Last year I saw the film that played on opening night of the Melbourne International Film Festival -- just not on opening night.This year I did that one better by actually, for the first time, attending Thursday night's opening night gala.
It's not something I would have done of my own volition, as the tickets are like $150. My wife wouldn't have done it of her own volition either. But she would have done it of somebody else's volition, if that makes sense. And when that somebody else already had a ticket, there was a ticket for me.
I'll explain.
My wife has a film premiering at MIFF this year. She's the producer, and it was directed by a pair of young Australians (they are probably 30). When I say they both directed it, I really mean one directed it and one shot it. I'll talk more about that next week when the film debuts.
Anyway, as the producer, she wanted to make sure that both guys had tickets to opening night. She was given one ticket for herself for free, and the director also got one. She then bought a third ticket so the DP could attend. As it turns out, the director was given a plus-one while the producer was not. He made his plus-one the DP, so she had the extra ticket.
That's where I come in.
I was excited in the abstract, as I like attending fancy affairs where you grab glasses of wine and small crackers with pate on them off the trays of passing waiters. But I learned about my own attendance only 24 hours beforehand, and I was immediately beset by paranoia about what I would wear. I generally don't attend any events where I have to look like, well, anything in particular these days.
Fortunately, my wife knows that, and the short time frame got me off the hook for having tried and whiffed on coming up with something presentable. She rejected my most formal option, which would have been a sport jacket and tie, telling me it would have made me look like somebody's uncle. I think she was right about that. I ended up looking quite consistent with the general level of attire by wearing a brown sweater (they call them "jumpers" here) with a red checkered shirt underneath and poking out at the top. The coup de grace was wearing my scarf as an accent (it's winter here, remember) and a black jacket. It worked.
No one was taking pictures of me anyway. There was some thought that maybe someone would, as there were a couple places here where you could stand and be photographed, which I guess was this event's version of the red carpet. We did stand there and were photographed -- by each other. And she liked how I looked, so all good.
I had a glass of red wine as myself and two thousand others milled about outside the Plenary Theatre at the Melbourne Convention Centre, which is right across from the casino where I see about a third of my movies. I then endured the speeches of no fewer than eight different people, for no fewer than 30 minutes, before the movie finally started.
But it was well worth the wait.
The Australian Dream is a documentary on the retired Aussie rules football player Adam Goodes. As you can probably tell from the poster above, Goodes is Aboriginal, though I'm using that word primarily for readers who don't live here and may be more familiar with it. The word we use nowadays is "indigenous," which I think is better, even if Aboriginal is not technically wrong or even offensive in and of itself. The offense is derived from the way the term has been used historically in a demeaning manner and an abbreviated manner in order to hurt people, and that's really what this film is about.
See, Goodes was forced to retire early from the AFL because the fans objected to him displaying any kind of pride about his indigenous heritage. If that just sounds bizarre to you, well, welcome to Australia. That's of course an oversimplification and I don't mean to suggest that Australians are inherently racist, because they are not. However, there is indeed a complicated history, to say the least, between the white Australians who have been here for 225 years and the black Australians who have been here for, oh, 60,000.
The inciting incident of the Goodes affair was when a 13-year-old girl in the stands called him an ape. Goodes heard it, and was so shocked and hurt that he immediately found an usher and asked that the fan be escorted out of the stadium. If that had been the end of it, it might have just gone away, but further racist taunts and insensitive remarks by footy commentators drew the battle lines, and Goodes began demonstrating more pride in his heritage, including some small tribal victory dances after he would score a goal.
The worst elements of Australian society and footy fandom took exception to all this and started booing Goodes every time he touched the ball. Even though he was a two-time MVP and two-time champion, and only in his mid-30s, Goodes decided he had to step away from the game.
My full review is here, but for now let's just say I loved it. It's not often that a documentary brings tears to my eyes, but this one did.
Goodes himself was the only celebrity I saw all evening, and this from a great distance. I had hoped to catch a random Hugo Weaving or even a Sullivan Stapleton (look him up), but no such Weaving or Stapleton presented himself.
However, I saw a damn good movie and there was wine and pate on crackers, so it was a good night.
And now, my sixth MIFF enters full swing mode, with movies on Saturday (that's today), Tuesday, Wednesday (two), Thursday, Saturday again (two), and two on the final Thursday. At least, I think that's all of them.
Stay tuned for full coverage of all these movies, as always.
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