The Cup

by Racheal
(Australia)

Getting Australian films over the line. Waving the Australian film flag nice and high, this film does a pretty decent job. It won’t have people going in droves to see it, or have critiques doing a dance, but it takes a crack and does a decent job.

It’s the story of two brothers, whose forefathers were jockeys also. It’s a true story so there is the option to Google away. But basically it follows the story of Damien and his brother Jason (Dan McPherson) as he races in The Melbourne Cup on one weapon of a horse – Media Puzzle.

It has a good opening sequence, which tries to pull at our heart strings from the get go. This continues on through the film. I don’t like getting the impression that I’m MEANT to respond a certain way. I want it to creep up on me. A film does this by working on us from the first frame, getting us to care about the characters, or situation so that when that epic moment happens we actually give a fig. This film was just too obvious about it.

There’s a star studded Australian cast. Pity the very few random Australian stars who aren’t in it. But at the start it’s all very confusing. The film literally jumps all around the globe setting up the contenders and their teams. There’s far too many characters that we have to get our head around. It doesn’t help that the horses are all brown and shiny so you get them confused as well.

There is a great sense of realism though, they’ve got the REAL Eddie McGuire, Bart Cummings, Channel 7, 9, racecourses you name it. They’ve got footage from the actual day years back, quotes, follow up on what happened to the characters, references to Phar Lap and all the rest of it. So we buy what they sell. But then they go and throw in the Bali bombings. This subplot is meant to base the story in realism and provide extra incentive for Damien to race in The Cup. It’s not really necessary though. Plus then there’s the odd thing that makes no sense. They’re at the Geelong cup, the qualifier for the Melbourne cup, a big deal I gathered. Literally on the ground about to jump on the horse and do the race and they choose that time to debate strategy. Really? You’re all clearly professionals I don’t think you’d leave it to the 11th hour to do so in reality.

There was also a nice balance between focusing on the horse and the human stories. Who doesn’t love a good horse film, Spielberg’s just about to bust one out War Horse. Media Puzzle embodies that typical Australian spirit – the feisty one who doesn’t like to do what their told and is hard to tame, but comes up with the goods with push comes to shove. Media Puzzle is brought to Australia as a stable mate for Vinnie, who is meant to be the star horse and win the cup. They are both from the same trainer. They should have just fudged the details of history and left Vinnie out of the story. They still could have had Media Puzzle as an underdog in general but I couldn’t help thinking, like the Owner/trainer really cares, either way their walking away with millions.

A highlight which I loved is the focus ON the Cup and it’s spirit. You really get that this is one of the greatest races in the world, which literally stops an entire nation and brings us together. Which I think is pretty special. Constant representation of the media helps build up the hype of The Cup throughout the film. Everything at and around the racecourses has a constant flurry of activity. There were at least a billion scenes of people training and racing, which I’m guessing someone in this world might understand or find interesting. But for an average person like me who likes going to the races because they get to dress up and check out men in suits, it teaches us that The Cup is a big deal.

My nature is that I’m an impatient person; I don’t like stuff to drag on too much. A bit of build-up is good but by the time we finally get to the actual race, we could have watched every Melbourne Cup race there’s ever been 10 times over. Some scenes drag on waaaaaay too much. Yes we know at some point Damien is going to um and ah over his choice and yes we need to know his reasons for making his choice. But flag them for the audience and then move on. However, in saying that, it is almost worth the wait. I got that little tingle of anticipation and excitement when the horses get in the gate, there is complete silence, wait, wait, BAM the gates open and the noise hits you.

Unfortunately there appears to be this perception that Australian films are not that great. I could fill this blog to bursting points analyzing the cinema trends, critiques, analysis bla bla bla. But I won’t. The point I’m trying to make is that this film is good but not great. Seeing as this film is about horse racing, I’m looking for some kind of horse analogy, which given how I know nothing about horse racing, tis a little difficult. I’m going to go with – if this film is a horse, then this horse finishes the race, it just doesn’t win it.