AGE OF RAGE - The Australian Punk Revolution

As a fan of music from the mid 1970s to early 1980s, I really wanted to like this film. I wanted to hear from punk or semi-punk bands of the era like The Saints, Radio Birdman and a heap of others. I was hoping for a sort of documentary version of Dogs in Space. But I would have settled for pretty much anything covering Australian music of the time.

But instead this film is mostly angry political activists spouting disappointment with society and their lives. The musical coverage is minimal, but the film may be worth a watch if you are interested in informal counter culture politics of the mid to late 1980s.

If you're after a chronological by-the-numbers story of Australian punk with talking heads going on about this and that recording or this tour or the power of punk (but how they've moved on musically, natch), you'll be disappointed. But that common approach would miss one of the main points of punk in practice, which was always to throw the thing back at the crowd, and say "your turn, go nuts". The music journos tend to turn up their noses at the scenes that flourished around the world post 77 and all that. Derivative. Boring. Unimaginative. Violent. But, Age of Rage refreshingly ignores that kind of thinking and is a an unapologetic, social documentary about the punk scene down under, good and bad. If anyone was ever a part of it, or something like - then, or later, or now - there's so much to recognise in this story. It captures the essence of the various counter-cultural aspects and why people were drawn to it. The squatters, the animal liberationists, the feminists, the "screw everything" types, the police reactions, the drugs, the so many damaged or disaffected kids who found their tribe and voice. All of these, and more, were always a part of the scene - were the scene - , and it's that scene that the doco respectfully - and clearly from a position of understanding and knowledge - portrays. As a piece of film it's really well edited and entertainingly animated and shot too, with some great footage from around the country.