RIP Archie Roach

Archie's family has given permission for his name, image and music to be used.

The last time I saw Archie Roach perform was in March. It was in one of the big tents at the Port Fairy Folk Festival - the same year that a stage was named in his honour.

As we listened in awed silence to the stories he told between his songs, the sound of his oxygen pump hissed through the PA system, amplified by the mic. He spoke in a frail, halting way, his voice trembling under the weight of the health problems that had plagued him for the last decade. 

But when he sang, his voice came from another place. It was rich, powerful and strong, soaring in that beautifully distinctive wide vibrato he's famed for, belying the image of the man before us who had to sit to perform and relied on a contraption to help him breathe. 

This image of Archie sticks in my mind because it's the best analogy I can think of right now for the man he was. He was a man who fought against adversity to share his message. No matter what life threw at him - and it threw a lot - Archie kept going. When he got knocked down, he got back up and sang his song. Even as his health faded, he worked even harder to share his truth, to inspire us all, to leave a lasting legacy of hope through song and story.

Every performance Archie gave was a deep experience, but some have taken on mythic status. The one in 1990, where he played just two songs opening for Paul Kelly at the Melbourne Concert Hall, his perhaps the most legendary. 

The second song was Took The Children Away - a song that never fails to make me cry, and is his best known track. 

"When the song finished, there was dead silence," Paul told Double J in 2019. 

"(Archie) thought that he bombed and just turned and walked off stage.

"As he was he was walking off, the applause started to build and build. 

"The audience had been so stunned that it had taken them a while to respond."

It was the birth of a legend. Later that year, Archie would work with Paul Kelly and Steve Connolly to record Charcoal Lane. The following year he won two ARIA Awards. And so his legend grew.

The other performance that looms large in his legacy came at the Port Fairy Folk Festival in 2010, where he was booked to perform alongside his wife and soul mate Ruby Hunter. 

Less than a month before the gig, Ruby passed away. She was just 54. 

Archie was devastated. He and Ruby had met nearly 40 years prior as homeless teenagers and been inseparable ever since. Archie told me Ruby's passing had felt like he'd lost a part of himself.

Ruby's funeral was held on March 5. Despite the enormous grief that weighed on his heart, Archie turned up at the Folkie the following day and performed, with an empty stool and mic stand set up next to him where Ruby would have been.

"You'll have to bear me up, I can’t do this without you," he told the audience.

"I need you today."

The concert became a tribute to Ruby, with Archie breaking down during River Song, a song he wrote with Ruby during a camping trip. He left the stage to a standing ovation that lasted long after he was gone, and was followed by a minute's silence for Ruby.

Later that year, Archie suffered a stroke, and the following year he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

But nothing could keep him down. He had a message to deliver to the world and wasn't going to rest until he'd delivered it. As soon as he was able, he headed into the studio to make Into The Bloodstream, one of many incredible albums in a back catalogue full of great records.

In July 2012, I got a phone call from my friend Lyn, inviting me to be an extra in Archie's new film clip. It was being filmed at the Crossley Hall, just up the road from the house where Archie would spend the last decade or so of his life.

Lyn neglected to tell me I was supposed to dress in old-style clothes circa the '40s or '50s. I turned up in my t-shirt and Converse. The costume lady rolled her eyes at me, and thrust a jacket into my hands. "Put this on," she said, before whisking herself away to more important things.

In between takes and set-ups, I sat at a table in my borrowed jacket with Archie, Jack Charles and Shane Howard, feeling unworthy and out of my depth as I interviewed them all for the paper where I worked. Archie told me about how his recent turmoil and triggered an expansion of his philosophy.

"A lot of my music just dealt with pain and sorrow - now it’s about joy and getting on with life," he said.

I barely made the cut in the clip, probably because of my Converse. That's me, bottom left-hand corner at the three-minute mark.

But I got to spend a lot of the afternoon watching Archie standing on the little Crossley Hall stage in his dapper suit, lip-synching to Song To Sing. Every time the camera rolled, it felt like I was in church, and Archie was the minister delivering a sermon. 

