Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

SpecialsTarget Disturbing yet enthralling

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

annullas@aol.com Cunnamulla appears to be a dead end in every sense of the word. Deep in the Australian Outback, Cunnamulla is the spot where the Queensland train tracks end as well as a small town overflowing with the bitterness borne of broken dreams, broken hearts and broken spirits.Seen through the eyes of documentary filmmaker Dennis O'Rourke, both the land and its residents are poor, brutal and unforgiving. While the hopeless young residents try to escape by sinking into sexual promiscuity and drug use, they still follow the example of the older generation, who drink, smoke, fight and curse as easily and naturally as they breathe. They blame the government and each other for their plight.There seems to be no place for tenderness, thoughtfulness or hope in Cunnamulla. And yet ... even in this place of such desolation, some residents long for beauty, and one or two even manage to find it. This film provides a surprising, engrossing, fascinating look into lives that few outsiders would otherwise know. Definitely worth a look.

soaringhorse This documentary is to be admired for bringing rare voice and - despite itself - a degree of dignity to the down-and-outs (or soon to be; this is what is implied at least) of a remote-ish Queensland town. But making grand statements about the Australian outback and its ethnically and financially troubled communities is not within the power of this film, however hard it may try. The kind of community and family dysfunction O'Rourke has discovered is hardly unique to rural people. It is also preposterous to focus on one group of troubled or unhappy people and categorise all others accordingly (what else could the title "Cunnamulla" mean?).In that light the reported anger and sense of betrayal felt by some of Cunnamulla's citizenry upon the release of the film is understandable. Also understandable is the legal action commenced against O'Rourke by at least one of the female minors in the film.But that's not to say there isn't room for exploring white-black relations or rural poverty in an Australian documentary. If anything, these are problems - a dirty secret - that lie across Australia like a stinking fog. You could make similar documentaries with titles like "Kempsey" or "Wilcannia" and find rich pickings for examining such problems. It's just that "Cunnamulla" hasn't turned out to be the vehicle for it.For all that there are still many memorable moments. The scenes with the DJ remain with me - wherever he is I wish him the best.

Philby-3 Dennis O'Rourke has a reputation for exploiting the subjects of his documentaries (`The Good Woman of Bangkok', `Cannibal Tours' for example), and I can see why he's not welcome back in Cunnamulla. Here, he has picked four or five desperates in a declining south-west Queensland country town, got them to open up and let the camera do the rest. His subjects skewer themselves on the lens as O'Rourke, off-screen, quietly eggs them on. Actually, there's a bit more to `Cunnamulla' than that. The general atmosphere of the place is well-evoked. We get a concert and a show; it's not all existential angst in the boondocks. People do grow up in such places, and prosper (though often elsewhere). But O'Rourke's main interviewees, the abused teenage girls, the depressed aboriginal boy with a record, and even the local DJ do not face a bright future. There's a bit of humour in the taxi-driver and his chatty wife, the scrap yard man with attitude and the shire dog-catcher who doubles as funeral director, but the overall tone is deep depression.My real problem with the film is that it doesn't really try to explain how people get to the end of the line or the bottom of the heap like this. Frankly I don't think the director cared very much. It's a well-done piece but with a cold clinical atmosphere - Darwin does Cunnamulla. It seems to me it provides ammunition for the social Darwinists who maintain it's no use helping the losers as that just postpones their inevitable extinction. There are some people who just want to be left alone, like the scrap-yard man, and so he should be. But the young kids need help and could benefit from it. O'Rourke seems to be saying `why bother?' Because it would be good for your soul, mate, if you have one.

sshan One hopes that Dennis O'Rourke's film on backwater Queensland town, Cunnamulla, is a personal view in which he chooses to highlight only negative characters for dramatic effect. If it is a truly representative profile of life and people in the town, then it becomes even more frightening and depressing.His metaphor of "the end of the line" is played out with devastating effect, as each character tells of their one-way track to nowhere.The characters have become trusting enough of the director to say things that that they probably oughtn't to have said into the camera. This brutal and embarrassing openness makes for a gruesome and somewhat prurient fascination.Despite the strong sense of exploitation that comes with this film, it remains a powerful and engrossing statement and probably encapsulates enough essential elements of rural claustrophobia to resonate for many viewers.