A three-hour film, shot almost entirely from the back seat of a car, consisting of two Melbourne lawyers talking: it doesn’t sound like a crowd-pleaser. But Melbourne barrister David Easteal’s The Plains has been getting rave reviews at this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival. Some critics are even calling it the big hit of the festival’s Tiger competition.
Easteal shot the film with friend and former colleague Andrew Rakowski in the driver’s seat. They met when while working in a legal office in Springvale, an outer eastern suburb. Both lived in Kensington in Melbourne’s inner west. “When we found out we lived quite close, he started to drive me home,” says Easteal.
Who knew that two middle-aged lawyers talking in a car could make for riveting drama?
The journey took between 45 minutes and an hour. A great deal can be said in an hour. Because everyone faces the front, it can feel like therapy. “That’s when I got to know Andrew,” says Easteal. “Our friendship grew over that time – an unlikely friendship in a way – and I got to know about his wife and his mother, who died in the course of that year.”
His wife Cheri is only glimpsed in the film, but he would call her on his way home every day. He would also call his mother. Both he and Cheri had very elderly parents in Adelaide, and would drive there so often they had bought a house in Horsham that they had grown to love. The plains of the title are seen in drone footage on an iPad: flat, brown country that had become their haven.
Easteal tried writing a more conventional script picking up on things they had discussed: the crunch points of middle age. “This age when, as an adult, both parents pass away and having your own mortality therefore brought to the fore. Difficulties at work; the sense of being stuck. These were things I wanted to explore, but I was having little success.”
Producer/director David Easteal.
He can’t remember how he decided that he should make the film with Rakowski himself. He wasn’t hard to persuade, he says. “I don’t think he thought it would be at Rotterdam, I think he just thought of it as something to do.” But he does recall that it was the idea of recreating the car journeys, in which he and Rakowski would both play characters like themselves, that felt right.
“I’ve always loved cars and shots of driving, so this seemed a unique opportunity to shoot an entire film in a car. Being able to observe the outside world highlights the fact that so much is left to chance in each shot. When we enter traffic, that is completely out of my control as a filmmaker, but it’s remarkable how often what’s happening in the car marries with what’s happening in the outside world and the traffic in ways that I think, watching now, are quite miraculous.”
By that stage, they were no longer working together. They would meet once a month and drive their old route, having agreed what should happen in that month’s shoot a few days ahead. “The precise dialogue wasn’t scripted,” says Easteal. “I think that would have been impossible. Authenticity was important. Andrew is not an actor and neither am I. I just wrote where each drive was going to go; it was structured improvisation.”
It was the length, he realised when editing, that made that work. He tried to shorten it by introducing jump cuts to leap over scenes. Paradoxically, they made it feel longer. “It took the shape it did, which I thought was a necessary shape for its rhythm and that’s where it ended up. But the feedback is that it doesn’t feel like three hours. I appreciate it’s a tough sell, at least on paper. I think that’s why some reviewers say they’re surprised.”
The few cuts there are keep the viewer “nicely unbalanced”, according to the rave review in Screen magazine. “The structure of The Plains is playful and idiosyncratic, rather than formalist or rigid,” wrote critic Neil Young. “The humdrum becomes slowly and cumulatively fascinating … It’s another example of the docu/fiction hybrids that have proved festival favourites in the last decade, and ranks among the most accomplished.”
In trade paper Variety, Richard Kuipers praised the film’s immersive qualities. “Both men are good company on the road, with stimulating stories to tell and plenty to say about the relationships that have played important roles in their lives. The Plains doesn’t require traditional dramatic turning points or earth-shattering revelations for its narrative propulsion. It is by gradual accumulation of detail and subtle adjustments in tone and delivery that it becomes compelling and enriching.”
Easteal has been making films in his spare time since he was a student. Two of his four short films, The Father (2011) and Monaco (2015) played at the Melbourne International Film Festival; Monaco won an award and travelled to several international festivals, including New York. Meanwhile, he continues to practise at the bar.
“Unfortunately I’m not getting paid to make three-hour films about middle-aged men driving home from work. I have to make a living,” he says. “But that has allowed me to make this film. It’s a unique way to make a film and I had complete control over what I wanted to do, so I guess there’s a practical side as well.”
The Plains’ Australian premiere will be in Brisbane on April 10. Other dates have yet to be confirmed.
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