"When you are down, and you're feeling lonely,

"You've just got to breathe, you've got to believe,

"Just get up off the ground,

"You know you're not the only one down on your knees,

"Asking to be free from all your pain,

"Well come on everybody, you've got a song to sing."

After our scenes were done, Lyn came up to me. "You can sing," she said, "come with me."

Still wearing my borrowed jacket from Wardrobe, Lyn led me into the neighbouring church, St Brigid's, where Archie's producer Craig Pilkington had set up his recording gear. Before I knew it, I was part of a makeshift choir of south-west locals, adding our voices to Archie's soon-to-be-released album. Singing along to those songs, in the resounding reverb of that church, is an experience I'll never forget.

Today, listening back to those songs, and indeed much of Archie's back catalogue, I'm struck by a singular thought - almost every song now sounds like a self-penned eulogy. Archie was so focused on sharing his story, whether it was about life on the mission or on the streets or just life in general, that he imbued the majority of his songs with his truth and his message.

And that message was one of hope, usually amid sadness. His songs are often about finding a way through the darkness and the adversity, or about an acceptance of things we endure, and how those heavy hammer blows can make the sharpest sword. Archie was stolen, then homeless, and then a teenage alcoholic living on the streets. He suffered at the hands of prejudice and racism and a system stacked against him, but he rallied, turned his life around, and became a treasured Australian musician and an icon, not just for indigenous people, but for everyone. Later, he lost the love of his life and half of one of his lungs, but still he battled to tell his truth. 

In the final decade of his life, he released more albums than he did in the previous three. In the last few years, he also wrote a book, put out a live compilation, started a foundation to support young indigenous musicians, toured as much as his health allowed, and even began a YouTube series called Uncle Archie's Kitchen Table Yarns. It was as if he saw the end approaching, and realised he still had too much left to achieve; he had too many songs left to sing, too many stories to tell.

What he seemed to be trying to achieve was to leave behind a legacy of stories and culture to influence generations to come. It's a goal he achieved, and then some. He was working to inspire people with his message; a message present in so much of his music, but perhaps best exemplified by the title track from his 2016 album Let Love Rule.

"Let love rule

"Let it guide us through the night

"That we may stay together

"And keep our spirits calm."

Rest in power, Uncle Archie. I truly hope you're back with Ruby in the Dreamtime now. Your legacy will live on. Thank you.

Thor: Love & Thunder (no spoilers)

(M) ★★★★

Director: Taika Waititi.

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi, Russell Crowe.

The judges of American Idol had been through some shit.

Apparently this is an unpopular opinion in some quarters of MCU fandom, but I desperately want to see Taika Waititi direct a third Thor film.

His take on Thor, in cahoots with the God of Thunder himself Hemsworth, has been a far funnier, wackier Odinson than what had been seen before. The tone of the films was in line with Waititi's own Kiwi sense of humour, but Thor also became a more comedic character, to the chagrin of some fans.

I like it. In Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Endgame, the Thunder God is a profoundly affected by his time among humans and from suffering loss - something he's not had to reconcile with as an Asgardian. He's absorbed humanity like a virus and doesn't fully understand how that sits with his godhood. Humility weighs unevenly on his immortality, and his profound power is ill-at-ease alongside the traits he's picked up from his Midgardian acquaintances. 

Thus Love & Thunder finds him in search of himself and his place in the universe. Having set off with the Guardians of the Galaxy at the end of Endgame, he roams space, bouncing from one distress call to the next, smiting evil with his mighty battleaxe, and winning the day.

But it all feels so hollow and empty. He's missing something in his life - and that something is Jane Foster (Portman), his ex-girlfriend. But when he sees her again, he's in for a massive surprise.

Combining the Mighty Thor comic series with the God Butcher series is a masterstroke from Waititi and co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. We get great arcs for Jane Foster as she becomes the Mighty Thor and uses that persona to battle her own demons, and we get Gorr (Bale), who is a worthy villain with a worthwhile backstory, cut from the same potentially understandable cloth as Thanos or Ultron or Scarlet Witch. Portman and Bale relish the extra depth in what could easily have been thin characters, and help make the whole thing work.

