Moulin Rouge Tops Australian Box Office
The Age
Saturday January 26, 2002
LANTANA. Great film, great plaudits. Predictions in the latest United States Premiere magazine that it will do big things there; locally, its actors and stars have had Australian Film Institute awards lavished upon them.
It was as though there were no other local films in the critical running, apart from the internationally backed $100 million epic Moulin Rouge. And, as far as the Australian box office goes, that might as well have been the case.
The official 2001 box office receipts were released on Monday, and domestic rhapsody appears lacking, if sales ranking defines success.
Only one local film made Australia's top 25 last year: Moulin Rouge, grossing $27.4 million and sitting pretty at number three. In fact, it's now the third alltime grossing Australian film. A top result for Baz Luhrmann and the moneyed backers his talents can attract, combined with Nicole Kidman's Golden Globe award this week.
On the other hand, for all its AFI plaudits and rave reviews, fewer Australians were tempted to see Lantana than a host of American imports. We were twice as likely, for instance, to watch a remake of Charlie's Angels, or the beauty pageant romp Miss Congeniality, or even the critically panned US propaganda reel Pearl Harbor, than to take in a local ensemble work about trust in relationships.
Clearly the AFIs do not have the domestic clout of the Oscars, and clearly this is not America. Merely another American market.
Such comparisons may seem churlish given Lantana has made a very healthy $9.9million here to date, and that suburban audiences will always favour the lightweight, but it is tempting to ask: why do only a handful of Australian films make the really big money?
Australian films grossed $63.5 million or 7.8per cent of the total box office nationally last year. This is not in itself a bad result: consistent with the 7.9 per cent share in 2000, though not quite the dizzy heights of 1988 (24per cent, year of Crocodile Dundee), or even 1994 (10 per cent, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel's Wedding) yet at least well above the more recent low of 1999 (3 per cent). Can we expect more?
More pointedly: are we making the right films, or plumping for the celebrated quirk factor?
Australian Film Commission chief executive Kim Dalton denies there is any problem with the quality of Australian film scripts. Contrasting Moulin Rouge and Lantana with other local box office successes last year - The Man Who Sued God ($8.1million), The Bank ($2.5 million) and Mullett ($1 million) - demonstrates the diversity of the scripts, he says. (Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, at $7.8 million, was belatedly added to the local list, though it is debatable whether it is an Australian film.)
"They're not quirky films in the way that Australian films are often dismissed," says Dalton. He concedes the industry could always do with more of the likes of Lantana by writer Andrew Bovell, whose dialoguedriven script signals a marked departure from many Australian films.
"Do we have a strong writing pool? I think it's an area that we are continuing to develop and get stronger in.
"People have realised that Australian films have to compete in the marketplace on story, scripts and performances. There's no special effects, no big budget, and not the stars or the marketing budget that American films have."
Lantana was an odd case in this respect, given its potential. The film received a narrow, staggered local release; a debatable and highly unusual strategy. But Alan Finney, immediate past chairman of the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia, says the strategy turned in an ``incredible performance" at the box office, considering the film's lack of big star value. He predicts Lantana will eventually take $12 million here.
Finney says he hopes Lantana will give courage to Australians ``to make more challenging and imaginative films". He adds: ``But they always have." Finney points to Mall Boy, a recent film from his Buena Vista company whose audience, he says carefully, was ``not large, but appreciative".
"It's hard to get people to see a film about a dysfunctional young man," laments Finney. He points out that seven out of 10 US films fail - so we should expect the same. ``It's more like the horse racing business." (Or, more appropriately, the greyhound business, visavis the quirky but soon forgotten Australian comedy Silent Partner.)
Finney protests that quirk is an overused word in the local film vocabulary, but that there is a long, strong Australian tradition favouring offbeat comedy.
Yet he claims that Australians will only make a commercial success of their own films so long as the US blockbusters continue to draw audiences here. This is necessary, he says, "so that audiences will have a positive experience and will come again". And, he points out: ``Where else are we going to show our trailers?"
Perhaps, Australia needs to make more Moulin Rougestyle blockbusters to crack its own top 25 at the box office more often?
The editor of Urban Cinefile, Andrew L. Urban, says it is perverse to measure success in terms of box office takings, given government funding - the cash backbone of all local production, though pointedly not Moulin Rouge - is supposed to be driven by cultural rather than commercial motivation.
"The government has made it clear that it is not providing funds to film production as if it were a profit centre. So why don't we assess the outcomes by the same yardstick: cultural value? Because that's too hard."
But are we getting it right, and is there enough diversity in content? ``If we keep asking the questions about the marketplace, we can't be discussing the cultural remit," argues Urban. ``What's the yardstick? Is it commercial? Popularity? Or culturally valid and creatively valuable films?
"There's no right and wrong, but as a society we should decide why we spend $100 million on film production."
Urban says it is impossible to predict which smallbudget films - and most Australian films can be classed as such - will sell well. ``The Dish and Wog Boy are exceptions to the (many) films that do not make money at the box office," he says.
"It is a showbiz mystery when a low budget film makes money. No one can plan for it."
The AFC's Kim Dalton is adamant: the government clearly does not have the sort of money to finance a Moulin Rouge. On the other hand, he believes we have the talent here to attract greater funds to movies.
"I don't think we rely on being quirky at all. I think we have a way of looking at things that is peculiarly Australian, whether that's our humour, our stories, the way we look at relationships or the landscape.
"We have to have an approach to things that is Australian because that's what separates us from the rest of the world. If we tried to do films the way Americans do them, we'd never do them as well, and you'd have to wonder why we were spending Australian taxpayers' money on it, too."
Box office 2001
• Australian top six
1. Moulin Rouge $27.4 million
2. Lantana 9.9
3. The Man Who Sued God 8.1
4. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles 7.8
5. The Bank 2.5
6. Mullet 1
• Overall top 20
1. Shrek $32 million
2. Harry Potter 31.3
3. Moulin Rouge 27.4
4. What Women Want 22.5
5. Bridget Jones's Diary 22.4
6. Castaway 20.6
7. Miss Congeniality 20
8. Pearl Harbor 18.7
9. The Mummy 18.2
10. Cats and Dogs 16.5
11. Tomb Raider 15.9
12. Fellowship of the Ring 14.9
13. Meet the Parents 14.7
14. Swordfish 14.4
15. Rush Hour 2 13.7
16. Traffic 12
17. American Pie 2 11.6
18. Planet of the Apes 11.6
19. Coyote Ugly 11.4
20. Hannibal 11.
© 2002 The Age
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