Look Both Ways

Plot synopsis:
The film charts the stories of several people over a hot summer weekend in Adelaide. Photojournalist Nick (William McInnes) discovers he has testicular cancer that has spread to his lungs. On his way home he goes to the site of a train accident to report on it, and meets Meryl (Justine Clarke) an emotionally vulnerable artist, who has witnessed a man get run over by a train. Over the course of the weekend, their relationship develops sexually as another chance encounter allows them to discover more about each other; the two gradually allow themselves to let go of their fears and form a meaningful relationship.
Meanwhile, Nick's colleague, Andy Walker, has to deal with the news that his estranged girlfriend, Anna, is pregnant, made more difficult because neither of them really wanted or planned for a baby. Andy also has to cope with his ex-wife, who doesn't trust his ability to take good care of his two children. The lives of Julia (the partner of the man run over by the train) and the driver of the train are explored: Both characters are shown going through the seven stages of grief. The train driver bridges the gap with his estranged teenage son during the course of the movie. The rain at the end of the film symbolizes relief.
The films credits are complemented by a series of photographs showing Nick and Meryl staying together, eventually traveling together and Nick surviving cancer.

Tags: boring, flashback

Review:
It's not just the use of animation to convey a character's thought and feelings; every scene has something in it that's part of the story, but this picture show is never intrusive.
Sarah Watt, the animator whose first feature this is would have been a natural in the silent movie era.The action in the film covers a hot February weekend in Adelaide and starts with a death  a man out walking his dog somehow winds up under a slow-moving passing freight train (there are no fences).
The train-driver is brooding over the accident, watched over by his silent though strangely composed son and the dead man's girlfriend is trying to come to terms with her loss.The interwoven stories are of course reminiscent of "Lantana", many a Robert Altman movie starting with "Nashville", and Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia".
Although William McGuiness and Justine Clarke are the lead actors, the rest of the cast shine as well; even the minor roles are well executed  for example Maggie Dence as Nick's mother, Edwin Hodgeman as his now-dead father, Sacha Horler as Meryl's flatmate and Andreas Sobik as the train driver (who has only one line of dialogue).You can't help wondering what Sarah Watt would do if she had a budget the size Peter Jackson now has.
With life inevitably comes death and the characters here bring the fear, longing and love of life to us in the most normal, everyday way.
Running like a railway track throughout the movie is the reality of death which may be around the corner, or a century away, no one knows their final hour, yet everyone finally becomes more aware of its inevitability at some point.
I loved this clever LOCAL film, full of mature characters and visual treats.In the cinema with me - full house by word of mouth I'd say- there were people laughing out loud yet the subject matter deals with death and pain.
Justine Clark was so dishily funny and down to earth, such an expressive face as she delivers her so clumsily real lines.The drawings and animation add so much to the story and fabulous fast,montages carry an extra charge.This is what the big blockbusters cant do- deliver stories that talk to the locals.
It's uncomfortable to even think about yet touches us all on many levels, and that is why LOOK BOTH WAYS succeeds.Building on death in thought-provoking, sad, and often hilarious terms, Look Both Ways binds a small Australian community together after the death of a man upon the local railroad tracks.
Also on the scene is Nick's newspaper partner Andy (Anthony Hayes, NED KELLY) and eventually the deceased's wife Julia (Daniella Farinacci, BROTHERS).Meryl sees the event as just another death, something that fill her thoughts and her paintings on a daily basis.
Newspaper writer Andy battles to understand life and death while struggling to be a good father to his divorced children, and the discovery that his new girlfriend is pregnant with an unwanted child.
Widow Julia tries to understand the seemingly meaninglessness of her husband's death as flowers flow into her home and she's forced to come to grips with such a sudden loss.Where Look Both Ways succeeds is in its delivery.
Widow Julia and the engineer who was driving the train are two of the more interesting cases within the story, as they have no speaking parts until the very end, but are given ample screen time which speaks volumes on its own.The message of the flick is simple but not forced: look at death both ways.
There is hope and fear within it, operating not at opposite ends of the spectrum, but as a gauge on how to live life without death looming ever present on one's mind.Meryl, the one who the film is mostly about, learns this lesson the hard way, coming to terms with her own fate, and that of Nick who's cancerous life is destined to plow into hers with the force of a padded sledgehammer..
It is good to be truly moved by a film without feeling like you have been manipulated, to see good acting without any 'star performances' overwhelming the whole thing, and to find yourself talking and thinking about it for days afterward with delight.
She has that great ability to tell a universal human story with an artists eye, through all those perfect little details of scenery, set, facial expression, props - all memorably enhanced by her unusual touch in using animation to convey thoughts and emotions.
But here's what my companion and I loved about "Look Both Ways" - the characters were real, the scenery real, the main topic (death) made us squirm, but we recognized the reality that we would rather avoid.
The main characters have to deal with things that creep up on us without warning, whether it be the death of a loved one, or a freight train accident, or the first unsure steps in a developing relationship.
