Film review - Robin Osborne
Diverse medical issues have inspired three of the best Australian films of recent times, Ruben Guthrie (the dangers of alcohol misuse), Last Cab to Darwin (cancer, and euthanasia), and Holding the Man (HIV/AIDS).
Since reviewing the first of these for GP Speak Spring issue I made a point of catching the second on the basis of loving the work of actor Michael Caton (The Castle), who plays a cancer patient/cab driver willing to drive thousands of kilometres for a painless death.
Having spent several recent years in Darwin, I was also interested to see how that city, and the country around it, would be depicted.
The third film had been so widely praised that I simply could not miss it, and I’m glad I didn’t.
The story, based on Timothy Conigrave’s highly successful 1995 book and a subsequent stage play of the same name, is well known. The author, who died shortly before the book’s publication, fell deeply in love with fellow student John Caleo at the Jesuitical Xavier College in Melbourne. The latter was a star Aussie Rules player at school, the game that inspired the clever title of the book: ‘holding the man’ incurs a penalty on the footy field, while male-male attraction was frowned upon at the school in that era.
I might add that it was far more taboo at my private school in Sydney a decade earlier (the film begins in the late 1970s), and I was surprised at how open minded the Jesuit boys and their teachers seemed to be.
Tim and John’s relationship continued into their adult lives, despite occasional straying, the most notable example being the gay bathhouse scenes around Sydney’s Darlinghurst. There is some explicit filming, but nothing gratuitous or inappropriate to the storyline.
As was so often the case in the late 1980s, both men contracted HIV, then a death sentence, and after a first half - to use a football term - of exploring adolescent love the film moves into the confronting phase of attempting to manage the dreadful impacts of the disease, which progresses into full blown AIDS.
Central to the story are the ways in which their families cope with learning their beloved sons are homosexual, and later, that they are destined to die.
The cast of high-profile actors (Guy Pearce, Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, et al) in no way outshines the young men around whom the story revolves - Ryan Corr (Conigrave) and Craig Stott (Caleo).
Like the book and play, this is a surefire award-winner.
So too, I believe, is Last Cab to Darwin, an interesting take on the Australian road movie genre (Priscilla, Red Dog, etc) that puts terminal cancer patient Rex, a Broken Hill cab driver, in touch with Darwin-based doctor Nicole Farmer, a Dr Nitschke doppelganger who has the ‘exit’ equipment to hand, and only awaits the final signoff on the NT legislation.
Based on the true story of cabbie Max Bell, who did this drive-to-death, ultimately thwarted by the federal parliament, the tale is a wonderful piece of celluloid theatre, especially the interactions between Rex and his neighbour/lover Polly (Ningali Lawford-Wolf), an Aboriginal woman of immense tolerance and good humour, and the sparky young Koori hitchhiker Tilly (Mark Coles Smith), a glowing talent.
Like the other film, and indeed Ruben Guthrie, it is a sad, funny, thoughtful and distinctively Australian production, and one that should not be missed.
