The Dish
***
Cinema
Releases - May 11, 2001
Certificate 12. 104 minutes. Directed by Rob
Sitch. Written by Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Jane Kennedy, Rob Sitch. Starring
Sam Neill, Kevin Harrington, Tom Long, Patrick Warburton, Genevieve
Mooy.
"The Dish" is a sweet little comedy
set in 1969, telling the story of the group of scientists in rural Australia
who presided over the biggest satellite dish in the southern hemisphere as
NASA sent men to the moon. It was their responsibility to make sure television
pictures of the landing were safely received.
There is a moment about halfway into the film
where the town's power gets cut off, the control station's backup generator
doesn't kick in, and the computer gets wiped. It's a race against time to
get the thing reprogrammed. And it was about this point in the movie that
I lost the opportunity to follow things very closely.
Here's the thing: There was nobody in the cinema
except me, in the middle of the auditorium, and a loud bunch of teenage girls,
in the front row. One of them came up and asked me a question. And then another.
And it kept happening, until eventually the whole lot of them had crowded
round me, set up camp and decided they'd rather talk to me than watch the
rest of the film.
I do not enjoy interruptions to my film viewing.
But these were polite and well-meaning young women, so I was reluctant to
tell them to sod off, and besides, "The Dish" is so gentle that I managed
to follow it just about fine. I cannot talk about it in much detail, but
nor would I have been able to had I seen it in perfect silence, because it's
a simple and low-key charmer, notable not for big issues but for its subtle,
quirky, observational humour about the inhabitants of a little town and their
excitement to be so crucially involved in a historical
milestone.
The director is Rob Sitch, who made "The Castle",
a low-budget comedy about a family living by an airport that was internationally
praised and an Australian cultural phenomenon. Here he gives us a film less
likely to make big crowds laugh out loud, but one that breezes along with
such nice wit that it would be hard for anyone to dislike.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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