latest notices
QPIX STUDENTS ARE TROPFEST FINALISTS
Graduates of QPIX’s 2011 Diploma of Production course have won their way into the finals of TROPFEST, the world’s largest short film festival, with their student production PHOTOBOOTH. Set in the Afghanistan conflict, PHOTOBOOTH is one of a sequence of...
'Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu' Out February 10
(Nationwide)
Over The Fence Comedy Film Deadline
(Nationwide)
Rottofest 2012: Call For Entries Now Open!
(Nationwide)
latest news
Geoffrey Rush Joins Tropfest
The acclaimed actor and newly-crowned Australian of the Year, Geoffrey Rush, will be a key player in 2012’s Tropfest activities.
Naomi Watts To Play Princess Diana
The Aussie actress is set to play the people’s princess in an upcoming film that chronicles the final two years of Diana’s life.
Sullivan Stapleton Signs On To ‘300’ Prequel
The Aussie actor has beat out the competition to land a role in the upcoming blockbuster.
James Cameron Loses Long Time Australian Collaborators
Producer Andrew Wight and cinematographer Mike deGruy lose their lives in a helicopter crash.
search the site
newsletter
Enter your email address below to receive the weekly Filmink newsletter
Gran Torino is a grand affair
Clint Eastwood's latest and perhaps last has raised some eyebrows with its particularly racist subject matter
One of the last big US releases of 2008 was the highly anticipated action-thriller, Gran Torino, directed by the Oscar winning, mainstream outlaw Clint Eastwood. At first glance, the film's trailer hinted perhaps at giving us what appeared to be another Harry Calahan- style shoot ‘em up holiday pre-fab flick. In fact, it turns out that what may be Clint's final acting performance is more than just another high-calibre-red rider-BB gun under the Christmas tree, begging to be removed before the next administration takes office on January the 20th.
The film's hype of gratuitous violence and tough bravado buddy bomb seemed groomed to be a ringer for a target audience that longed for an updated version of a western from the good old days when good guys and bad guys were as two dimensional as high noon westerns shot in black and white. Gran Torino, it turns out, is not your predictable pro-violence blockbuster, and actually portrays a piece of filmmaking art which lies somewhere between Clint's dirty old self and his sensitive Bridges of Madison County persona. Eastwood's rumoured and quite possible acting ‘swan song,' about a 1972 two door 351 C.I. limited sports edition vehicle (the titular Gran Torino), hides a lot of power under its hood and has, if nothing else, elicited mixed emotional reviews from a wide variety of critics on a wide range of topics. Perhaps justly so, as Eastwood plays the role of Walt Kawolski, a recently widowed, retired auto-assembly-line worker, Korean war veteran and unapologetic bigot living in modern day suburban Detroit.
There is no post traumatic stress disorder over the number of "gooks" he begrudgingly confesses he shot to a neighbourhood kid, rather than confessing to his beloved deceased wife's fresh out of the seminary priest. Instead Eastwood's character is like many of today's senior citizens struggling to deal with a rapidly changing world, clinging to the familiar. Walt ("Don't call me Wally") Kowalski takes pride in his country, his flag and telling his neighbours to "stay off my lawn." Soon Kowalski has to deal with living next door to the immigrant Hmong family, whom he declares as "Barbarians" (among his kinder racial epithets). With time and the overt sweetness of the Hmong family (and in particular seventeen year old Sue Lor played by Ahney Her), Kowalski's overt prejudicial macho tendencies to some extent begrudgingly retreat, if only like glaciers melting due to some fortunate global multi-cultural warming.
Many politically correct ‘slur fearing' critics seem to take real offence at Eastwood's racist character and are missing the point. (It's called believable role-playing folks!) Clint Eastwood as Walter Kowalski is indeed scary, rude, and unappealing - if not all too real a character in places throughout America where gentrification, and integration, be it economic or social, are lacking.
The sad reality is that this ubiquitous topic requires more mainstream coverage not less and, running away from the film because it uses words that have always been in the vernacular is not going to erase what we would all like to forget. Has such language stopped the popularity of hip-hop, because it frequents the use of the "N" word? Also give Eastwood kudos and recognition for stepping out of bounds and beyond the limits of his past big gun box office successes, trying to put a sense of cultural conflict in the increasingly ethnically diverse modern world.
Gran Torino turns out to be an against the grain tragedy that evokes feelings as it evolves into a melancholy and touching film. Eastwood's script was at times a tad trite ("Ya know somethin'... you're okay kid") and his growly scowl faced dialogue was definitely ill-suited for singing. (Clint, now is not the time to start a new career.) But hey, who else is addressing these issues in the forum of an edge of your (bench) seat suspense action-thriller prime for Hollywood New Year's release? Perhaps Roger Ebert wrote it best when he observed, ‘What other figure in the history of the cinema has been an actor for 53 years, a director for 37, won two Oscars for direction, two more for best picture, plus the Thalberg Award, and at 78 can direct himself in his own film and look meaner than hell? None, that's how many.'