Tamar Lewit
Citizen Journalist
Written on Wednesday, 13 March 2013 08:43
'Blinder' a dazzling portrayal of footy as it was
Many years in the making, Blinder could not have come at a more apposite time as a movie about our Australian game, the young men who play it, and the turmoil of drugs, scandal, youthful mistakes, and club culture surrounding them.
At a time when AFL football is dominated by corporate management, image and PR spin, and high performance demands, this film vividly conveys the emotions and fire of grass-roots footy: sweaty change-rooms, children and local fire-fighters in the crowd, the tooting of horns at each goal, the bursting excitement of the game. The film loses nothing with its low-budget style, which perfectly suits the up-close, sensitive portrayal of local football at the heart of a country town.
The plot shuffles through a series of sometimes confusing flashbacks to gradually reveal the story of a once aspiring footballer, appealingly played by Oliver Ackland, and the circumstances which smashed his AFL dream and those of his teammates ten years earlier.
The anguish of past mistakes and nostalgia in changing times (one ex-champion comments wryly that his kids play soccer) are lightened by scenes of finals games in which we are caught up with the local community in their passion, camaraderie, and the sheer joy of raw footy played a metre from the crowd.
In portraying country footy, Blinder does not require the audience to suspend disbelief as painfully as the classic The Club, during which football devotees winced at scenes of supposed AFL play painfully pantomimed by actors. (The common thread between the two films is Jack Thompson, who reprises his role as a football coach three decades after The Club.)
Every on-field contest in Blinder is felt by the watcher as body thumps body, and we are swept up with crowd and commentators in the quest for the 'holy grail' of a Grand Final Cup.
Apart from well-placed sweeping views of the Shipwreck Coast at Torquay, the camera mostly hugs the faces and bodies of the young men and women, mother, and coach, around whom the plot revolves. This is the core of the movie: teenage boys and girls, their energy, vulnerability, fallibility, confusion, and glory. Relationships – between mother and son, team-mates, coach and player, player and football hero, team and supporters, man and girl, sister and sister – are sensitively portrayed, with a surprisingly equal empathy for the female characters.
Above all, this film shows us footballers as teenage boys struggling with their own strength and flaws, to grasp their dreams, and to "say stuff", as one character puts it, but connecting with each other and their aspirations through the flight of a Sherrin from boot to breast.
Perhaps a tad long at 119 minutes, Blinder makes a welcome change from slick Hollywood productions with endings that can be predicted from the trailer. Anyone who loves football will love this movie. Those who do not may not understand it.
http://www.backpagelead.com.au/afl/8800-blinder-a-dazzling-portrayal-of-country-footy