The humour is a fine balance amid the bleaker elements of the story; as he did with Jojo Rabbit, Waititi manages to work a deft line between the morbid moments and the hilarity. It something he excels at - just watch his breakthrough films Boy and Hunt For The Wilderpeople and note the darker realities lurking below the surface, and how comfortably-yet-uncomfortably they sit with everything else. 

The same thing is on display in Love & Thunder. Cancer and mortality mix with the futility of life itself, while heartbreak and love battle it out. The whole thing is a damning diatribe against religion when looked at from Gorr's angle, a sad story of the inevitably of death when looked at from Jane Foster's side, and an examination of the devastations of lost love from Thor's perspective. The idea that Waititi has made the Thor films throwaway comedic fluff is nonsense.

Waititi's perfect use of Guns N' Roses is also to be commended, while there are visual flourishes (a fight in the Shadow Realm in particular) that are impressive. Some of the battles and action sequences feel a bit samey, as is to be expected 28 films into a saga, but there are moments where you can see Waititi is striving to bring some flair to the long-running party.

Waititi deserves a third film to close out his own Thor trilogy. If anyone is going to end the Thor saga, should Hemsworth want to hang up his cape, it must be Waititi. 

Elvis (2022)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on July 7, 2022.

(M) ★★★

Director: Baz Luhrmann.

Cast: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Kelvin Harrison Jr., David Wenham, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Luke Bracey.

"Ladies and gentlemen, here's a little song called Spinal Meningitis Got Me Down."

Baz Luhrmann certainly has a style, and his visual flamboyance and love of a red curtain spectacle would appear to put him in good stead for this attempt at being the definitive Elvis biopic. 

But Baz is his own worst enemy. For every moment of welcome flair in this lengthy drama, there are half a dozen of style-over-substance. The film's first hour is packed with so many unnecessary camera moves, cuts, edits, and crossfades, that it's like being on an out-of-control carnival ride. It's like an explosion at both the bell and neighbouring whistle factories.

It's only in the second half, when Luhrmann calms down, that the film truly engages, and Butler's stunning performance is able to shine through and become more than just a caricature.

Told partially from the point of view of Elvis' manager Colonel Tom Parker (Hanks), the film hits every big checkpoint in the Elvis wikipedia page - his early breakthrough with It's Alright, Mama, his controversial early TV and stage performances, joining the army, marrying Priscilla, his Hollywood stint, the comeback special, and through into the Vegas years and his untimely death, aged 42.

Elvis, its directorial tics aside, is a solid potted history of its subject. Diehard Elvis fans may be disappointed, and if you're looking for a deep dive into what made The King tick, this ain't it, but the film is at least a board overview of his world-changing career.

In a tough role, Butler excels. He captures the stage mannerisms and vocal particulars perfectly, but really flies in the latter half of the film as the troubles settle in. Butler makes Presley human, even as the shopping list of plot points whirls past in a blur of camera tricks and pointless editing stunts.

Equally impressive is Hanks as Parker. Hanks, in one of his few villainous roles, brings layers and complexity to a character that, like Presley, could have ended up being a caricature. In a film where so many characters are mere ciphers, the glue of Presley and Parker - of Butler and Hanks - holds proceedings together.

But for every clever line, such as Parker's manipulations, there is a naff one, usually involving Presley's family or to describe what Presley thinks and feels instead of showing us. For every awesome musical moment (and there are many) there is a saccharine score to beat you over the head, practically yelling at you to feel a particular way. For stunning moment of production design to recapture the era, there's a directorial move with the camera or in the editing suite or in the special FX department that is present for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Luhrmann's kookiness and over-egging style as a director can have its moments, but his latest film is laden with the same problems that beset his previous one, The Great Gatsby. The movie works best when Luhrmann stops showing off, and gets out of the way of the story and the actors. The constant distractions of direction suck the emotion out of the film, bloat its storytelling, and quickly infuriate.

It's only the work of Butler and Hanks, and a mid-film chill pill for Luhrmann that make Elvis a decent overview of one of modern history's most important figures. Luhrmann's stylistic tics mean the film avoids some tropes of the music biopic genre, and there is an admirable boldness to his approach, but the definitive word on the King of Rock 'n' Roll is yet to be filmed.