Showing On 11, 13, 14 November
Monday 6pm, Wednesday 4pm and Thursday 6pm
Watch The Trailer
Storyline (warning: spoilers)
How do you measure the success of a band like Midnight Oil? Is it that they self-carved a successful touring career while still being pretty punk in their early days, refusing to play along with what they saw as Countdown’s confected pop candy image? That the gig took them all over the world? That, at the height of their powers, they used that platform to champion eco-activism and amplify the voices of First Nations people, as spearheaded by towering frontman Peter Garrett?
As might be expected, The Hardest Line gravitates around Peter Garrett. It’s to Clarke’s great credit that he doesn’t resile from prodding the apparent contradiction inherent in the man who most rang the band’s activist clarion, and once ran for the Nuclear Disarmament Party, later joining the Labor party that worked so hard to ensure, via preferences, that he didn’t make it to Parliament under that much freer banner.
The Hardest Line is sonically driven by gig footage, with overlaid commentary – both archival and new – predominantly coming from unseen members of the bands’ shifting line-up: drummer Rob Hirst, guitarist Martin Rotsey, Jim Moginie on keys and guitar, and bassists Andrew James, the late Bones Hillman and Peter Gifford. There are no to-camera talking heads, but you get a good sense of the guys’ own understanding of their legacy.
There’s great stuff on the band’s naivety on first playing a gig to not entirely convinced First Nations communities, opening their eyes to what was really going on, and their collaboration with the mighty Warumpi Band on the Blackfella Whitefella tour.
It’s really in this sense of enduring hope for truth-telling and treaty – far too long ago promised by Prime Minister Bob Hawke – that the real legacy of the Oils burns. It’s what lights up Clarke’s film.