Some of the actors who appear in several scenes have no lines, or only a handful, but this just underscores the quiet intensity of the script.It reminded me of some of Altman's best stuff, separate story threads that wind in and out of each other, sometimes intimately intertwined and sometimes very briefly touching.
Can't think of any other movie it compares to very closely, State and Main would be the nearest I can think of, although this is less of a comedy and more a thinking and feeling film.I've no idea if or when it's going to get released elsewhere, but catch it if you can..
There is no reason for a small budget to reduce the aims of a film production, but director Sarah Watt tries to pack too much into her filmic bag in Look Both Ways.
The result is that none of their stories are fully developed, and in the absence of commanding central figures, the theme of death threatens to take over as the main character.The main story, a budding romance between Meryl Lee (Justine Clarke) and Nick (William McInnes) needed more detail: we needed to get to know the characters better, but Watt does not seem to know them well enough to go further.
The Waifs, and other Aussie pop singers were another intrusion.Watt is a gifted film-maker, but she should study the art of story-telling, in particular the skill of peeling layers off characters to reveal their inner selves.
The performances of William McInnis, Justine Clarke and Anthony Hayes are real convincing portrayal of characters trapped in a moment in time.
The delicate performance of McInnis as the cancer suffering Nick, brings home the real feelings of disbelief, fear and anger that a person has when they are told for the first time that they have the "C" word.
The tragedy for writer / director Sarah Watt has come with her own diagnosis after the film wrapped - the Australian Film going audiences such as myself wishes her a speedy recovery so she can continue to provide us with powerful pieces of cinema such as "Look Both Ways"..
Death is a daily topic in all media, part of which is shown in the film by the short animated sequences.
I've just seen this movie for the first time and thought I would pen a short comment, but feel that Look Both Ways is a movie that could improve with multiple viewings...Over the space of a weekend we follow a group of ordinary Australians who are mostly connected through the tragedy of a train crash.
We watch as couples and families work through their feelings, cope with their relationships, and manage health problems.In so doing Look Both Ways explores the ups and downs we all face as we lead our lives and has a relevance for each and every viewer.
Something I really love about this woman's short films was the elusiveness of theme -- especially in "Living with Happiness." This film has some nice beginnings -- unusual location and the potential for a strange cinematic treatment, but fails to succeed with clunky expositional dialogue, patchy performances and very television coverage.It's once again charming television and very ordinary cinema.
I know many people will say the film has deep meaning and is life affirming while it just a small story that says nothing new or different about death and dying.
Justine Clark tries hard and William McInnes is likable in his Seachange rehash as a snag with a big issue.The Big Train Smash story is off screen and that's part of the problem - there's no defining screen event to propel you into the film.
After years of supporting an increasingly tired and predictable Australian film industry, Look Both Ways is a minor miracle.
Sarah Watt (the writer/director) is definitely a person to watch, her mastery of the art of story-telling is well matched by her skill with direction.
His real life wife, Sarah Watt, has created magic with the script and direction and the dream/thought sequences that employ her unique style of animation.
Look Both Ways is a very, very good Aussie film.
Most of the characters are surrounded by death, one with cancer, one who's partner got hit by a train and another who's father has died.
Following these characters through a weekend of awful events, unfriendly attitudes and bad news just isn't my idea of a watchable, interesting movie and I got very tired of its "one note" theme and couldn't wait for it to end--in fact I almost stopped about halfway through.
I found the film a great little gem about life and death, often sharply poignant, occasionally quite funny, and certainly moving.
I thought that perhaps there was a little less time devoted to each story as I would have liked, Andy and the train driver in particular, however the film is still erstwhile in its dramatic drive, and malignant in driving home the message it sets out to tell.Whilst I can claim to being slight biased, its nice to come home from a night at the movies after seeing your home up on the big screen, in a good film.
Another IMDb reviewer described it as "life-affirming", and I will endorse that opinion.This film about otherwise ordinary people was so moving, its message so deep and fundamental to our humanity, and so thought provoking.
And the writer-director, Sarah Watt, has succeeded brilliantly in one of the toughest tasks in film-making: representing the inner experience of people  their thoughts and fantasies  visually, cinematically, without resort to soliloquies, dialogue or voiceovers to convey such interior events.Ms. Watt has been making short animated films for over 15 years, and she uses her animation skills to great advantage in this, her first feature length, narrative movie.
Then she witnesses a man struck dead by a passing freight train.In the wake of these events and another unconnected to her, a horrific train accident elsewhere in the country, Meryl begins to imagine brief catastrophic scenes at every turn, in which she herself dies a violent death.
We are shown these flashes of vivid visual imagery, which always take the form of animated watercolor paintings, in a style like those she makes in her spare time (this is where Ms. Watts's animation skills come into play).Nick (William McInnes) is a photographer with the local paper who covers the accidental death caused by the freight train that Meryl witnessed.
But they are absorbing, especially the angry, grieving partner of the man killed by the train, the devastated train engineer, and a hotheaded reporter colleague of Nick's and the two women in his life.The film is not without problems.
