The Eye of the Storm

Filmmakers brave (or foolhardy) enough to tackle Patrick White's rich literary legacy might be counted on a couple of fingers. Although Voss has been successfully adapted to the operatic stage, nothing came of Harry Miller's proposed film in the late 60s, while Jim Sharman's The Night, The Prowler (1978) was filmed from White’s own script.

During the author’s lifetime this paucity might have been attributed to the inexorable control that White exacted over his work and legacy—to the point of denying his own official biographer access to his private journals. However since his death, a new generation has been slow to grasp the opportunity presented by the novels. Indeed, it’s an experienced team who’ve risen to the challenge with The Eye of the Storm, the novel that tipped the scales to net the author his grudgingly accepted Nobel Prize in 1973.

Former socialite Elizabeth Hunter (Charlotte Rampling) lies dying in her lavish residence by Centennial Park in Sydney. Occasionally lucid, though as often floating on an ocean of memory, her needs are attended by two nurses, the sassy Flora (Alexandra Schepisi) and saintly Mary (Maria Theodorakis), a housekeeper, the irascible masochist and Holocaust survivor Lottie Lippmann (Helen Morse), as well as stalwart family lawyer Wyburd (John Gaden). Into this delicate arrangement arrive Elizabeth’s estranged adult children: Dorothy (Judy Davis), the Princess de Lascabanes, smarting from a failed marriage into European aristocracy that has stranded her in middle age with nought but a title and some jewels; and Basil (Geoffrey Rush), a rumpled actor, knighted by the British, who floats through life playing to other people’s expectations while haunted by his failure as Lear, the role by which he measures the limits of his talent. Temporarily united by a shared plan to pack their mother away to a nursing home and generally accelerate their inheritance of her fortune, the pair descend upon the deathbed to extract what they feel is owed.

The extent to which the film is seen as a successful adaptation depends entirely on the degree to which the story is viewed as inseparable from the prose in which it was written. The pleasures and frustrations of White’s writing—which for many may amount to the same thing—unravel organically, brilliant tendrils of digression curling away from painstakingly crafted scenes, present action illuminated by streams of consciousness, prose of unrelenting precision sinking its barbs into the reader’s mind: “the women, either in loud summery shifts, apparently with nothing underneath, or else imprisoned in a rigid armature of lace, shrieked at one another monotonously out of unhealed wounds.” Writing to Cynthia Nolan in early 1970, White commented that the novel was “going to be in the shape of a spider’s web,” and indeed to read it is to trace each thread through the concentric circles of narrative that slowly orbit Elizabeth’s impending death.

The dangers in adapting a narrative of this complexity are manifold. Judy Morris, whose lengthy resume as a film and television actor is complemented by writing credits on the Babe sequel Pig in the City (1998) and George Miller’s dancing penguin extravaganza Happy Feet (2006), has sharpened the primary relationships while shearing away the majority of Elizabeth’s mental forays into the past, trimming the frumpish Jessie Badgery from her entourage and generally rearranging and combining scenes to allow a seamless cinematic flow, one that is amply realised by director Fred Schepisi.

Having made his name at home directing films such as The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), Schepisi departed for the US where he solidified a reputation for producing films both critically respected and commercially robust. With Eye he is less analeptically trigger-happy than might have been expected, relying on loaded visual imagery to suggest the barely supressed corruption in which White revelled, the camera lingering on mould formed on a dish of preserves, two kilos of beef rotting in a garbage bin, and worms “lashing themselves into a frenzy of pink exposure” beneath rose bushes “at the climax of their beauty.” The film combines lush costumes and decor—gilt bed frames, colonnades and chandeliers. The house at Centennial Park is an exercise in opulence. Adding a smoothly vapid jazz soundtrack, Schepisi succeeds in capturing the crass indulgence of the period without aiming for the florid ruthlessness with which White represented his countrymen—although Colin Friels’ lascivious politician Athol Shreve comes close.

One of Schepisi’s most obvious achievements with this film is simply assembling a cast of such calibre. Judy Davis is superb as Dorothy, the perennially disappointed princess, murmuring the correct formalities through sour lips, roiling insecurities being permitted meagre outlet as she kicks her mother’s tasteful furnishings. Trained by Elizabeth in pursuit of wealth, Dorothy takes none of her mother’s unalloyed pleasure in the material; in one brilliant scene, she is surprised by Mary while rubbing her face on a sumptuous rug, Davis’ face collapsing from mortification into self-disgust on learning that the fur is platypus. Rush is equally good as the fumbling, narcissistic actor: “I think I might be ready for something real” he tells Flora with sublime self-delusion after their mutual seduction— though his presence tends to overwhelm the whole, a fact not helped by his unnecessary narration.

Charlotte Rampling is also excellent as the still-regal Elizabeth, her features displaying both the collapsed beauty and inner steel of the dying matriarch. Even from her death bed she is capable of slicing through the affectations of her love-starved children, out-performing the debonair Basil in their excruciating reunion or reducing Dorothy to sputtering incoherence with a sweet enquiry: “Are you going through a difficult time again?” However it is in its representation of Elizabeth that the film runs against the limits of the medium. In the novel, White accessed scenes from across a lifetime of casually unthinking egotism and the brutal pursuit of status, offering her character both as it was and is perceived in recollection all at once. Rampling, though brilliantly cast, can only gesture toward such psychological depth.

