7.7 | / 10 |
Users | 5.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Wake in Fright is the story of John Grant, a teacher who arrives in the outback mining town of Bundanyabba planning to stay overnight before catching the plane to Sydney. But a long detour of gambling, alcohol and brutality change Grant's plans.
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Gary Bond, Jack Thompson, John Meillon, Chips RaffertyDrama | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 kbps)
Advertised DTS-HD MA 2.0 is incorrect
English SDH
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The extraordinary history of Wake in Fright (hereafter, "WIF") is retold many times in this impressive package from Drafthouse Films, but let's summarize. The film was made by a Canadian director and a British producer, and co-financed internationally when the Australian film industry was in its infancy. Released in 1971, WIF bombed at the local box office, because Australian audiences were appalled at its frank portrayal of life in the outback. ("That's not us!" yelled one man at a screening attended by co-star Jack Thompson.) In the international market, the film's brutal depiction of one man's lost weekend of drinking, gambling and bloodsport did little better. Only the French embraced it (as they so often do with cinematic outcasts). Critics were favorable, and so were fledgling directors, including up-and-coming Australian auteurs like Peter Weir, Fred Schepisi and Bruce Beresford and a little-known American upstart named Martin Scorsese, who sat behind WIF's director at the Cannes Film Festival and exclaimed his approval audibly throughout the film's screening. As an éminence grise thirty-eight years later, Scorsese would bring the restored film back to Cannes as a classic. In the interim, though, the film was little seen, theatrically or on TV or video. Its negative disappeared into obscurity, the location unknown. In 1996, the film's editor, Anthony Buckley, began a search for the elements. Eight years and many false starts later, they were found in a Pittsburgh facility where they had been slated for destruction. Several years of legal disentanglement ensued, followed by additional years of tests and restoration work. The digitally restored film was released at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2009, in Australia theatrically the following month, and on DVD and Blu-ray shortly after. Drafthouse has acquired the rights to release it here.
Prologue (added on May 20, 2015): In the two and a half years since this review was published, many posters at Blu-ray.com have expressed perplexity—and that's putting it mildly—at my failure to condemn the video for its smoothness and lack of grain. Many of these posters appear to be unaware of the interview with director Ted Kotcheff that appeared shortly after this review, in which these issues were expressly addressed. Leaving aside the arguments advanced below, which I still find persuasive, I find it compelling that the director of Wake in Fright considers the restoration of the film performed by Anthos Simon, then general manager of Deluxe Australia, to be the "best" the film has ever looked in both color fidelity and detail. As the director of numerous films, and also as the showrunner of Law and Order: SVU when it made the transition from film to HD video, Mr. Kotcheff is fully familiar with how film should look. He also has the perspective of having seen Wake in Fright when it was first released, which is an advantage not enjoyed by most critics of the current restoration. I have also seen references to "unrestored" stills, which I assume refers to the comparisons first made available on the Australian Blu-ray. One should bear in mind that a straight scan of the "unrestored" negative would have produced an image that was, for the most part, faded and that suffered from numerous tears and scratches. The current presentation of Wake in Fright, in all of its forms, is a reconstruction from a badly deteriorated OCN for which no preservation efforts had been made. That so much detail could be extracted at all is a miracle. As for the color scheme, people are entitled to their opinions, but when it comes to accuracy, especially in this case I defer to the director. Finally, it would no doubt have been possible to silence many of the critics by overlaying this restoration with a layer of "digital grain". Far too many Blu-ray fans are willing to accept such trickery as "film-like", when it is nothing more than the deliberate introduction of noise into an otherwise clear image. I'm just as happy that Mr. Santos didn't indulge in such a cheat. It's generally agreed that the transfer of Wake in Fright used by Drafthouse Films is identical to that appearing on the Blu-ray previously released in Australia. One could hardly expect otherwise, since Drafthouse has neither access to the elements nor the financial incentive to produce a new transfer. Let's start with the obvious positives. The image on Drafthouse's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray reflects an excellent balance of bright, colorful frames in daytime scenes and dark, properly graded shadows at night. Blacks are deep and solid where they should be, and contrast in the bright (very bright) heat of day is appropriately set to bring out depth without blowing out detail. Except for an early scene on the train, in which Grant is imagining his Sydney holiday, director Kotcheff stipulated that he wanted no cool colors in the