road to nhill

I borrowed this film on DVD from work, having seen it when it came out but not since, and it was overdue yesterday. Perry and I set off to return it this morning and then it started raining heavily the minute we left the house, so I thought OK, I'll watch it instead while we wait for the rain to recede. 

Apart from, as I remembered it, being a pretty great movie, it also features a lot of former Crawfords  people, such as  Lynette Curran, Monica Maughan, Lois Ramsey, Patricia Kennedy, Alwyn Kurts, Terry Norris, Bill Hunter, Tony Barry, Peter Aanensen, and Don Bridges (who was in two episodes of Special Squad so just qualifies). In fact, of the only people in this film (eg Denise Roberts) who weren't in some Crawfords show like Homicide or The Box or both, it's probably because they were/are too young. I don't think that's so much a matter of the casting being drawn from a bunch of old Crawfordsites as it is a sign of what constituted an experienced senior actor in the late 1990s. The Sunday Age's review (from 16 November 1997 p. 36) described the cast as 'perhaps the finest collection of character actors ever assembled for an Australian film'. 

Alison Tilson told the Sydney Morning Herald's Ruth Hessey in 1997 that she wrote the film so her father could enjoy something at the movies without the word 'fuck' in it.* 

For some absurd reason I recalled Road to Nhill as being set in Nhill. Why on earth would it be, given the title? It's set in Pyramid Hill, a place which actually is not even very proximate to Nhill (262 km) and which has no special road leading to it, despite the discussion early in the piece of the difference between the 'road which actually goes to Nhill' and 'Nhill Road'. 

This seems like a distortion of the truth but there you go. I guess someone just thought 'Nhill' was a decent name for a nowhere place. 

Here's the Pyramid Hill store from the film, above, and google earth, below. 

Thought you might like to see a drawing of it in 1933 from the Age (14 Feb p. 12). It was built after the previous building was destroyed in a fire in 1932. The accompanying article says the new building has been 'treated in the Florentine manner'. 

Anyway, back to the film. It is not quite a film about nothing; it's about how a car accident (not actually a mundane incident, but not immediately fatal for anyone) exposes the strengths and weaknesses of a whole lot of relationships. Also, Alwyn Kurts gets to utter lines like 'I'm skipper of B grade' in a Wes Andersonian tableau. 

On the whole, as glib as it may read, just a really nice but not insubstantial film with some truly spectacular actors, a great script and marvellous locations.

There is a narratorless 'making of' documentary with the DVD that tbh doesn't add a lot to the whole. A lot of material about the making of the four-bowling-ladies-upside-down-in-the-car sequence. Matthew Dyktynski refers to the older actors as 'icons of Australian product'. There is a clip from Homicide in there, when they canvass the various tv shows they've all been in. Terry Norris is featured heavily in the 'making of' but Alwyn doesn't feature and neither does Bill H. 

*Ruth Hessey 'Women 1 Men Nhill' Sydney Morning Herald 14 November 1997 p. 66