Word: schepisi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1980
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
THROUGHOUT the opening of The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith director Fred Schepisi continually dissects static tableaus. The camera suddenly cuts from the scene at hand to a minute corner of the picture: In the lapse of conversation suddenly one is looking at a swarm of termites on a windowsill. A domestic portrait gives way to an extreme closeup of a rusty knife cutting through bread--the sound suddenly amplified and grating. Idyllic farm panoramas are interrupted with scenes of chicken roosters being slaughtered, huge shears go through sheep's wool, the camera slowly absents itself from a sermon and creeps...
...Thus Schepisi lulls the audience into the colonists' state of mind. They are sympathetic to Jimmie Blacksmith's plight, and yet they want him to defeat this system on its own terms. He finally finds decent employment and marries, he shuts himself off from his Aborigme heritage, and yet' there's that impenetrable look in his eyes...
...scare the audience. Unlike Straw Dogs, or a Deer Hunter, the film does not manipulate the audience by quick cuts to gruesome scenes, so that one fears every sudden change of scene. That, in effect, is manipulated terror: one fears what gore might come next. In Jimmie Blacksmith, however, Schepisi imbues his simple close-ups with increasing echoes of horror. Slowly these scenes draw the audience into an ever-widening circle of violence. Sometimes the scenes are frightening. Sometimes not. It is the randomness one fears. One cannot hear a baby scream, or watch someone mixing soup for dinner, without...
...CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH Directed and Written by Fred Schepisi...