Worth: $13.00
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Cast:
Rachel Ward, Mick Green Jr., Bryan Brown
Intro:
… preaching to the already-converted, and even then, a lot of it ends up drier than the soil Rachel Ward spends so much time trying to revive.
Four years after directing and co-writing Palm Beach, Rachel Ward’s latest feature takes an entirely different tact. Framed around her work tending to her farm, this documentary (her first since working on 2006’s Knot at Home Project) is an insider’s look at the state of Australian farming, where it’s headed, and what can be done to move things in a better direction.
Starting out with a brief synopsis of Ward’s own connection to the land, her dream to create a sustainable farm is shown to be itself borne from the national dream that is our cultural understanding of the Outback. Her confidante, Mick Green Jr., even looks and sounds like the quintessential Aussie farmer, with an easy-going and approachably charming personality to match. As such, there’s a rather dark irony that Ward’s first contact with the Aussie ideal was through acting in The Thorn Birds, a miniseries where all the Outback scenes were shot in SoCal. Namely, because it’s a solid precursor for just how far that bushland ideal is from the reality of things, especially over the last handful of years.
Inspired to take up action after the disastrous Black Summer bushfires, the film follows her efforts to convert her land and indeed herself to the ways of regenerative farming. While keeping a solid amount of self-awareness about both the size of the task at hand and her need to learn how to do even the basics, there’s a lot of ground covered as far as showing the cycles within cycles that make up the local ecosystem. Everything is connected, and with humanity’s capacity to affect the world around them, we are part of that connection; it’s all a matter of how we treat it.
Ward’s direction behind the camera and demeanour in front of it emphasise the patience required to make this happen, while still trying to highlight that change must start immediately or sooner if it is going to take root when it needs to. However, it is arguably too languid to get across the urgency of the situation, or even to make the admittedly-comprehensive detailing of how regenerative agriculture works engaging for the whole run time. There’s also a tangible lack of real connection to the wildlife being depicted, be they flora or fauna, which unfortunately puts it behind similarly green features like the surprisingly affecting The Biggest Little Farm.
Rachel’s Farm is certainly informative, both in showing the mechanics of regenerative farming and their practicality (read: profitability) as well as giving a first-hand account of just how chaotic the natural world got at the start of the decade. It even manages to clear up some misconceptions, like the role that cows play in the larger picture. But as a piece of media meant to spark a ‘think global, act local’ attitude and behaviour in its audience, it can come across as preaching to the already-converted, and even then, a lot of it ends up drier than the soil Rachel spends so much time trying to revive.
