In Melbourne, Australia, there is a famous crime family - the Cody family. Three brothers, Darren (Luke Ford), Buzz (Joel Edgerton) and Craig (Sullivan Stapleton), and their uncle "The Godfather" (Ben Gates) Delson) hides in the local area. At the same time, the police gradually surrounded the family, and when the war was about to break out, the 17-year-old member of the family, Joshua (James Frencheville), was in conflict. On the one hand, he needs to be loyal to his family and protect his siblings. Meanwhile, a police detective, Leckie (Guy Pearce), tries to save him as a young boy, while giving the family members legal sanction. Under such contradictions, the confused teenager gradually stepped into a situation beyond his control.
One- sentence commentary
With a tense rhythm, "Animal Kingdom" is not only from David Mitchold's excellent debut, but also a unique Australian film.
- urbancinefile.com.au
"Animal Kingdom" is Australia's most outstanding crime film, and one of the best crime films seen worldwide. Mitchold plunges the audience into the world of his characters, giving us a sense of celebration of destruction like never before.
- blog.cinemaautopsy.com
With an excellent balance of extreme violence and dramatic conflict, Animal Kingdom proves to be a full-fledged, tense thriller.
——filmschoolrejects.com behind-the-
scenes production of
the new Australian director who won the Sundance Award for his debut film
For David Mitchold, we may be able to give him the title of "21st Century Filmmaker", because his film career really started in 2000 as a screenwriter and actor. Since 2006, he has begun to try to display his directing talent, shooting several short films, and most of them have won some short film awards, which has accumulated rich experience in film writing and directing and a reputation in the industry for him. Finally, at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, he won the "World Film Jury Feature Film Award" with his feature feature debut "Animal Kingdom", ushering in a beautiful appearance for himself in the world film circle.
The birth of "Animal Kingdom" didn't actually come from the director himself, but he did have a long-term interest in Melbourne's underground society life. And a friend of his, Liz Watts, who is also a director and producer, saw the potential of the script in a script project about a similar life. She read the original script and suggested that David Mitchold use it as a basis for the story, "We felt that we needed more characters and story lines, and David agreed. Make David feel that the script is still It's very important to have a lot of polish that needs to be done." Then, the director wrote a lot of drafts of the script, and got feedback and suggestions from many people in the film industry. Eventually, he decided to start shooting, with Liz Watts serving as a producer, raising a budget of about $5 million from the government film fund for the film. For Mitchold, this is indeed the brainchild of ten years of filming, and he is also a little excited about it, "Think about it, you spent so many years writing these large and small scripts, but you really never thought about it. One day you can make a movie like this. I feel like it's like a sudden jump in a landscape, it's amazing." The
explosion of acting by new and old Australian actors
In terms of cast, this film does not have a particularly famous movie star, and Guy Pearce, who has worked hard in Hollywood, is one of the most famous. This movie star who has been in many popular movies in Hollywood and left a deep impression, but has not been able to become popular, is also the main reason why this movie has won some public attention during the shooting stage. However, the real protagonist of this film is still the local actors in Australia, such as Ben Mendelsohn. He is already quite well-known locally in Australia. At the same time, in some Hollywood films, he has also played a supporting role, such as the performance of the early history of the New World. Of course, he will also be involved in films such as "New World" (2005) and "Australia" (2008) that express local history. In "Animal Kingdom", he really entered the world's fans' vision as the protagonist. In this regard, he first expressed his support for the director, "David has a beautiful genius brain, he has too many dramatic The idea.” His own role as Godfather Cody is considered to be, without a doubt, the most vicious yet cool nightmarish character in Australian film history, and such accolades have given audiences a strong reaction to his performance. expectations.
The role of Joshua Cody as an introduction and clue in the film is the debut of a young actor James Frenchweiler, but he has been affirmed by the critics with his wonderful performance, and is considered to be this film. The film "One of the greatest discoveries". And the director also praised him, "James really interprets a role that I couldn't imagine before. When I saw him, he looked thin, like a child, and he didn't even look like the character in the script. But the more I saw him Observing him, the more I like the character characteristics he shows in his bones." For James, being able to work with many experienced actors is the greatest help for a young actor like him who is new to the film industry, "I learned through acting and observation. A lot, and everyone is very happy to work with. For me, the learning process was a bit of a twist and I couldn’t even keep up with the pace at first, so I needed to learn faster.”
black image of a crime family
The director of the film once stated that he did not intend to make this film a tribute to criminal behavior, nor did he intend to make the characters in the film so cool, nor did he intend to make a rock-style crime film. He tried to show more substance. Content. Stylistically, it's a hardcore, rough, and dark film that almost unmistakably extracts the genes of crime from a tense family drama, showing the predicament of no one being safe. Taking violence about to break out as the node of the story, through the growth story of a boy, the director expresses the family's distortion and moral decline. In such a family, it seems that only relying on animal instincts to survive and fight back, while a After the shocking violence, what is left is a more shocking ending, leaving the audience to experience the sadness of this family.
Trivia
· When polishing the script, director David Mitchold also took a lot of inspiration from crime fiction. He said that his biggest inspiration was Tom Noble, a local Australian crime novelist. The writer was once a full-time crime reporter, and his "Murder in Blue" was David Mitchold's favorite.
·Although it is an independent film, but with its excellent quality, the film has also achieved quite a success at the box office. It earned more than US$3 million at the box office within a month of its release in Australia, making it the fourth-largest box office in Australia during the same period. Film. It also received attention in overseas markets and was rated as one of the most anticipated films in the summer of 2010 by The New York Times.
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