Kenneth Nguyen, a writer from Melbourne Age wrote a piece that went something like this, ”Please, Baz, tone down the kitsch and turf the Kidman”
When I read comments by Mr Nguyen and the general cold reviews on Australia the film, I realise how much in common Swedes and Australians really are; That both cultures are isolated – Australia at the arse end of the world and an island,and Sweden at the top north- with bloody freezing temperature most of the year which affects the people’s general out look on life, eller hur?
Both bag their locally produced films when directors dare to show something that is perhaps less kitchen sink realism and dare I say it,when us simple folk from the suburbs would pay a ticket to watch instead of downloading it or gathering in trendy arty cinemas the size of bathrooms,while having a chat over a double espresso.
You see, when you’ve been away from home a while one always looks back with perhaps a slight touch of romanticism-the sentimentality of homeland. The imaginary home and our country is what it is in my mind and the emotion it evokes,negative or positive. I have realised with time that things I would once dread no longer existed upon my return,(like John Howard)it is not that these fears in people,places things did not ever exist,as they did ( Pauline Hansson) and they were(are)real,it is that I have changed. I have outgrown my fear, my perspective has changed with time and distance. So when you are entrenched in dual landscapes as I am,one has the privilege of freedom and an odd obligation which I am not ashamed to stay stems from love for both landscape and culture to bring and see the best of both worlds in a universal context which the best stories over time tell and touch us. (Australia, Wizard of Oz, The Immigrants, just three examples)
I will dare to say that elements of the Swedish cultural institutions are totally unaware of the gifted individuals amongst them who are of what they would certainly count as the kitsch variety and have being promptly cut off so as not to be given any room in fear that we may have Bergman/ Lurhman mutation, which would be opposed to Swede’s unique phrase called, lagom, which means mediocre and that is a compliment on this side of town. Eller Hur?
And we have no major box office international sassy, sexy female actors since Garbo, Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Bergman as they’ve been taught in film school to tone it down and be smart good girls who are directed by a generation of male directors who in turn have been raised by mothers who’ve castrated them metaphorically speaking,from the neck down-A backlash of social-liberalism, possums. (Which is probably why right now the sexiest man alive is a sweating, bloody cheaky bull drover, Aussie and not a Swede.)
So we don’t get sassy because that would be too frightening for the Swedish film school trained directors to handle- but one man did give women her mojo, good or bad- he got canned for it too and his name was Ingmar Bergman and women have never been as complex, sexy, strong, weak, loving, hating, neurotic bitches since. ( Mrs Boss, Monica (Summer with Monica) Scarlett, Baby Jane...me, citing some examples of what I mean)
I had the extraordinary and rare pleasure of sitting in a packed cinema in one of the western suburbs of Stockholm because all the inner city cinemas were sold out for the Christmas opening of Australia.(And they wouldn't let me in with my fish'n chips in my bag)
My point on Mr Nguyen article about toning down the kitsch and turfing the Kidman is this ; If you can get Swedes to come out on sub freezing levels on Christmas day, make them pay twenty-one dollars for a ticket and then expect them to sit for two and a half hours to watch a film about a drover, Mrs Boss and their creamy in the Aussie outback singing Somewhere over the Rainbow, then mate, Baz Lurhman IS the Wizard of Oz.
Eller Hur?
