The endlessly quotable film The Fortress turns 25
Comic Leon Filewood was on a 1st date when he preliminary seen The Fortress in 1997.
Then 18 years previous, he had simply moved from Thursday Island within the Torres Strait to the massive smoke in Brisbane to research legislation.
“I completely beloved the movie … I pissed myself laughing,” Leon says.
“It was a difficult time in my each day life, and it did help. Even when it was simply to encourage me to not convert right into a legislation agency like Dennis Denuto.”
In case you are unfamiliar with the movie, it may be a David vs Goliath comedy the place the Kerrigan family fights a authorities try to accumulate their dwelling, to make method for an airport enlargement.
To mark 25 a very long time as a result of its launch, we requested two comedians no matter whether or not it may be worthy of a rewatch — if just for the vibe, the serenity, or just because Dale dug a gap.
Straight to the pool house
When comic and movie podcaster Alexei Toliopoulos rewatched The Fortress in the midst of previous yr’s lockdown, he had very low expectations.
“There’s that hesitation, significantly with comedy, that it might have aged in one other method,” Alex says.
“I used to be shocked to go once more and uncover, lo and behold, The Fortress is a fricken masterpiece.”
Though he was as effectively youthful to seize it within the cinema, Alexei remembers the phrases and charges from the film turning into ingredient of his childhood.
For Alexei, the movie’s outcomes arrives right down to how “exactly Australian” it’s — a lot in order that they needed to redub items of the dialogue when it was launched within the US.
“It has this bodily look of turning into casually humorous and decrease important, even nevertheless there’s some genuinely fairly particular issues heading on, from script to effectivity to course.”
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Equipped how saturated we’re in overseas written content material, Alexei states it may be comforting to see something established in our personal yard. Insert a younger Eric Bana actively taking part in a Greek kickboxer within the combine, and you have obtained your self successful.
Whereas there have been different notable comedies on condition that its launch, he claims none have skilled the precise legacy as The Fortress.
“I positively do imagine it truly is simply one of many best possible movies at any time manufactured on this nation.”
It’s actually Mabo, it’s the vibe
Watching The Fortress again in 1997, Leon remembers feeling “extremely appreciative” of how the movement image delved into Indigenous land rights, significantly with strains like this 1 from character Dale Kerrigan:
“I’m actually beginning as much as absolutely grasp how the Aborigines [sic] really feel. This residence is like their land. It retains their recollections. The land is their story. It may be something. You cannot simply resolve on it up and plonk it down someplace else. This nation’s gotta finish thieving different individuals’s land.”
Leon suggests listening to that sentiment “was significant for me as an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander human being, [to see the film] growing some empathy.
However, the movie’s cast and creators weren’t Indigenous by themselves, and regardless of its metaphors, it does revolve throughout a white members of the family.
“I’m completely certain an educational would pull that movie apart, and rightfully so.
“However as a comic book, and as a admirer of the film, I took the movement image for what it was, and [liked] the best way it employed humour to broach a really main topic,” Leon states.
All spherical, he says The Fortress is “timeless” and properly actually price a rewatch.
“It’s 1 of these movement footage that each time I take a look at it I simply completely admire it and snicker.”
