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6/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. On Our Selection remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
Should you watch On Our Selection today? Honestly, if you have a soft spot for grainy, old-fashioned Australian bush humor, then yes. It is a bit of a relic. But it has a heartbeat.
If you prefer your movies slick, quiet, or logical, you will probably hate it. It is loud. People are constantly shouting over one another. The Rudd family is perpetually on the brink of disaster, and they deal with it by being incredibly stubborn.
The whole thing is about trying to turn a patch of dry Queensland scrub into a farm. It feels authentic, or at least as authentic as a 1932 movie can get. The dust gets everywhere. You can almost taste the grit in the scenes where they are trying to dig, dig, and dig some more.
There is this one moment where the father, Dad Rudd, is just staring at the horizon. He does not say anything for a long time. It feels like he is actually worried about the next harvest. It is a weirdly human beat in a movie that usually relies on people falling over or arguing about chickens.
Speaking of the chickens, the animals in this movie are chaotic. There is a scene involving a calf that feels completely unscripted. The actors look genuinely frustrated, not "acting" frustrated, but like, 'why is this animal not listening to me' frustrated. I loved it.
The pacing is all over the place. Sometimes it sprints through a whole season in thirty seconds. Other times, it sits on a single conversation about fences until you start looking at your phone. It reminds me of the pacing in The Pretenders, where you just have to go with the flow or get left behind.
Is it a masterpiece? No. It is just a story about people trying to survive. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are just annoying, like actual families. The dialogue feels like it was written by someone who had spent too much time in the sun. It is clipped. It is sharp.
I kept thinking about how different this is from the polished stuff coming out of Hollywood back then. It does not feel like it wants to be a legend. It just wants to be a movie about a farm. That counts for a lot in my book.
Maybe do not watch it if you are in a bad mood. The constant bickering might drive you up the wall. But if you want to see a bit of history that actually feels like it has dirt on its boots, give it a go. Just don't expect it to be tidy. It is messy. It is loud. It is definitely alive. 🌾
IMDb —
1921
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