Tuesday, May 15, 2007

What happened

Staying up the last couple of nights to watch Bastard Boys, the ABC's two part telemovie on the dock workers' dispute back in 1998, my partner and I enjoyed much of the drama and had fun recognising a number of scenes and scenarios of the docks dispute from when we participated in the community picket supporting the MUA (but not knowing each other was there, as we weren't together then). "It was like that the night I was there," my partner called out at one scene.

Yes, a lot of it resonated, and yes, it was enlightening to get a 'sense' of what was happening behind the scenes. But, does that make it a good telemovie?

It was with some relief that I noticed this morning that Barista had already posted a pretty comprehensive review of Bastard Boys, to which I contributed my impressions in the comments, so forgive me for thinking this saves me the trouble of writing a review here. Lazy? Busy!

Seriously, though, it is odd watching a television programme or movie about events in which you're involved, even if only in a very marginal way. Odd, but compelling, and strangely satisfying – like it affirms your memory of the events, or your place in them, by saying, "Yes, this happened". Even if you yell back, "It didn't happen like that". (Actually, no, I didn't yell that.)

By the way, I know it is pretty late (I was busy trying to make my partner's Mother's Day nice to blog), but I'd like to wish all the mothers a happy Mother's Day for last Sunday. I hope you had a great day.

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1 Comments:

At May 15, 2007 7:28 pm, Blogger philjohnson said...

My wife and I watched both parts and enjoyed the production. We realised it was not a doco-drama in the conventional sense of all the characters being real-life people of history. The script seemed to convey the mood of the Company and of the workers. The acting overall was good.

A nice piece to play and remind us of the ugly underside of the Howard coalition from the 1990s. Very apt in this election year. Now all that is needed is for the BBC production "House of Cards" to be rebroadcast to remind us of Francis Urquhart the conniving Tory imagined as Maggie Thatcher's successor. Urquhart was played faultlessly by the late Ian Richardson. The Urquhart saga has much in it that resonates with the ugly reality of Howard's regime.

 

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