That said, I think Ms. Watt has real promise as a narrative film director; she appears to work well with actors, and her own imagination shines.
I understand that Sarah Watt is usually a director of animated films.
The use of animation here was excellent: the pictures spoke the emotions with no need for scripting.If you liked "Tom White" or "Three Dollars" you will probably enjoy this, although I ranked these both higher as they struck more of a chord with me than this film..
Writer, director Sarah Watt's film "Look Both Ways" is a noble, uplifting movie about the human spirit.
The story was engaging, the direction was spot-on, the characters were almost brilliant, there is nothing I would criticize of this film.
The film often breaks into animation without severing the flow of the movie, quite a feat, and the rapid montages that appear from time to time are stunning, to say the least.
Look Both Ways is a fairly engaging movie that focuses on a set of people after a tumultuous train crash kills a person.
The movie just sort of floats on by, The only saving grace is the hilarious animation that possesses a character's inner thoughts about death, but other then that, it's pretty unremarkable..
Maybe directors will once again trust actors to bring intelligent contributions to the film and allow them to navigate their own way through the development of a character.
It seemed the actors found their own ways of playing these characters and hence they were given dimensions that are never evident in many other films..
With more than just a nod to Paul Anderson's Magnolia (1999) and Tom Tykwer's Run, Lola, Run (1998), long-time animation writer/director, Sarah Watt, has produced an engaging montage of mini-stories all interwoven over a hot, lazy weekend in and around Adelaide, South Australia, and all loosely connected as a result of an accident  or was it?
Not so here: Meryl Lee (Justine Clarke) and Nick (William McInness) are in the frame most of the time, she being a commercial artist creating birthday/anniversary/wedding cards and such like (and is grieving about the recent loss of her father), he being a photo-journalist for the daily rag.
She sees the death (or does she?); later, he photographs the accident scene with his mate, Andy (Anthony Hayes), the journalist who drags him along to get the photos necessary for the story.
However, while at the scene, Meryl's and Nick's eyes meet briefly, and, with the job done, both find that they're wandering off in the same direction, and thus strike up a conversation.Andy, in turn, is dealing with death  and an on-again/off-again romance  in a different way: he's on a crusade to prove that many male 'accidents' are actually suicides (for whatever reason) by writing a series of pieces for the paper and raising public awareness.
Incensed, for multiple reasons, Meryl runs off, agonizing and agonized.At this point, let me leave you to find out how Nick/Meryl and Andy/Anna come to terms with the need to look both ways, and while they all ponder the meaning of the young fellow's death.There are other characters who contribute enormously to this little gem, beginning with the train driver and his family.
Without one word of dialog between the driver, his wife, and their son, Watt really shows her skill as a director and with the camera to 'tell' a complete story, culminating with the driver delivering an apology and one of Meryl's bereavement cards  which, as the viewer, you've already seen in an earlier scene  to the girl-friend/partner/wife (it's uncertain which it is) of the accident victim.Add to that, the talents of the children who appear, all of whom perform flawlessly (but kids like to play-act naturally, do they not?).The four main actors are simply excellent.
William McInnes (real-life husband to director Sarah Watt) is outstanding in his role, by far the best I've seen from him (winning the Australian Best Actor Award for this role).
Not only is her directing and writing skill evident, her technique in this film of using animation to show the thoughts of the characters is often excruciatingly funny.
The film is more about the choices we make during our life than about death.Even the less sympathetic characters, such as Andy, were portrayed in such a way that you could understand their emotions,even if you couldn't full sympathize with them.
The cartooning and artwork added another element to the movie that kept my interest.I would recommend it to fans of independent films who like realistic characters in realistic settings presented in an unusual way..
In a summer stuffed with over long blockbusters, how nice to watch a film that ends when it should, and has a decent script and a story you can follow without taking notes and drawing up a flow chart.The movie starts with a train wreck and then ventures into the unsteady territory of the potential train wrecks of the protagonists' lives.
He's got an awkward ex-wife, two ill-mannered kids and a pregnant girlfriend, and is feeling pretty sorry for himself.In the meantime Meryl, (Justine Clarke  who is this wonderful woman?) an artist on her way home from her father's funeral, witnesses the rail track death.
Adelaide manages to look like Dagenham with sunshine  I'm still trying to decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing.I read that Watt is an animator, and I certainly loved the animations of Meryl and Nick's varied death fears.
A movie about cancer has to offer something more profound than entertainment, but this film fell short of making any kind of statement a 14-year-old couldn't.
no offense to Adelaide people - love your "city", very pretty place, but i think such a great film ought to have been made the way it was intended and this was intended to be a Melbourne movie.
In their first meeting, the two main characters prove that there are things in life worse than death.
Or is life serendipitous, do things just happen for no reason.Sarah Watt is an award winning animator, this being her debut film.
Justine Clarke, William McInnes and Anthony Hayes bring so much pain and misery to their characters, yet making them so sympathetic and flawed, they make they feel so real.This is a beautiful story about the wonders of life, set within a dark world of death..