This review is part of Honi Soit’s continued coverage of the 71st Sydney Film Festival, 5-16 June. Read the rest of our reviews here.
On a miserable winter’s day in Sydney, hundreds of rusted-on Midnight Oil fans filed into the state theatre for a screener of Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line (2024). I was, as per any Oils concert I’ve attended, the youngest person in the room by a long way. But the energy was palpable, almost as if we were waiting for the band themselves to stride onto the stage.
The documentary, which opened the Sydney Film Festival last week, lived up to this energy – the infamous energy of one of the most raucously loud, unashamedly political bands this country has ever produced.
I was certainly bubbling with excitement. I’ve been an Oils fan for years: as an Australian growing up under Gen X parents, songs like “The Power and the Passion,” “Beds are Burning” and “Blue Sky Mine” were ubiquitous throughout my childhood. My full appreciation for the band developed alongside my forays into music listening, especially in my angsty, politically frustrated late-adolescence.
First and foremost I’m a fan of the music, in all the band’s different eras. From the heavy surf-prog-punk of the early years through the post-punk middle era to the lighter sound developed after the Warumpi tour, the noise just makes sense.
The Hardest Line certainly hit this mark.The sound quality, at least in a cinema, was incredible – obviously a prerequisite for any good music doco. In fact, the noise was the closest in volume and especially texture to a live Oils concert that I have heard since the six shows I attended in 2022. Director Paul Clarke noted that the film had been intended for the big screen, and the format did not disappoint: this is definitely one to see in a cinema.
This is one of the film’s biggest strengths, and something I couldn’t help but keep noticing. It was also great to see a whole number of songs from the back-catalogue, from the debut eponymous “blue” album through Red Sails in the Sunset to 2022’s Resist and everything in between.
However, what makes the Oils really special is their lyricism. The band has always delivered pointed and often poignant political activism through their songwriting, responding to contemporary Australian and global concerns from the 1970s onwards. This is a point stressed by Clarke, who intended to explore this relationship in the film.
The band responded to – and helped stimulate – growing environmental and anti-nuclear movements in the 1980s (including frontman Peter Garrett’s first foray into politics with the Nuclear Disarmament Party). From the mid-80s Midnight Oil turned to First Nations justice, and working with First Nations artists and activists across Australia helped to hold a mirror to White Australia’s cult of forgetfulness.
Throughout the turn towards conservatism in the mid-1990s – with the election of Pauline Hanson and John Howard’s prime-ministership (moments in the documentary that had the crowd booing and groaning) – Midnight Oil continued to produce absolute bangers that held this shift to account. After a hiatus through the 2000s and 2010s for Garrett’s political career in the Labor Party, the band returned in 2020 and 2022 with new music that responded to persistent First Nations resistance and the need for climate justice.
It was this movement through the Australian social and political landscape that the documentary attempted to chart. Director Paul Clarke noted that he had always been a fan of social history, and aimed to tell the story of the band as the story of our country.
“Their music really sums up what happened to us over the past 50 years,” Clarke said, “you really get a sense of our lives via their music.” It was this idea that Clarke and his team attempted to capture over a mammoth multi-year production process, beginning with a short film the director produced for the band in 2016.
In this task The Hardest Line isn’t flawless, but given the scope of the band’s extensive career it does a remarkable job at telling both the story of the Oils and of Australia. As Clarke said, “ultimately, you’re not pushing the doona into the scotch bottle, you’re trying to make a narrative that will carry your audience.” Not everything could fit, and whilst some aspects of the Oil’s career, particularly the earlier years, felt slightly rushed, the narrative certainly carried me. And that is what makes an excellent documentary.
The inclusion of certain archival footage was definitely an achievement, particularly film made available by the band for this project alone, and footage from the 2000 Olympics closing ceremony, which proved “incredibly difficult” to procure according to the film’s director, given the licensing cost.
I am also impressed by the film’s title, pulled from 1982’s “The Power and the Passion.” Clarke said it best when he noted that “The hardest line felt like the essence of their story… They did it so hard, the idea that four or five people in a room could come up with what they did was so interesting. The hardest line felt like the best way to fire the narrative arrow.”
Ultimately, Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line is an excellent chronicle of Australian political history through the lens of our most politically important rock bands. The film is a testament to the enduring relevance of this incredible band, and a tribute to the immense impact Midnight Oil and its members have had on Australian politics and culture. It deserves to be seen on the big screen.
Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line premiered at the Sydney Film Festival on June 5, and is in cinemas from July 4.
