Burke & Wills (1985) User Reviews

Too much budget splurge in the first hour, not enough in the second.

[joachimokeefe · 6/10 · 4 August 2021]

Alan Moorehead wrote a thrilling account - 'Cooper's Creek' - of Burke & Wills' (SPOILER) doomed 1860 expedition from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpenteria and, er, not quite all the way back.

If you've read that book, this movie successfully recreates amazing scenes of the size of the initial expedition, trekking in the immense, desolate, scorching outback, the dignity of the Aboriginal people, and Victorian white mens' extravagant facial hair. It's worth watching as a supplement to Moorehead's account.

What the movie does not translate from the book, sadly, is any sense of suspense. In fact, every single ironic and outrageous beat of the true story is obscured, seemingly by the writer and director's wish to cram every detail in at the beginning. We could have done without the beautiful Greta Scacchi singing several Victorian parlour songs, or games of cricket, or horses and camels being tormented quite so much.

After over 2 hours, your faith is not rewarded by the sole survivor John King's appearance as a Thunderbirds puppet.

Tries to be an epic, but the basic story - which is heartbreaking - isn't clear enough.

looking for burke & wills (1985)

[cabh597 · 22 January 2006]

i saw this film on VHS around 1988. it was somewhat disturbing...and a little slow moving in some spots. but looking back on it now, i think the slow pacing was meant to reflect the slow death (and the growing despair) suffered by the protagonists. there were several frightening scenes (i.e. the man urinating the last of his bodily fluids down his pant leg) as death came to these explorers. the long and short of it is that this was a surreal film, with an intentionally (in my opinion) disjointed narrative flow that did not receive the attention or recognition it deserved.

Ultimately disappointing

[name99-92-545389 · 2/10 · 27 May 2014]

I expect the story behind this movie is something like: screenwriter (or director, or producer) reads Alan Moorehead's book "Cooper's Creek" and thinks "that'll make a great movie. But I will have to make a few (minor) changes to make it screen worthy". And so we get something that looks like a film student's very literal translation of book to screen, but "improved".

We have pretty much all the major incidents of Moorehead's book, but we have a vastly overplayed love interest (presumably because someone felt a female presence was necessary). We have someone's attempt to be "arty" with occasional flashbacks and other fractured story- telling, the sort of thing that might have been novel when Theodore Sturgeon employed it (for much the same reasons) in "The Man who Lost the Sea" in 1959 --- but 1959 was a long time ago and the technique has overstayed its welcome. And we have a desperate attempt to add a villain to the mix: whatever Moorehead ascribed to misunderstanding, the movie ascribes to incompetence. what Moorehead ascribes to incompetence the movie ascribes to malice.

So, is it worth watching? IMHO it's worth giving it a few minutes (with lots of fast forwarding) to get a feel for the terrain --- what it actually looks and feels like. But it's not worth more time than that unless you're interested in some particular deconstruction of the movie, like how it handled particular events.

Could it have been better? I don't know. The changes made were formulaic, but without them the movie would still have been somewhat plodding. I think the basic concept, trying to tell the story as a literal movies, was flawed from the start. A better alternative would have been a documentary, telling the same story but allowing for the background information which made the book rather more interesting than this movie. Another alternative would have been a much more grand scale re-imagining, for example an Australian road trip movie that covered the same route and continually referred to the original expedition, or the story of someone obsessed with the expedition and wanting to retrace the route.

Fascinating Australian History Lesson

[Sturgeon54 · 8/10 · 28 July 2011]

What an odd, yet incredibly moving film - a "forgotten epic." As an American not knowing one thing about Australian history - especially Burke and Wills (Australia's counterparts to the explorers Lewis and Clark in American history), I was expecting an adulatory foreign period piece. Instead, this is an insightful, dark, and often terrifying adventure story about the triumphs and travails of the first two European white men to completely cross the Australian continent in the 1860s. Performances here are first-rate - especially that of Jack Thompson - as are the cinematography and unusual cross-time editing. Also interesting to me are some of the parallels between the tenuous relationships of whites and natives in both Australia and the U.S. at the time. Though this movie may never find an audience in the U.S. (it is very rare and has never been released on DVD), it deserves to be re-discovered.

Some things get better with age

[hvorrath · 9/10 · 16 July 2010]

25 years on, this movie is even more interesting than it was when first released. Some things haven't changed - the performances by Jack Thompson and Nigel Havers are still first rate, and Greta Scacchi is still gorgeous (and sings beautifully - it is her own voice). And the outback footage shot on location is just as stunning. But now there are whole generations of people, not to mention immigrants to Australia, who weren't taught about Burke and Wills in primary school, so the story of the explorers and what happened to them is new. This was one of the first Australian movies to have a large number of indigenous people involved and it is interesting to see how in 1985, the film makers contrast the struggle that the Europeans have with an environment in which the indigenous people lived quite comfortably, and also show that their communication systems were better! Definitely worth a look and hopefully it will be released on DVD some time soon.

Remember the story but not the title

[lwlmaw · 9/10 · 7 July 2020]

Saw this movie at least 20 years ago and still remember it in great detail but couldn't remember the title finally tracked it down As an American I had no idea how it would end but was caught up in the adventure great acting and wonderful location shots

Classic example of great mid-1980s Aussie film making

[robertemerald · 10/10 · 9 August 2019]

I live in Australia and even here I hadn't heard of this movie. Thankyou someone up there that it appeared in the bargain bin at the op shop. Burke and Wills is truly splendid. Such care is taken with locations and the style of camerawork. Such care with skies and wildlife, although I admit there could have been more wildlife. This movie should rank beside Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975). It offers the same priceless glimpse into an historical period, in this case the mid-1800s, and is full of exact artefacts, costumes and brilliant props. I'll concede that, for dramatic effect, some of the characters were slightly overblown. But not all. Some characters were unique. There are some brilliant imaginings of persons of their day, and this is crucial to the understanding, and the running, of the movie. There are some very clever people on screen and off in this production. The depictions of aboriginal culture were considered and even haunting. I'm not surprised it received 4 nominations at the AFI in 1986. This is a top shelf effort and is highly recommended to anyone whom wishes to see how really committed Australian movies can be.