the word on dvds
BREAKING BAD S4 [UNIVERSAL/SONY]
The Illusionist [Madman]
Vince Gilligan conceived Breaking Bad as the journey from Mr Chips to Scarface. Hero to anti-hero, life to death. Walter White, the cancer-ridden school teacher would become Albuquerque’s crystal meth king. With a path that welldefined and the end-point so apparently obvious it’d better be an intriguing ride.
Based on a half-century old unproduced script by French comedian/director Jacques Tati, The Illusionist tells the story of an elderly French magician called Tatischeff whose out-dated, simplistic vaudeville act is faltering. After working his way onto a bill in London, he faces the ignominy of following a young mophaired quartet. An audience full of shrieking teenage girls empties within seconds and the magician performs to a pair of disinterested stragglers. Forlorn but not defeated, Tatischeff heads to Scotland where he wins the affections of a less cosmopolitan crowd and the heart of a young girl. Intrigued by the old man, she is swept away to the exciting world of failed performers, depressed has-beens and tough living.
It was for awhile; a breath of fresh air, a show willing to go extreme lengths to push the boundaries of what you could do on TV. The antagonist cooked meth for god’s sake – how much edgier could you get? At least Tony Soprano had decades worth of mobsterism to make things familiar. White is not a familiar character and his delusion is particularly venal, screwing over his family to save them, all the while descending further into a selfish abyss that will surely devour everything that surrounds him. Why then do we care about him? It’s a question that is getting harder to answer. Which is why this season’s shift away from Walter (Bryan Cranston, still good but repeating his performance more than ever) towards Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito, the real star of Season 4) works so well. Not only is Fring an intriguing and uniquely menacing character, but his world – the drug world – is the core of the show. It makes sense to spend some quality time with him and Esposito makes it worthwhile. Yet this is also problematic. Fring is another anti-hero with a skewed moral compass. It’s just another reminder viewers have few characters to sympathise with and even in the Golden Age of Drama that matters because frankly, meth is not that interesting. Breaking Bad still brings the tension and thrives on episode cliff-hangers, but four seasons in it feels as thematically constrained and insular as ever. This journey needs resolution, quickly. JUSTIN HOOK
Tatischeff is obviously Tati, and The Illusionist is a wistful and sentimental apology to his real life family. There is controversy over who the girl in the film is: his illegitimate eldest daughter or another more legitimate daughter to whom the film is dedicated. The film itself is very European as you’d expect from Sylvain Chomet whose Les Triplettes of Belleville looked like an old poster brought to life. And so, the animation is miles away from the slick highly rendered and ultra-detailed Hollywood fare and closer to Studio Ghibli’s output. But it lacks the former’s sense of daring and awe, and the latter’s sense of effervescent joy and wonder. It’s not that it’s drab – although setting it in Scotland surely didn’t help matters – it’s more that it is small scale and homely. And like Tati’s live action films, this one is almost entirely unscripted. But unlike those films, this one is not as complete and focused and only serves to remind us that Tati was an inscrutable character more anchored to places than people. JUSTIN HOOK
Once Upon A Time In Cabramatta [Madman] Cabramatta is a small suburb some 30 ks southwest of Sydney’s CBD. Nowadays it’s a haven for inner-city types prank-slumming it, retirees on food tours and urban foragers hunting the best pho in town – as well as Australia’s largest Vietnamese community. Wasn’t always this way though. In the ‘80s and ‘90s it was Australia’s heroin capital. Deals were undertaken in broad daylight, addicts wandered the streets, shooting galleries littered the side streets and teenagers were living the thug life. Cabramatta was Sydney’s own drug ghetto. Beyond the tabloid headlines the reality was even grimmer. Families that had fled the post-war Vietnam were now fighting to keep their children away from the street and the community was fraying at the seams. Once Upon A Time In Cabramatta offers an evenhanded account of the public anger and easy demonisation of immigrants. Their stories are told first-hand in a no nonsense manner by the people who lived through it. There aren’t any overegged dramatisations or re-enactments; they’re pointless when reality is so shocking. It’s not all doom and gloom though. The third act restores some sanity, as third acts should. The community fight back with the help of an embittered publican and young Vietnamese local councillor and they win. This is another remarkable effort by SBS, reminding us our history is difficult, ugly and whichever path it takes there’s always a noisy crowd cheering for the downfall of the newcomer. Yet despite its troubles Cabramatta is now the epicentre of a thriving multiethnic community and a far cry from the footage in this doco. JUSTIN HOOK
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