John Olsen: Journey through "you beaut" country
Directed by Don Bennetts
Distributed by the Australian Film Institute
Reviewed by Yvonne Sorensen
John Olsen's paintings are rather frenetic, full of convoluted lines and plenty of energy. The calm tone and pace of Don Bennetts' new film beautifully offsets that energy.
For anyone interested in Australian painting, this film gives an insight into how John Olsen interprets the Australian landscape, adding an excellent music score by Kevin Hocking, classical guitar playing by Sebastian Jorgensen and poetry readings by Adrian Rawlins.
Don Bennetts has succeeded in producing a film about art which manages not to be "arty". A commentary on Olsen's paintings — by Olsen himself, the late Lloyd Rees, artist Jeffrey Smart, Olsen biographer Deborah Hart and Australian National Gallery director Betty Churcher — is kept conversational. No "artspeak" here.
Occasionally, the commentary lags a little, which is not a problem, really, because then you can concentrate on the paintings. And there are plenty of paintings. Besides Olsen's, there is everything from Streeton to Fairweather.
The film records a painting trip to Lake Eyre as it is transformed into an inland sea, and there is footage from Donald Campbell's 1964 Project Bluebird expedition into the desert to break the world land speed record. The contrasts in some of these sequences are fascinating. So too are the paintings which evolved from Olsen's painting trips to the north-west of Australia.
John Olsen's love of Sydney and the harbour is apparent when he talks of the "sheer physicality" of Sydney. Most of his best Sydney paintings are shown in this film. The vibrancy of works such as Entrance to the siren city of the ratrace, painted in the '60s, reaches full impact as the camera slowly pans over it.
The Opera House sequence is followed by a flashback to Lake Eyre and Donald Campbell's oddly shaped speeding Bluebird. The camera angles and contrasts create a surreal effect, reinforcing Olsen's statement that most modern Australian landscape painting is all about surrealism, space, time and flux.
Recalling his first flight over the Bungle Bungles, John Olsen suggests that "it's the job of poets, musicians and painters to make the imagination believable". Add "film makers" to that list, and add Journey through "you beaut" country to your list of priorities.