Wake in Fright

A depressing study that proves that alcohol, no money and the sweaty environment of a remote backwater can’t lead to a better future. An irresistibly boorish Donald Pleasence and a convincing depiction of a one-way trip to the absolute moral and physical bottom, which worries me a bit, because if it was up to me, I’d have a clear Oscar winner – everybody's just drinking beer all the time, and as Pleasence himself said: "Could be worse. Supply of beer could run out." Amen. (23/09/2018)

With this slowly flowing film, you wait for some kind of dramatic twist, a tragedy, and it turns out to have been a tragedy the whole time, as it is about the gradual descent of an easily influenced teacher into the madness of alcohol-drenched existential futility and the easing of instinctive transitions. In its seductive phlegmatic nature, the film shows the moral decadence of the inhabitants of the Australian outback in all its “beauty”, with its atmosphere of the dusty desert environment, its empty dialogue and aimless survival. And how easy it is to surrender to them. (08/06/2020)