10 Best Australian Movies of All Time

 

1. Wake in Fright (1971)

Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright is hands-down the most terrifying film about Australia. Scorsese after watching it at the Cannes premiere called it, “deeply — and I mean deeply — unsettling and disturbing movie”.  It was made a year before Boorman’s Deliverance, which revolved around city-bred men running into trouble with an isolated rural community. Wake in Fright doesn’t have a clear-cut structure like Deliverance. But it’s a more spine-chilling descent into the world of primal terror.



2. Breaker Morant (1980)
Bruce Beresford’s hard-hitting anti-war drama was based on a true story of the 1902 trial of three Australian lieutenants. The film’s dramatization and staging would naturally remind us of Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957). The three lieutenants are brought on trial for the murder of three Boer prisoners of war. But we soon learn that the trial is to cover up hypocritical military blunders, and uphold the facade of diplomacy. 

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3. Mad Max Film Series


George Miller had the unique vision of re-imagining the vast Australian desert landscape as post-apocalyptic wasteland. The result was the original Mad Max Trilogy with Mel Gibson in the titular role. The trilogy became one of the most influential action films, leading to many copycat dystopian movies. The first installment of the series was only made on a $400,000-budget, and went on to make $100 million. 

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4. Walkabout (1971)





Nicolas Roeg is one of the important British filmmakers who often made films about outsiders inhabiting an atmosphere that’s totally alien to them. That scenario was literal in David Bowie starrer The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). The singer plays a humanoid alien visiting from a distant planet in the movie. Walkabout also contains a similar, simple plot where two English children get lost in the harsh conditions of Australian outback. 

5. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978)

 



Fred Schepisi’s film is based on Thomas Keneally’s novel. Its central character was a half-caste Aboriginal man named Jimmie, who was modeled after the real-life colonial-era outlaw, Jimmy Governor (1875-1901). The film tells a tale of racial despair as Jimmie wasn’t wholeheartedly accepted into the Aboriginal world and repeatedly demeaned by the whites. The oppression reaches a dangerous boiling point and leads to Jimmie’s grisly crimes.

6. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)


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Peter Weir’s highly acclaimed feature is based on a novel by Joan Lindsay which is mistakenly assumed as a true story. On Valentine’s Day, 1900, a group of all-girls boarding school students in Victoria, Australia goes on a day trip to Hanging Rock. After picnicking for some hours, a few students decide to climb the rock, accompanied by a teacher. Only one girl of this small group returns, screaming in terror. The rest vanishes without a trace.

7. Ten Canoes (2006)

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Rolf de Heer co-directed Ten Canoes with Peter Djigirr, an Aboriginal actor, producer, and a musician. The movie unfolds as a hybrid of ethnographic documentary and entertaining slice-of-life drama. Except for David Gulpill (who acts as the storyteller), the cast comprises non-acting Aborigines.

8. Animal Kingdom (2010)


Dubbed as Australian Goodfellas, David Michod’s startling debut feature revolves around a morally bankrupt family of criminals. The narrative unfolds from the point of view of the family’s teenage member, Josh Cody. He comes to live with his sinister grandmother after the death of his mother due to drug overdose. The Cody family is already under crisis as the matriarch and her three brooding sons’ criminal operations are closely watched by the police.

9. Mary and Max (2009)


This is the only feature film of the extraordinary Australian stop-motion animator Adam Elliott. Before Mary and Max, he won an Oscar for his short animation Harvie Krumpet (2004). In Mary and Max, Elliott tells the tale of unlikely friendship between two eccentric outsiders. Mary is a bored eight-year old Australian girl whose pen-pal is Max Horowitz, a depressed middle-aged man living in New York. 

10. The Last Wave (1977)

Made right after the critical success of Picnic at Hanging Rock, Weir’s The Last Wave also tells a deeply mysterious story with no easy resolutions. The film opens with a sudden hailstorm hitting a dry village. Despite the foreboding opening sequence, the film features a simple murder trial at its centre. David Burton, a Sydney-based lawyer, reluctantly agrees to defend a group of aborigines accused of killing one of their own. David is surprised to see one man in this group named Chris. He has appeared in the attorney’s dreams. 

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