There was a time about 30 years ago when 'The Sundowners' seemed to be on television every month. Not any more.
And that's a pity, because it's a great, sprawling story about the life of itinerant workers in the Australian Bush.
Robert Mitchum at his laid-back blokish best and Deborah Kerr lead a great character-driven cast of slightly misfit individuals who follow the trail of ad-hoc labour. It's a feel-good movie which - like all feel-good movies - has lots of little moral things to say. But they are never overstated. There are no bad eggs, no serious villains, just lots of harmless adventures with some serious and comic interplay. It's almost like a musical with the songs removed.
'Sundowners' is a long movie, too, for what it has to say. Not so much a day-in-the-life as a year-in-the-life of this married couple and their youthful teenage son. She is getting tired of the endless trail, of living in a wagon and a tent. She wants a house. He doesn't. He likes the variety and vagary. He hasn't 'dunroamin'.
There are some splendid scenes of post-colonial small-town Australian life before the nation got stroppy and wanted to become an antipodean USA. Cinematography is sweeping and wonderful.
If you're a third-millennium city slicker weened on computer shoot-'em-ups, who can't live without an I-Pad and two mobile phones, then this gradually evolving experience jogging along at cart-horse speed is going to seem slow, uneventful and perhaps rather boring. However, if you can enjoy a piece of well-acted, character-driven drama, that offers a kindly take upon simple human affairs, I think you will find this uplifting and worth the effort.
And that's a pity, because it's a great, sprawling story about the life of itinerant workers in the Australian Bush.
Robert Mitchum at his laid-back blokish best and Deborah Kerr lead a great character-driven cast of slightly misfit individuals who follow the trail of ad-hoc labour. It's a feel-good movie which - like all feel-good movies - has lots of little moral things to say. But they are never overstated. There are no bad eggs, no serious villains, just lots of harmless adventures with some serious and comic interplay. It's almost like a musical with the songs removed.
'Sundowners' is a long movie, too, for what it has to say. Not so much a day-in-the-life as a year-in-the-life of this married couple and their youthful teenage son. She is getting tired of the endless trail, of living in a wagon and a tent. She wants a house. He doesn't. He likes the variety and vagary. He hasn't 'dunroamin'.
There are some splendid scenes of post-colonial small-town Australian life before the nation got stroppy and wanted to become an antipodean USA. Cinematography is sweeping and wonderful.
If you're a third-millennium city slicker weened on computer shoot-'em-ups, who can't live without an I-Pad and two mobile phones, then this gradually evolving experience jogging along at cart-horse speed is going to seem slow, uneventful and perhaps rather boring. However, if you can enjoy a piece of well-acted, character-driven drama, that offers a kindly take upon simple human affairs, I think you will find this uplifting and worth the effort.