He Died with a Felafel in His Hand
A search for love, meaning and bathroom solitude. Danny goes through a series of shared housing experiences in a succession of cities on the east coast of Australia. Together these vignettes form a narrative that is surprisingly reflective.
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- Cast:
- Noah Taylor , Romane Bohringer , Brett Stewart , Damian Walshe-Howling , Sophie Lee , Ian Hughes , Linal Haft
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Reviews
Touches You
best movie i've ever seen.
I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
While I do try to support the Australian film industry (being Australian myself) occasionally an stinker comes along and, I'm afraid, 'He Died With A Felafel In His Hand' is one of them. Much has been made of this movie as it is the adaptation of a book by John Birmingham. A book that traces the author's life through various share houses around Australia and humorously captures the ups and downs of house sharing. Dealing with an array of strange guys who collect their pubic hair, live in tents in the lounge room and complain about our materialistic and corrupt society. Putting these characters to life would have been a difficult task for the director Richard Lowenstein and this is clearly evident as the film isn't as successful as the book. While Noah Taylor is good as Danny, the tortured writer, the other characters in the film are two dimensional and not worth worrying about or caring for. The characters are merely caricatures of 'weird and wacky' people and the dialogue inexcusably overbearing, the delivery hopelessly bland. Too often characters come in, talk a lot in a very convoluted and quirky manner and then leave only for this routine to be repeated again and again (with different combinations of characters) throughout this meandering wreck. The set design is well done though but only reinforces the fact that this film is all about surface. Much has been made of the soundtrack which is good. Any film that starts with the Stranglers' 'Golden Brown' deserves a shot. But what happens from there is merely pot luck... Read the book!
A movie that comes across as one "written" as though it was discovered only in mid-production that dialogue is important to a film. Interestingly, if one turns off the sound and just watches "Felafel" it is mildly engaging. The cinematography is fine and the film has a cool "look" but the dialogue is just so bloody awful it makes one laugh for all the wrong reasons. As there is really no plot beyond quirky loser moves around meeting even quirkier losers the movie is really just as easy to follow without any sound.The only conceivable reason to endure the dialogue is some fairly decent music in the soundtrack but it would be better just to get hold of the songs because while strong they really don't seem to have any particular relationship to the movie either.
i am an Australian and am a fan of Australian films and 'he died with a felafel in his hand' is by no means a let down. few films leave me in the state which this film did, the first time i saw it was on commercial television and missed the first half hour, didn't really intend on watching the whole movie but by the end i couldn't understand why i felt so moved by this film. i hired it the next day, after watching it all the way through, at the end i still had the same feeling as i did the night before, i thought Noah Taylor was great as was Emily Hamilton,but also the minor characters, flip and all the other house mates Danny had stayed with added both depth and comic relief to the film.if your thinking of seeing this movie i highly suggest you do, I've recommended this to all my friends, I'm a teenager so to get a group of pubescent teenagers through a movie with no college humor or breasts must mean the film has something going for it which appeals to audiences.
I certainly enjoyed this inventive and unique piece of Australian moviemaking. I think that it was extremely well put together piece of film. I was always in pain from laughing so much. When the scene with the skinheads with the chainsaws happened I almost swallowed my Coke can !!! I must also compliment the casting director as the cast was certainly very well matched to their roles and made this film a pleasure to watch. I have been in the film industry ten years myself and would feel very proud to have been involved in such a production. My favorite character Was the African redneck, a brilliant and hilarious performance. Miss Hamilton is an outstanding actress with a huge future. Along side her alluring beauty is a marvelously dedicated and intelligent actress, I thought Miss Hamilton made the film so much the better. Congraduations to the crew and artists for producing one of the ten best films I have ever seen. And you go Miss Hamilton, you have everything it takes to go as far as it gets.Craig Wilson