FALLOUT

Director: Lawrence Johnston

Rating: 2.5/5

Director Lawrence Johnston strives to bridge the tactical genocide of the Japanese population with the impact of a film production upon Victoria’s capital in Fallout, the source novel ‘On The Beach’ by Nevil Shute acting as the thematic anchor in this interesting if flawed work.

As a biography of the British author, whose works include A Town Like Alice and The Far Country, within the context of the shifting global landscape circa-1940s, it is a well-researched collection of clips, talking heads and background music. The omni-presence of journalist/author Gideon Haigh casts a long shadow over the film’s first half, his earnest and well-recited straight-to-camera narration both an asset and a liability.

With Shute’s daughter and some Nuclear Proliferation 101 lessons providing the only counter points over the first 40 minutes, Johnston’s work comes across as a little stiff. A history lesson that endeavours to paint a portrait of the geo-political landscape, engineering background and human cost that inspired Shute, there is a lot of familiar stuff here; unlike Johnston’s past works, the visually splendid Eternity (1994) and Night (2008), his eye here is static, his palette blah.

Suggesting that this 90 minute effort will play better as a government-broadcaster free-to-air two-parter, the second half refocusses upon Stanley Kramer’s Melbourne–based shoot for his 1959 adaptation of Shute’s blockbuster bestseller. The author’s point-of-view all but disappears from the film, with Johnston instead addressing the impact of A-listers Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins upon this colonial outpost. The only surviving principal, starlet Donna Anderson, offers pertinent insight.

For film buffs, the recounting of one of Hollywood’s most high-profile off-shore shoots is a joy. Archive interviews with Kramer put the importance of his project into perspective against the fear of nuclear war, but never at the expense of a b&w still from the set or a little salicious slice of production gossip. When the film does re-invest in Shute’s opinion, it is with regard to his thoughts on how his novel’s chaste protagonists become overtly implied lovers; like the rest of Johnston’s film (and, apparently, Australian society of the day), the studio behemouth becomes the focus of everyone’s attention.

The upshot is that it is never quite clear what story Johnston is trying to tell with his film. There is an abundance of clarity in his facts, but their relation to each other in anything other than the most perfunctory of ways remains elusive. Fallout will play well as a tertiary education study guide, but falls short as a theatrically worthy work.