Introduction

David Caesar's Idiot Box (1996) and Mullet (2001), two of the more interesting (if not always successful) Australian pictures of the last decade, aim—a little like the films of Yasujiro Ozu suggests John Flaus—"to make the commonplaces of existence yield up their meaning". (1) Caesar unsentimentally and indiscriminately turns the camera's eye on contemporary Australia in both its urban and rural incarnations, exploring its nuances and details, its rituals and rites of passage, and finally—perhaps even somewhat anthropologically—simply bearing witness to a culture and its people.

Despite their anthropological and quasi-essayistic similarities (both films can be viewed as cinematic essays on Australians and the manner in which we speak and interact with one another), Idiot Box and Mullet are very different films—inverted images of one another, perhaps, like opposite sides of the same coin. Idiot Box is pessimistic and angry where Mullet is optimistic and nostalgic (if slightly melancholic); urban where Mullet is rural (the films are Caesar's 'town mouse' and 'country mouse' respectively); and obsessed with the present where Mullet is obsessed with the past (both that of the characters and of rural Australia in general). Although Caesar's visual style is occasionally garish and overblown (what I would describe as being 'needlessly messy,' though this is not so much the case in Mullet as it is in Idiot Box), his ideas and observations are most certainly worth taking note of.

A Story About the Young and the Useless

The angrier half of Caesar's contemporary Australian diptych, Idiot Box, concerns itself with the deep-rooted sociopathic tendencies that are implicit in any and all members of the last two generations, explicitly linking these tendencies to the centralised role of television and home video in their (our!) upbringings. (2) Kev (Ben Mendelsohn) and Mick (Jeremy Sims), urged on by heist movies and televised current affairs stories, (3) decide to rob their local bank—not so much for the money (although both characters are unemployed), but for some sort of sensation or feeling, which television has clearly robbed them of. This is particularly pertinent in the case of Kev, whose trajectory through the film has a feeling of quixotic desperation about it, as though he's on a quest for sensory stimuli of the non-televisual variety that will enable him to feel—and thus become human—again. Unfortunately, in Caesar's pessimistic worldview, this stimuli can only be provided by Kev's own self-destruction, which he allows us to experience firsthand at different points in the film. These moments of subjective self-destruction play in slow motion, (4) are devoid of location sound (instead the soundtrack becomes submerged in a bizarre mix of bagpipe music and white noise) and include:

• the opening scene of the film, in which Kev slowly crosses a busy highway (perhaps in the hope that a car will hit him);
• the scene in which Kev deliberately sets off every car alarm in the car park;
• the scene in which Kev does doughnuts in a stolen car; and
• the scene in which Kev, infuriated by the fact that he was stopped (by another robber) from robbing the bank, brandishes his gun in front of the police. In my reading of the film, Kev is actively trying to get shot in this final scene; chasing, as ever, some sort of elusive, life-affirming physical sensation.

If Idiot Box is flawed, it's flawed only in its obsession with cinematic style (the aforementioned moments of mental subjectivity aside). Caesar has some very interesting (if pessimistic) things to say about television's adverse effects, but sometimes Idiot Box feels more like a Tarrantino-esque heist movie than a thoughtful (though very funny) essay on media saturation. There's something frighteningly alarming about the fact that Mick learnt how to perform cunnilingus by watching a video, but it's arguably lost amongst Caesar's numerous dollies, whip-pans and 'Scorsesian' flourishes. (5)

Life is Like a Bucket of Fish

My favourite Australian film of the past five years, (6) Mullet, as previously noted, is the yin to Idiot Box 's yang. Unlike that of his earlier picture, which was concerned with television's stranglehold on Australian youth, Caesar's focus in Mullet is far less angry, but notably more eulogistic—modernity (the present) and the manner in which it tragically but necessarily kills off tradition (the past). This theme works on two levels in the film; the personal (Eddie and his family) and the societal (rural Australia in general). Eddie (again Ben Mendelsohn) returns from the city after a prolonged period of 'no contact,' disrupting the status quo amongst his family and friends (for the second time), (7) while Caesar's camera, in the meantime, documents (again in a somewhat essayistic fashion) the dying days of Australia's country towns and their traditions. (8)

And this is where, if anywhere, the idea of anthropology begins to come into play. Said the great anthropological filmmaker Jean Rouch, " The camera eye has an infallible memory," (9) and the role of Mullet (and Idiot Box for that matter) is, in part, to get down on celluloid, where it can exist in a tangible form, this unique (and in my mind tragic) moment of Australia's history, in which "our old white culture . . . which was dominant until the 1960s . . . is now in remission everywhere and moribund in our big towns". (10) Mullet is a chronicle of physical space (the look and feel of the location), culture (particularly in regards to masculine rituals of emotional repression and their subsequent emancipation, such as that which takes place on the football field) and language ("You stupid cow, Robbie, I could've spilt my beer.")

