Hammers over the Anvil
A humane, well-observed coming-of-age tale set in the Australian outback,Hammers over the Anvildetails with gentle frankness the growing self-awareness of Alan Marshall (Alexander Outhred), a boy whose dreams of riding a horse are hampered as much by his dull shopkeeper father as by the braces on Alan's crippled legs. Alan's idealized role model is the tanned and rugged East Driscoll (Russell Crowe), a friendly but solitary man given to lonely midnight rides, whose individuality and happy embrace of nature seem, to the budding young writer, nearly pagan. (The opening scene of the film is of East merrily splashing about naked in a stream with his horses, with Alan gazing on admiringly.) East is the sort of good-natured, simple soul who thinks nothing of calling the young man always close on his heels a "bloke" and offering him swigs from his flask. Nor is he the type to hesitate from making his move when the lovely Grace McAlister (Charlotte Rampling) comes to town just because her staid husband is in tow. The touching love scenes between East and Grace are believable and carnal (one realizes that part of the reason it took so long for Crowe to reach superstardom was the lack of a female lead who could appraise his unapologetic masculinity as wittily and engagingly as Rampling does here), all the more so for being viewed through Alan's eyes. Ann Turner has crafted a film much quieter that her fine, fantasticalCelia(albeit every bit as heartbreakingly ironic), but it is no less sympathetic and understanding of a child's sometimes confusing view of the adult world.--Bruce Reid