THE KING IS DEAD
Australia, 2012, 105 minutes, Colour.
Dan Wylie, Bojana Novakovic, Gary Waddell, Luke Ford, Anthony Hayes.
Directed by Rolf de Heer.
Neighbours have been a significant part of Australian movie and television consciousness, and not just at Ramsay St for so many decades. Neighbours, both cheerful and annoying, have popped up regularly, part of the Australian suburban landscape.
Rolf de Heer, celebrated writer and director for several decades now (Bad Boy Bubby, The Quiet Room, Tracker, Ten Canoes), must have experienced some traumatic neighbours – or has been able to imagine what might happen if you had very loud and violent neighbours. Here they are.
It all opens nice and quietly during the opening credits, the camera tracking along the street in a leafy Adelaide suburb picking out the details of the houses from numbers 35 to 41. One house is now for sale. The agent shows various groups in and out. Next door a chef is cooking plenty of garlic and wafting it over the fence. He wants only garlic-favouring newcomers. And he gets them, Max , a science teacher, and Therese, a tax accountant. They move in, make friends, allow the little girl next door to come in when she wishes. All very nice.
But, on the other side. A yob turns up, radio blaring with a four-letter (and more) rap song which he mimes and tries to memorise. But, he doesn’t live there. It is King who lives next door. He seems ultra-high most of the time and handles drug deals with his friends whom Max and Therese nickname Shrek and Escobar. Therese – at first - thinks they seem ‘interesting’ and can’t believe she is witnessing drug deals. In the meantime, the couple is doing up the house and working hard in the garden.
But… at night. Yells, screams and shouts, loud music, fights. And the police cant’ do anything, 95% of crimes are not solved…, regrets…
So far, so familiar for all of us (with varying degrees of identification with Therese and Max).
It is what happens then that turns the comedy blacker and more serious. Max and Therese think up all kinds of schemes to get the police to intervene, starting with graffiti on the fence proclaiming scum dealers live there. They don’t work.
The last part of the film is dark farce when the couple’s foolproof scheme goes so wrong in the middle of the night. It is a dastardly time for poor old King - whom we have come to like in an odd kind of way. Gary Waddell gives a wonderfully deadpan performance as King, sometimes to laugh at, sometimes to laugh with.
Audiences who have been enjoying the ordinariness and the satire so far may baulk at the torrent of language when a drug gang of Maori migrants turn up and throw their weight around. There are a couple of bashings as well. Of course, it is far-fetched…, isn’t it?
When all returns to calm and the only thing is for Max and Therese to move – they have tried the other suggestion made by police and crims alike to minimal avail: use ear-plugs. The film ends with a pleasantly neat joke.
1. The work of Rolf de Heer? Over the decades? Realism, exotic, black comedy? The suburbs?
2. The blend of the serious, the comic, the satiric?
3. South Australian settings, the Adelaide, streets, houses? Interiors and exteriors? The action limited to the street?
4. The jazz score, its mood, contribution to the atmosphere? The rap song and its profanities, the repetition?
5. The credits, the tracking along the street, the variety of homes, the agent, the sightseers, the chef cooking the garlic, wafting it over the fence, the six-minute walk to transport? Max and Therese buying the house?
6. Max and Therese, their age, his being a science teacher, she a tax agent? Character, interactions, working in the garden, the house, happy together?
7. The neighbours, the chef and his wife, their little daughter, talking, the welcome, the little girl’s visits, making the gate in the fence, the rules for her protection? Her being terrorised by the visitor to King’s house? The rescue?
8. King, his appearance, odd? Shrek and Escobar? Their appearance, the drug deals? The rap music, Shrek and his trying to memories the words and sing? Therese thinking the neighbours interesting? Seeing the drug deals? The nights, the clock, the shouts, the screams? The tough visitors? The tough man and his girlfriend and her denying his brutality? Threats?
9. The arguments about calling the police? The chef calling the police? The suggestions about earplugs? Therese and Max and their being robbed, the reaction of the police? The later cleaning out of the house, the credit cards, the mobile phones, taking the car – and King saying he would find it? The discovery of the car, the lies about who took it to avoid charges? The credit card loss and the pressure on Max and Therese?
10. The desperate plans, getting the paint, for the graffiti on the fence, the night attempt, the old paint not working?
11. The plans, rejection of them? The growing desperation? The noise?
12. King’s house, taking away all the trees and bushes, the grass gone? King, borrowing the ten dollars from Max? His sister, the coma, his being in the house, his deals?
13. The final plan, Max going in, dropping his mobile phone, the empty house, the scares? King’s arrival back, his collapse, no pulse? The decision to put him in the roof, getting the ladder?
14. Their being caught, Shrek, the threats to Max? Max and his pretending to be tough – as King ignored Therese in the past? The violence?
15. The arrival of the Maoris, Max and his telling lies, Shrek and his friend being bashed, the injuries to the friend’s face? Max pretending to be a dealer? Then liable for King’s debt? Thirty thousand dollars, the question of interest, the science question and the answers, corroboration by the silent Maori, the maths and the percentages?
16. King reviving, the money in the roof, his recovering it?
17. The happy ending – but the decision to move, the agent, selling the house, the visitors?
18. The irony of King, selling his house, his sister dying and leaving it to him? Therese and her idea of buying the house and renovating?
19. An entertaining film about suburban paranoia?
