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Long Weekend: The great white hunter
Title:
Long Weekend: The great white hunter
NFSA ID
13951
Year
1978
On a long weekend camping trip to a lonely beach, Peter and Marcia confront the despair of their marriage, as nature takes revenge on them.
In this clip, Peter (John Hargreaves), walking his dog Cricket, finds a broken doll covered in moss. At a tidal lake, he discards his beer bottle and pretends he’s in a western, firing off his gun at nothing in particular. Back on the dunes, he realises he’s not alone – there is a van parked on the beach nearby.
Peter pursues a number of myths in this scene. He is both the hero of a western, shooting an unseen enemy, and a Robinson Crusoe figure, alone on a deserted beach. He is perturbed when that myth is punctured by the sight of the van. The figure of the doll also upsets him, if only momentarily. It’s a fairly obvious symbol of the child that has just been denied him by Marcia’s abortion – although we don’t know about that yet, at least not for certain. The ducks on the pond are another symbol, as is Marcia’s examination of the eagle’s egg she has found on the beach. The frozen chicken is less obvious, although we have seen Marcia drop the chicken on her kitchen floor before they set off. That is to make clear the chicken was frozen solid. When she picks it up in the camp it has already started to spoil, perhaps another sign that nature is taking revenge on them, by denying them the food they are relying on. The mosquitoes are certainly a satirical sign of Peter’s ultimate vulnerability, even if he thinks he’s a cowboy.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.