Herald Sun
Edition 1 - FIRSTTHU 06 SEP 2001, Page 041
called to account
By CLAIRE SUTHERLAND

David Wenham believes his new movie will stir interest, writes CLAIRE SUTHERLAND

LIKE shooting fish in a barrel. Aside from the odd banker, it would be hard to find anyone who would disagree with the banks-are-bastards premise of Australian director Robert Connolly's new film, The Bank.

It would be fair to assume the film has a ready-made audience of anyone who lives in a country town deserted by a bank, anyone who has been rejected as a customer for having too little cash, or indeed anyone who has stood in an interminable queue.

That's everyone, then.

Best known for producing the searing portrayal of a working class family constantly poised on the edge of violence, The Boys, Connolly has reteamed with Boys star David Wenham for The Bank.

Filmed in Melbourne, standing in as any generic hi-tech, high-finance location, The Bank opened the Melbourne International Film Festival.

It's a view of Melbourne not often seen on film, possibly a product of Connolly being Sydney-based. Melbourne was his second choice, but the Sydney Olympics made filming in the Harbour City an impossibility.

``If we'd made it in Sydney we would have possibly represented the city in a way that has become like a cliche and inadvertently, through the process of it, I now couldn't imagine having made it anywhere else,'' Connolly says.

The only down side of filming in Melbourne for Wenham was that a scene where he was to go swimming in Sydney Harbour became a scene where he was dumped into the Yarra River, mid-winter.

His Yarra dip puts him in good company. Tennis ace Jim Courier has done it twice.
``Yes, but he did his out of choice,'' Wenham points out.

``He leapt in there with a great deal of joy -- I leapt in there with a great deal of trepidation.''

The film hits the big screen with perfect timing. Anti-corporate feeling has never been more visible, with S11 protests (the Melbourne version of which disrupted filming on The Bank several times), consumer boycotts and books such as No Logo uniting what was previously a rag-tag band of activists.

Indeed, No Logo author Naomi Klein came to a Sydney screening of The Bank during her July visit to Australia.

``She loved it,'' Connolly says. ``We're going to (this month's) Toronto Film Festival and her base is there so she's coming again and bringing people within that movement.''
Wenham says he saw the film's scope from Connolly's first pitch.

``The first time Rob told me the story I realised it has the potential to tap into a sentiment that's prevalent in the community,'' he says.

``That was less so at the time, four years ago, pre the first riots in Seattle, and it's just grown exponentially since then. It's actually the perfect time now for the film to be shown.''

But while Connolly is happy to tap into anti-corporate feeling, he emphasises the fact his film is no dreary piece of propaganda.

``We didn't want to make a film that was a lecture and we looked at the films we loved and we wanted to find a genre that would be an enjoyable one, like the political thriller,'' he says.

``We could have made it in a social realist, tough, edgy way but we chose not to. We wanted to have fun at the banks' expense.''

No surprise then that one big bank with a spectacular board room, which Connolly was eyeing off, refused him permission to film there after reading the script.

For Wenham, The Bank was film number four in a schedule of five films virtually back-to-back.

He came to The Bank set after a part in Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge.

He was virtually unrecognisable in the film, playing a female playwright with a touch of the Louise Brooks about her.

THE role was pared down from the initial offer to virtually a cameo.

``People just don't believe that I was in the film. That poor character did suffer at the hands of script editors when it went into production.

``My role had diminished before the cameras even started rolling. But it's Baz's film and I would have played a featured extra to have been in his film,'' Wenham says.

From the set of The Bank, Wenham flew to New Zealand to film his part in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy with fellow Aussies Cate Blanchett and Miranda Otto.

With a Macedonian Western somewhere between, Wenham was more than ready for a year off.

``It's been great to have down time. It's so necessary just to stop, purge, then plug in the recharger and attempt to rejuvenate, get the creative juices going.''