film, and the transfer accurately reproduces the intended palette dominated by reds, browns, oranges and ochres. (The daytime sky, of course, remains naturally blue.) From here, the situation becomes more problematic. The Australian Blu-ray has been repeatedly criticized for excessive application of so-called "DNR", a term that, it should be recalled, stands for "digital noise reduction" but has come to be applied indiscriminately in numerous instances where posters on internet fora have found fault with a video transfer. In some instances the criticism is legitimately applied but inaptly named; in others, the criticism is simply wrong, reflecting lack of familiarity with the source, ignorance of relevant film technology or some other flaw at the viewer's end. WIF presents a unique problem, because there isn't a good "original" against which to compare the Blu-ray image. WIF was restored entirely in the digital domain, after extensive comparison tests revealed that a photochemical restoration would harvest substantially less detail. A sample comparison of a frame restored by each method is reproduced in the booklet included with the Blu-ray. Nothing in any of the restoration articles I have read indicates that a 1971 print, or any other vintage source, was used as a standard by the restoration team. Throughout their commentary, director Kotcheff and editor Buckley repeatedly point out areas of detail that they say have never previously been visible, including on release prints struck from the negative in 1971. Now, since the evil of so-called "DNR" is to strip away visible detail, what are we to make of a situation where the people who made the film say we're seeing more detail than we ever have before? The image on the Drafthouse disc is certainly soft and frequently smooth in a manner that may (but does not necessarily) indicate the application of noise reduction software or high frequency filtering. However, similar effects can also be created by selective color grading and manipulations of contrast, both of which have consciously been applied here. Certainly there's none of the "wax dummy" quality in faces associated with the heavy application of DNR. Faces shine from perspiration, but Kotcheff confirms in his commentary that this was deliberate and intended. A fair question can be asked as to whether detail from the initial image capture was sacrificed in digital post-processing for the sake of creating a "cleaner" final product deemed more pleasing by the restoration team. But how could that question ever be answered? One would require access to the raw scan, assuming it still exists in unmodified form. WIF was not restored by faceless technicians working at the behest of corporate bean counters. The work was performed under supervision of the Australian National Film and Sound Archive by top craftsmen who have proudly stood up and taken responsibility for their choices. The film's director and editor have signed off on their work. Though an occasional shot gave me pause, overall I found the results to be detailed and free of artifacts, and I have scored it accordingly. I anticipate dissent, but I think that people claiming "DNR" need to explain exactly what has been "DNR'd" out of the image in WIF, given the fact that much of what's currently there was never more than a latent possibility in the negative until this version. Ultimately, if one is a true purist, the real question raised by the Blu-ray of WIF is how to judge a restoration that shows you more than the original film. For the director's comments on the restoration, please see Blu-ray.com's interview, which can be found here.
Contrary to the jacket copy, the audio is lossy DD 2.0, and it gets the job done, although the dynamic range is somewhat limited. Whether that would improve with lossless encoding is unclear, but I suspect that Drafthouse was not provided with a full-range source to encode. Grant's dialogue is perfectly clear, but the Australian accents of many of the supporting characters are sufficiently thick that you may need the aid of the subtitles. The sound editing of WIF is sophisticated, but not in the way we think of today. It uses intrusions of sound (odd volumes, sounds that don't belong, abrupt silences) to enhance Grant's sense of dislocation and the general air of unreality. The DD track conveys this effect adequately and also does a surprisingly good job with the soundtrack by pop musician John Scott.
It would be unfortunate if debates over the restoration process overshadowed the film that has been rescued and restored. The restoration team has made its artistic choices, and what appears on this Blu-ray is how the film has been preserved for the ages. The alternative would have been to have it disappear for all time, thereby depriving the world of a unique and harrowing tale of a civilized man's systematic disassembly by . . . what exactly? That's the intriguing question that hangs over the end of WIF. What is it about the outback that proves so irresistibly alluring to someone like John Grant—or, for that matter, Doc Tydon, in whom Grant perhaps sees too much of himself for comfort? What makes Grant take a "bonded" position in a place he despises and then, as soon as he's offered the opportunity for an escape, fling himself more deeply into the same vile muck? A character flaw? Sun stroke? Original sin? WIF doesn't even give you a hint, and that's one of its most unsettling elements. Highly recommended.
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