The Price Of Milk
Picture: C
Sound: B- Extras: C+ Film: C+
The desire to do a quirky, funny, offbeat, irreverent film
is more a fact of indie cinema than ever, thanks to successes like The Coen
Brothers. Writer/Director Harry
Sinclair tries his hands at it with The Price of Milk (1999), a New
Zealand answer to the likes of Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride (1987),
Monty Python, Terry Gilliam, Woody Allen, and anything else outrageous they can
emulate to be funny.
That may sound ambitious, but the result is odder
still. Rob (Karl Urban) and Lucinda
(Danielle Cormack) live and love together in their own private farm land space,
but the peace cannot last, as she starts to wonder if they are about to go into
decline. Her wacky friend Drosophilia
(something significant in that name?) wants her to put him though all kinds of
trials and tribulations, but no sooner has she spoken, then an elderly Maori
woman is hit by a car. She survives,
but then takes Rob’s cows and trades all of them for a quilt!
Lucinda realizes this doubt has backfired, so he goes cow
hunting, while Rob goes nuts. They
might want to both have things the way they had been, but as things get even
more absurd, the question is how to do so?
The film offers as many hits as misses, but even some superior visuals
cannot overcome one too many zingers.
The Maori are not misportrayed as some stereotypical society of mystics,
which is good, since they are an oppressed ethnic class. The film is smarter than that.
What results is a sort of cult item that some may really
enjoy, and must make some more sense if you understand New Zealand. This is the land of everything from the
Maori to the band Split Enz, so it is a country with many interesting things to
offer too many not in the know.
The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image has video black
that is a bit off, almost looking second-generation at times. The colors are off a bit, looking
oversaturated via what is likely a PAL transfer. It is likely that cinematographer Leon Nabbey intended this, but
the colors were too delicately produced to survive the generation and format
change. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
surround is not the strongest when played back in Pro Logic, but is passable. Extras include a few trailers including this
film, outtakes from the film, and a helpful commentary by Sinclair and Cormack.
I have to admit that I am not the biggest Fantasy genre
fan, and this film does also belong in that category, even when it becomes as
dramatic as it does. There is an
audience for this film and you know who you are if you like these kinds of
film, but other viewers need to really think before having high hopes for
it. The acting is good all around,
which helps the sometimes-abstract nature of the film. It does make me curious about other Sinclair
films, so that says something.
- Nicholas Sheffo