This is made manifest in the way both texts deal with Elizabeth’s moment of revelation, where, battered by the hurricane of the title on the fictionalised Brumby Island, she relinquishes her own unyielding hold on life and experiences a moment of sublime grace. In the novel, her rambling mind persists in returning to this moment, which both anchors the novel and her character, the insight into her own selfish refusal to open herself to love casting its illumination across the rest of her life. “She was no longer a body, least of all a woman,” White writes. “She was instead a being, or more likely a flaw at the centre of this jewel of light: the jewel itself, blinding and tremulous at the same time, existed, flaw and all, only by grace.” Limited as he is by the eye of the camera, Schepisi is merely able to capture the image of Rampling standing in the surf, dappled by the shadows of seabirds, her face upturned and exaltant. Although beautiful, the moment is perhaps unavoidably stripped of much of its psychological and indeed metaphysical resonance.

“The worst thing about love between human beings,” declares Elizabeth early in the novel, is “when you’re prepared to love them they don’t want it; when they do, it’s you who can’t bear the idea.” Over the course of nearly 600 pages of vividly imagined prose, White meticulously traces the destructive effects of attempting to impose one’s will on the heart. In contrast, Schepisi and Morris have managed to dramatise the essentially meaningless theatre to which relationships descend when denied loving sustenance.


First published in RealTime Arts, Iss. 105, Oct-Nov 2011, p 21

Big Scary - Vacation

Since coming to the rather sensible realisation that playing in a band is preferable by far to dealing with things like jobs or rent, Melbournians Tom Iansek and Jo Syme have been quick to get on with it: half a dozen EPs, including the themed ‘Seasons’ releases, supporting tours with acts like The Vasco Era and Midlake, as well as numerous solo shows. With their debut long-player, the pair have assembled a solid collection that sums up their work to date without quite hitting the electric rawness of their EPs.

Loosely unified around the thought that Big Scary are on a holiday from the ‘real world’, Vacation is rife with images of uncertainty. “I can quote my favourite line / I can calculate the distance in sine” Iansek declares on second single ‘Gladiator’, before recognising his inability to effect events: “it makes no difference anyway”. Though some of the material here seems a touch adolescent, Iansek is able to inject a whole universe of frustrated vigour into a line like “I’m just bored / I don’t know what to do with my life” (the piano-powered ‘Mix-Tape’) with a throaty yowl that is completely convincing.

Though the genre-tripping for which the pair quickly became known is less flambouyantly displayed here, Iansek’s writing retains all its versatility; the stripped down blues of ‘Purple’ is followed by the synth-blurred ‘Child In A Tree’ and the contemplative downer ‘Bad Friends’, in which Iansek’s beautiful upper register lends “my friends are all getting drunk somewhere without me” a genuine poignancy. But the highlight is a re-recording of ‘Falling Away’ from the Autumn EP, which casts a small shadow across the rest of the record.

Impressive as much for the wide-ranging breadth of Iansek’s songwriting as the clear-eyed certainty of the pair’s performance, Vacation is a promising debut LP.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 432, October 3rd 2011

Ganglians - Found Sounds 'n Sad Slackers

Fun fact: Sacramento has one of the highest unemployment rates in the United States. Given that, it’s perhaps not so surprising that friendly local psychedelic popsters Ganglians are somewhat preoccupied by the realities of life under late capitalism. ‘Drop The Act’, the track which opens their euphoric third full-length effort Still Living, is nothing short of a slacker call to arms, singer Ryan Grubbs hollering with frenzied glee: “this is a sad, sad song / for all you sad, sad people / why don’t you pick up the phone / and tell me what you’re gonna do?”

Recovering from the flu contracted on a recent tour, guitarist Kyle Hoover is chipper about the band’s situation. “Worklessness, joblessness, feeling as though you should be doing something with your life but are completely unable to do so. On [‘Drop The Act’] I know that Ryan’s trying to capture an ‘inspire our generation’ [vibe], but … there’s sort of like a mocking sort of feel, like, ‘Yeah! Let’s get together and do nothing, guys!’”

A double irony, as in a few short years Ganglians (a play on ‘Gangly Aliens’ or ‘Gang of Aliens’ – take your pick) have compiled a small but impressive discography, their most recent effort being preceded by the sprawling lysergic spatter of Monster Head Room as well as their self-titled debut. Coming together over a shared love of Brian Wilson’s sixties songwriting (particularly the creepily beautiful Smiley Smile), Hoover also cites The Millenium’s Begin – “the most perfect studio pop record of the sixties” – as a vital touchstone.

Integral to Ganglians’ take on hooks and harmonies is their incorporation of found sounds and samples, lending their songs a cinematic edge. “[We] like to give it that element of escapism,” says Hoover. “When you circulate that sound collage stuff, it makes it feel like you’ve created your own little universe … we use [samples] for that purpose, [establishing] atmosphere … But on [tracks] like ‘Things to Know’, they’re just plain silly – like you know, where the motorcycle builds up and he’s like, riding off into the distance.

While Still Living is rife with tongue-in-cheek touches, Ganglians are just as capable of offering songs up straight from the heart. “’California Cousins’ and ‘Sleep’ are much more personal songs,” says Hoover, “especially for Ryan, he was dealing with relationship issues and whatever else … Half of the album is us getting together and jamming stuff out; half the [songs] were probably written in one night,” he explains. “Then there were songs like ‘Sleep’ that took us like weeks to figure out how we wanted it to work. It’s kind of a bit all over the place.”

Despite his recent brush with the lurgy, Hoover is keen to get back on the road – anywhere’s better than Sacramento. “We’ve been stuck at home, I’m at my folks’ house and Ryan’s able to couch surf wherever we are, but there’s a large period of time where we’re both jobless and homeless. We’re like, ‘When can we get on tour again so we don’t have to worry about life!’ That said, we’ve always both known that the best part about being in a band is writing a record and being in a studio and recording,” he says. “It’s the most magical experience.”


First published in The Brag, Iss. 428, September 6th 2011