films of Peter Tammer | ||
JOURNEY
TO THE END OF NIGHT |
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The
recollections of a shattered and traumatised man, a former escapee from
the advancing Japanese army relates the horrors of war, his doubts and misgivings
of the support of comrades, his fear for the loss of his best friend, and
of course, his own fear of dying.
"Journey to the End of Night" is the diary of a soldier. Although it was filmed forty years after the event, it is a timeless universal testimony because of its power and emotion. It is the voice of an individual raised against the violence, the horror and the futility of war. The
film raises one question which continues to haunt us: a soldier is trained
to kill, but not to commit murder. Who can draw the line? "...so compelling that one accepts long passages of monologue as if they were action-packed depictions. From this harrowing confessional emerges one more example of war's essential obscenity." The Herald, Keith Connolly 1982 " ... which draws the spectator into an hallucinatory psychodrama." Ghent Film Festival , Belgium, 1983 "In one sense Bill Neave's is the single greatest performance in the Festival; in a more teasing sense, it seems of course scarcely a performance at all. By collapsing past and present, Tammer has created a remarkable sense of forty years of one man's life." Brian McFarlane, Cinema Papers, August 1982 Awards: Melbourne
Film Festival 1982 Australian
Film Awards 1982 Also selected for showing at:- Sydney
Film Festival 1982
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