The Australian Dream – Review

The Australian Dream

Directed by: Daniel Gordon

Runtime: 90 minutes on the field

Stan Grant, who wrote The Australian Dream, gave a speech in 2015. Adam Goodes had just decided to leave the Australian Football League after an onslaught of booing he believed to be racially motivated. In Grant’s speech, he talks about the lines from our National Anthem, “Advance Australia Fair”. He places emphasis on the lines “Australians all let us rejoice / For we are young and free”. Grant points out that the human story on our golden soil is not a young one. Australia may have been federated under the Commonwealth in 1901, but Indigenous Nations have occupied Australia for ~60,000 years.  “Australia” itself is not a young concept, either. The romanticising of great southern lands has existed in the European consciousness for hundreds of years predating colonialisation here. What is young in the memory of Australia is idea of terra nullius—and the proclamation that Indigenous Peoples do not count as such. The story of Adam Goodes frames this ~230-year-old issue through the lens of a young Australian—an Australian of the Year—and makes larger points about what Australians need to face.

This is a well-made documentary. It’s sharp, honest, comprehensive, sometimes even funny, and uses a lot of real footage in conjunction with contemporary footage. It is not unbiased. A documentary does not have to be. This is telling the subjective experience of Australians through the objective world they inhabit. The booing was very real for human beings like Goodes and Nicky Winmar (who the film also features), as are the comments made by Eddie McGuire and the blackface worn by a co-presenter after Winmar took a stand against racism in the stands. In this sense, the film is undoubtedly accurate. What it doesn’t do is give Eddie McGuire, who was invited to participate, a chance to respond to his harrowing comments suggesting Goodes play King Kong after he had a young fan ejected for calling him an ape. Does the film owe McGuire this? I don’t think so. This isn’t Eddie McGuire’s story, nor is it the story of white people dealing with the fallout for being called out for remarks received as racist.

I imagine a lot of people will be sensitive to this. Especially by the type that believes all ideas should be weighted equally at all times by all media. Well, not so much the ideas they are done with. Just the ones they are not, no matter how far past discussing some things we are as a society. For some, it’s equal at the worst of times, hegemonic the rest. This is a chance for successful black professionals to talk about how they still struggle with racism, and how their success does not mitigate that. It is a chance for black people with clout to speak out, and how that has been perceived as offensive for too damn long since the Dreaming.

There are segments of the film that make your blood boil. They give some airtime to a right-wing apologist of some kind (I didn’t catch his name, and it really doesn’t matter), who plays the role of throat-clearer for racism in Australia. He says things like “It may not be a good thing, but when you respond with an act of aggression, what do you expect?” What was this heinous act of aggression? Goodes did a few skips towards the crowd and then mimed throwing a spear. I got worse in primary school, trust me. If this is considered an act of aggression from a professional athlete in a sporting context, then I think a more apropos comparison is the spear to a mirror. There are social media grabs and soundbites of people taking the suggestion that Goodes being booed was racially motivated and defensively asking if booing, itself, is racist now. Ironically—although perhaps not—this was done in a tone far more aggressive than any interview Goodes has been recorded giving. There’s also clips of a guy on The Footy Show (I think), echoing the sentiment I heard a lot at the time:  “They’re not booing you because you’re racist; they’re booing you because you’re acting like a jerk.” I’m not sure if any of them could explain why he’s a jerk. He just is for holding up that mirror.

It all comes together with many Australians showing Goodes support in the wake of the incidents. They don the number 37, fly the colours and give him a standing ovation in his absence. It’s a nice little compliment sandwich in companionship to the first piece of bread, the necessary emphasis on the point that everyone involved in the making of this film loves Australia and recognises it is a great place to live in comparison to many other places. That is not to say that it is an equal place, or fair place.

I would like to say that films like The Australian Dream are redundant. I would like to say that Australians don’t need to see this film. I would like to say that this film will change things. I am pretty optimistic about the future, given the globalised and connected world we live in. Children have computers in their pockets that allow them fact-check myths, lies and slander at a moment’s notice. That being said, all I needed to see to come back to reality was The Australian Dream’s Rotten Tomatoes score of 100% versus its IMDB score, a measly 5.8. The Australian Dream may be preaching to the choir listening through the hatred. Unfortunately, The Australian Dream is a necessary film.

On the bright side, in the wake of The Australian Dream and The Final Chapter (2019), another documentary based around Adam Goodes’s ordeals, the AFL offered an unreserved apology for not doing more to stand with Goodes, and directly addressed the trend of booing Goodes as racist. They resolved to do more to oppose racism on and off the field. This affects lives. This affects Australians. It’s one step closer towards the Australian Dream. Advance Australia fair.