So Australia is a mess, yes, trying to pack too many varied things into one film that never quite meshed into a cohesive whole. But it was a very comfortable-feeling mess, and I unabashedly loved watching it.
Bonnie & Clyde is one of the very few films that I consider to be essentially perfect, maintaining both our emotional connection to Bonnie and Clyde as well as our emotional distance from what they do. It would’ve been much easier to either make them unlikable villains or give us some reason that explains their actions but Bonnie & Clyde doesn’t let us off so easily.
Gold Diggers is both more explicit about and less infused with the Depression than 42nd Street. It begins with Ginger Rogers singing “We’re in the Money” (which includes lines like “Old Man Depression you are through, you done us wrong” and “we never see a headline about a breadline today”), but it turns out to be a rehearsal that gets interrupted by creditors shutting down the show for lack of payment for the theatre.
42nd Street works because it has a vitality and freshness that actually revitalized the musical as a cinematic form. It works because choreographer Busby Berkeley is a genius of some sort. And it works because of its inspired mix of cynicism and optimism that could perhaps only come out of the Depression.
Once in a while, a first-time director jumps onto the scene with a film that is so assured and so well-made and has such an air of vitality and realism that it’s difficult to believe he hasn’t made a dozen films already. Cary Fukunaga has pretty much done that with Sin Nombre.
