Despite this being a dated movie I liked it very much. The Green Bans are something that can be as easily forgotten as remembered. They are not the sort of thing that a memorial can be erected to, but are apart of our history nonetheless and a movie is probably one of the best ways to keep the memory of it alive. The movie does deviate a little from the true events surrounding the struggles between residents and developers, for example the police searched hard for Juanita Nielsen when she whent missing; of which the dissapearance in the film is inspired by, not the slack, apathetic attitude as shown in the film. But then I guess you do have to take a bit of poetic licence, and I guess this was it.
The film certainly had a good guy, bad guy element to it. The struggling squatters led by Kate Dean (played by the talented Judy Davis), against the greedy developer Peter Houseman (Chris Haywood). The cast also contribute to a distinctly Australian movie, along with Davis and Haywood, we have Richard Moir (as the architect of the developers who leans to the squatters) Bill Hunter, John Meillon, and John Gregg. Despite (in my opinion) shonky action movies like the Tom Clancy adaptations, Phillip Noyce has shown he is capable of good movies with the moderately good The Bone Collector, Rabbit Proof Fence (both of which included good music from the ever talented Peter Gabriel) and the Quiet American. This movie is the beginning of that tradition. The last two movies are like this one, historically based, somewhat different from the mainstream features, and intellectual to an extent.
Phillip Noyce, Marc Rosenburg, Judy Davis, and the rest of the cast, ensure that a part of Australain history is remembered through a medium other than a history book (nothing wrong with those though). An Australian movie, inspired by an Australian event, with an Australian director and distinctly Australian cast, make this a distinctly Australian movie. The events that inspired this film and the film itself are both something that we can call our own. A good movie which I am glad I saw.
