Raging Bull: Scorsese’s masterpiece of 1980s American cinema
The best films on free-to-air TV this week are Raging Bull, Shame, Tales from the Golden Age and Avatar.
Director Martin Scorsese’s uncompromising 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull (Sunday, 12.40am, ABC) can be seen as a precursor to his later GoodFellas and Casino in its charting of underworld creeds and lifestyles. Robert De Niro, in a shape-shifting and Oscar-winning performance, inhabits the character of flawed and headstrong boxer Jake LaMotta with a feral intensity, while Joe Pesci, then unknown, is memorable as his combative brother.
Oddly enough, the film was not a commercial success on release, though it is now widely hailed as one of the best — if not the best — American films of the 1980s. Though familiar, the lesson is still instructive: the films don’t change, people do.
It was called Ozploitation, a loose genre of B-movies made in Australia in the 70s and 80s. Though director Steve Jodrell is not generally considered a card-carrying member of this loose fraternity, his 1988 tense small-town thriller Shame (Monday, 12.30am, ABC) proudly walks a fine line between art-house aspirations and genre thrills. Deborra-Lee Furness plays a hard-charging lawyer who becomes involved with rape victim Lizzie (Simone Buchanan) when her motorcycle breaks down in the fictitious — and threatening — West Australian town of Ginborak. Robustly acted and sturdily made, the film is at once a throwback to a different time and a good example of passionate independent filmmaking.
It is an interesting phenomenon in the wake of the fall of the Iron Curtain: nostalgia for the bland and repressive atmosphere of socialist societies. Every eastern European country’s cinema has an example of it, and one of the better and more intriguing entries from Romania is the 2009 omnibus film Tales from the Golden Age (Tuesday, 12.25am, SBS Two). Five directors have created six short stories, each illustrating an urban myth from the waning years of Romanian society under strongman Nicolae Ceausescu. The two stars of the film are the impeccable production design and the narrative peccadillos embodying the often absurd incongruities of socialism. It’s a fascinating film.
Equally absorbing, for different reasons, is writer-director James Cameron’s 2009 science fiction blockbuster Avatar (Saturday, 9.05pm, Ten). Cameron’s peculiar talent is using the same plot elements over and over again in his films: the first two Terminator films, Aliens, The Abyss, True Lies and even Titanic share elements of action films with strong characters, often dealing with military and/or industrial complexes that control them from afar.
Avatar is no different, presenting a far-off, exotic world and its inhabitants, threatened by a rampant military presence. Yet Cameron makes it all fresh by virtue of groundbreaking special effects and his patented brand of adrenalised action filmmaking. He’s at work in New Zealand on no fewer than three sequels.
Raging Bull (M) 4.5 stars
Sunday, 12.40am, ABC
Shame (MA15+) 3.5 stars
Monday, 12.30am, ABC
Tales from the Golden Age (M) 4 stars
Tuesday, 12.25am, SBS Two
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