History… an interesting thing. At the moment we are touring the Great Rocky Mountains. We landed in Vancouver Canada (didn’t want to spend time stripping for US customs) and settled into our respite room to recover from jet lag before we headed out into the wilderness that is the Rockies.
First up was the telly… a bit of idiocy to put us to sleep but what we found was a run of the American movie, ‘Sunday Too Far Away’. Now Aussies will be saying at this point… “What the Hell?”. Yep… I hear ya. I love the Aussie classic, but although this had Jack Thompson in it and a lot of the favourites it was NOT the movie I remember.
In this version there was zitto romance, and it ended with a hideous fight shot frozen in time. Also… we are told in the end by caption no less that the Shearers won. Phttt…. The movie bore little resemblance to the well loved classic.
To my mind it looked to be a recut with poorly executed scenes, hideous sound track inclusions and missing were those beautiful Aussie silences filled with bird song, sounds of the bush and wind which go well with those long outback distant horizons. In essence… what was absent was the very essence of the Aussie film.
Yep… they rewrote and recut history and it is much, much poorer for the US editing. In fact I would go as far as to say it is bloody dismal.
I have often spoken about history… Aussie history in particular and if it isn’t enough that the bloody Brits get their head in … to the exclusion of what is really supposed to be Australian account of history, the Yanks now go and rewrite our classic history to their version. “Sh*t”
The shearers strike and their struggle, mateship (the real version) and the emotions embodied in the struggle of the Aussie battler is what the original Aussie version of the movie ‘Sunday Too Far Away’ is all about.
The Aus vs NZ struggle in the battle of the wide vs the narrow shearing comb, the basis of the story is a side line. Albeit an interesting one along with the birth of the Labour Union movement and many, many other issues. This US recut misses all this and suffers for their editing and recutting effort.
Why can’t people just leave our history alone and tell it as it is!
Now we know history is commonly rewritten by the movie mongrels (moguls… I think not) but when they start doing it to our history and everyone else’s as well as their own it is really, really annoying. They did it in the war movies… ie The Great Escape where they took a true story and adulterated it to the point that it is now a historical rewrite. No Americans were actually involved in the real events but the movie mongrels being who they are make them the heroes … in this case an entire fiction no less.
The historical rewrites are an indictment on history and more should be said about such vandalism. I won’t even go into the ‘Pearl Harbour’ 2001 debacle other than to say that too has been rewritten to the point where it is almost entirely fictional.
You think we could do more justice to real history… real heroes and real life. As if life isn’t interesting enough.
It is enough to make ya’ give up on the movies. We are getting out and about tomorrow and I can’t wait to check Vancouver out!
Happy travelling everyone.
Jan
A film short… just to remind you:
http://aso.gov.au/titles/features/sunday-too-far-away/clip3/
Jan is an Australian author and writer. You can find our more about her publications at her official web site. Be sure to check out the reader discounts there.
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Jan Hawkins Author 
The problem with this sort of thing goes far deeper than merely annoying movie watchers who know the truth. These falsehoods passed of as ‘based on a true story’ movies convey to unsuspecting viewers that they are learning actual history. Viewers believe themselves to have been educated and enlightened when instead they have been manipulated to believe falsehood. This brings with it implications in the real world when such viewers begin to act on their understanding of this false history.
Yes… I know what you mean. It is sad to see our kids taught such delusions. Hollywood really should be held accountable. In future years they will call it brainwashing I am sure.