Film Review - Midnight Oil 1984 (2018)

Midnight Oil 1984 is a documentary about the band Midnight Oil in 1984 and the launch of their album Red Plains on the Sunset and meanwhile its front man Peter Garrett decides to run for the Nuclear Disarmament Party in the General Election that year in Australia.

Midnight Oil 1984 is a very good documentary for these 2 reasons:

- Firstly the archival footage presented here is remarkable over 20,000 feet of 16mm film was recorded during that period and to see all of it presented in this way is terrific with the old concert clips, the sweat pouring off Peter’s head, the energy on the stage, the crowds getting into it and even seeing some of the news conferences and interviews and show clips was fantastic for a historical type person like myself.

- And secondly its great to hear that music be it songs like Power and the Passion, Beds are Burnings, Short Memory among others it makes you want to tap your feet along to it and in some cases sing along and it also made me think about art vs politics and whether the two trains should meet and this was a case where the art and the politics do mesh together very very well and that yes at times art can be political but if its done well then there should be no problems at all.

But I do have a criticism about this documentary and that is as good as the vintage footage is there is a bad habit of cutting back to contemporary interviews with the band members and those that worked with them at that time and it pulled me out of the experience of watching the doco especially when other documentaries like Senna and Waking Sleeping Beauty got around this very easily by just having the interviews be voice over on the older footage.

And I wish that approach had been taken here as it would’ve worked a lot better and allowed you to be truly immersed in the 1984 footage without having to be taken out of it just to watch an interview clip from 30 odd years later.

And so that was Midnight Oil 1984 a very good documentary that save for the interview clips did a great job telling its story and toe tapping along to their songs, 3 out of 5.