Of course, earlier I noted that, despite these melancholy proclamations of traditional Australia's death, Mullet (in comparison to Idiot Box) was ultimately an 'optimistic' film. I stand by this analysis. The film's final scenes, although arguably too convenient and sugar-coated given what has transpired before them, point towards a future that—while not at all like the past (which is "safe")—might not be so bad after all. Eddie's family (and rural Australia along with it) might have changed, but that change doesn't necessarily presuppose destruction—in fact, in this case (as a result of what Flaus calls a " deus ex machina pregnancy") (11) it presupposes life and (re)birth.

Although greatly pared down in comparison to Idiot Box, Caesar's style, once again, prevents the film from being an irrefutable masterpiece. What would be interesting, in my opinion, would be to see Caesar turn his back on 'sheer style' for a film or two, (12) aiming instead for a more innocuously realist observation of Australia as only he can see it. (13) He need not be Guy Ritchie, Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese in other words; he need only be David Caesar, and David Caesar alone. What I'm ultimately interested in is what this filmmaker has to say; I really couldn't care less about what he can do with a dolly and jib.

Conclusion

Still, Idiot Box and Mullet —these two profoundly interesting and infuriating pictures—ultimately represent what I consider to be some of the best filmmaking that this country at present (or not-so-distant past, at least) has to offer, and David Caesar—this profoundly interesting and infuriating director—is in my eyes one of this country's most unique, angry and distinctly enigmatic voices. His films—at once both flawed essays on the state of nation and its peoples and anthropological time capsules that deftly encapsulate the moments in which they were made—are indispensable pieces of Australian cinema; two near-masterpieces that take the commonplaces of our everyday existence, and using a little bit of brute force, make them yield up some remarkable meanings.

Notes

1. Flaus, J. (2001) "An Impressionist Work: Mullet ". Senses of Cinema. Issue No. 14, June 2001. Available online at: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/14/mullet.html Accessed on: October 19, 2004
2. Interestingly, I explored this same idea in my short film Once (2002), the only difference being that Caesar's characters are encouraged by television to rob a bank, where the lead character in mine confuses the line between fiction and reality to the point where he begins stalking random women on street, believing himself to be the 'director' of their lives.
3. Coincidentally, the bank robber whose stories inspire Kev and Mick seems to have been just as influenced in the 'idiot box' as they have: his rubber clown mask disguise is vaguely reminiscent of the rubber masks worn by the 'ex-presidents' in Point Break (d. Kathryn Bigelow, 1991).
4. Much like mentally subjective point-of-view shots in the work of Martin Scorsese, particularly Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980).
5. Admittedly, this criticism might be a little too harsh. Although the film's themes would most probably be better conveyed were Caesar not so entertained by his own showmanship, one can't deny that his sound design (which utilises a wide array of bizarre transmission signals, sound bytes and popular music that is never allowed to play in its entirety before Caesar 'changes the channel') and editing (especially the implementation of found footage as structural punctuation, most notably in one of the film's fight scenes) is inspired.
6. The more 'international' Moulin Rouge (d. Baz Luhrmann, 2001) aside.
7. I'm assuming in this sentence that his unexplained and seemingly unmotivated leaving didn't go down too well at the time.
8. Interestingly, the pub used in the film was actually renovated the day after shooting was completed, and the scrub in which Eddie's caravan was located was soon levelled to make way for a new freeway. In this respect, the film is literally a visual record of Kiama as it once was but no longer is.
9. Source unknown.
10. Flaus, J. (2001)
11. Ibid.
12. Sadly, this seems unlikely if Dirty Deeds (2002) is anything to go by…
13. I'd be most interested in seeing him try something with an almost neo-realist mentality.