so reclusive and monomaniacal according to anecdote.
Dingo is a singular film in the oeuvre of a singular director and writer, a filmmaker who has made such a made variety of films, in both content and mode, that it is hard to find the threads of authorial of continuity in his work. As long as he keeps making interesting and unique films, those kinds of questions are just academic.
Written and Directed by Rolf De Heer
Starring Colin Friels and Miles Davis
Dingo begins with an image of beautiful incongruity, the titular character John 'Dingo' Anderson, perched above a panorama of dry Australian landscape playing sparse trumpet lines that reverberate through the desolate bush scene, swirling through the expanse like animal cries. It's a strangely primal experience, an exhilarating clash of the very ancient and the very modern, and one instance of the striking juxtapositions that are pulled off so skilfully throughout this unusual film. Colin Friels plays the titular character, John 'Dingo' Anderson, who in a chance boyhood encounter meets the world famous jazz trumpeter Billy Cross (Miles Davis in his only film role) when he and his entourage are forced to land their jumbo jet on the airstrip at Poona Flat, a tin-pot outback town. Dingo is enraptured by the impromptu performance delivered by Cross and his band, and when this strange visitor implores the boy to "look him up" if he ever comes to Paris, Dingo's dream is sparked into passionate life. After this initial encounter, we cut to Dingo in adulthood - married with two kids, working as a dingo trapper and playing trumpet in a country-meets-rock-meets-jazz -meets-rubbish band, still holding on desperately to his childhood dream. Dingo's individualism is clearly spelt out in his first transcendent experience of jazz music - while he watches and listens in awe, his childhood friends and the rest of the community stare like a school of stunned mullet. As the banality of ordinary outback Australian life becomes more ingrained into Dingo's experience, the pressure to conform and provide for his family threatens to dispel his dreams of greatness, forcing him decide whether to take that final leap, or let it all go forever.
The metaphor at the heart of Dingo - it takes courage to make dreams a reality - is universal, but it's power lies in the fact that it is a specifically Australian story. As Dingo plays at the front of his band for a tin-pot benefit event, he's carried away into a sublime fantasy, playing side by side with his hero in a virtuosic display of musicality. He returns to earth to see the assembled crowd gaping at him in bewilderment, the cultural cringe in motion. In another blatant juxtaposition, Dingo is out in the bush hunting down the "educated dingo", a three-legged dog that has experienced and understands the tricks with traps, and has eluded him for awhile. He gets his chance to take his shot, but is visited by a vision of Billy Cross and his band beckoning him to join them. The visual effect is a bad reminder of the garish excesses of 80s video clips -a picture in picture, Vaseline-on-the-lens moment - but like many of Rolf De Heer's unfashionable choices (because he is an admirably unfashionable director in my opinion), it seems to fit amongst the peculiarities that define this film.
Colin Friels puts in a good performance as the naive adventurer Dingo, and Miles' Davis turn at acting, while not really comparable to the wonderful score he has contributed, is engaging if only on the level of demystifying a figure who was so reclusive and monomaniacal according to anecdote.
Dingo is a singular film in the oeuvre of a singular director and writer, a filmmaker who has made such a made variety of films, in both content and mode, that it is hard to find the threads of authorial of continuity in his work. As long as he keeps making interesting and unique films, those kinds of questions are just academic.
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