David Stratton is, of course, an Australian cinematic institution, although one who's rarely appeared in films himself. He's that strange contradiction, a widely known and beloved critic (most critics are either obscure or despised ... and I'm fine with the first one, not so much on the second but ... feh). This documentary does double duty - both telling a quick history of Stratton's life and providing a potted history of Australian cinema for the last seven decades. As someone who's read Stratton's autobiography and knows a fair bit of this history, there's not a lot spectacularly new, though it is good to get some of these stories from the horses mouth (and there are a supporting cast of a number of significant Australian filmmakers and performers who put their own two cents in about David, their own films and others).
And of course, it's inevitably going to be at its most golden whenever Margaret Pomeranz is on screen as well - only appearing as a double act with David (over what looks like a rather nice plate of oysters at a restaurant overlooking the harbour bridge). The two slip back into the natural banter that they had on TV for almost thirty years, and it's wonderful to have them together again for this go around.
This is probably not important cinema, but it's a comfortable documentary that I enjoyed a fair bit.
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