Wake in Fright’s Aggressive Hospitality

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Waiting for a train he'd rather not have taken: Gary Bond in Wake in Fright


“It could be worse; the supply of beer could run out.”

-Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasence) assesses his home town of Bundanyabba

Wake in Fright 

is not a film about the 2010 Australian federal election (that one might be called Lie Awake in Despair), but it is a film which says uncomfortable things about Australia, and therefore is not entirely unrelated to this winter of political discontent. It lays waste to the cherished Australian ideal of mateship and beyond that specific cultural provocation, it can be seen as a film about friendliness in general. Many places are described as friendly, without the further interrogation which might reveal the differences between, say, the way people are friendly in northeast Ohio, and they way they are friendly in Istanbul. The study of friendliness is rich territory for art and the fact that nearly everyone in Wake in Fright could be described as friendly is disturbing indeed.
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller