Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows interviews with people talking about how car accidents have affected their lives. A young man, who caused an accident, reveals his anger at a doctor’s suggestion that he was a 'bloody idiot’, but also expresses gratitude towards the same doctor for making him determined to walk again. A young woman who was badly injured in an accident expresses her profound grief for a friend who died in the accident, and reveals how her friend’s death helped her to see her own physical injuries as minor in comparison. Another woman is shown, with her daughter, describing her despair at losing her husband.

Educational value points

• The clip presents personal perspectives of the consequences of car accidents on survivors, and friends and families of victims. Since records began in 1925, there have been more than 169,000 fatalities on Australian roads. This surpasses the number of Australians killed in the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined (89,850). In addition to the emotional and physical trauma experienced, estimates from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau reveal that the financial cost of road accidents is in the vicinity of $15 billion per year.

• The clips reveals the complex emotions felt by a young man who is both a car accident victim and the person responsible for the accident. Although seriously hurt himself, the man in the clip first expresses his anger that the doctor took him to task over his reckless driving; later, after taking his first steps as he learns how to walk again, he reveals a shift in attitude and he thanks the doctor for his help.

• The emotional trauma suffered by family members after the death of a loved one is revealed as a woman expresses her grief at losing her husband in a tragic event. In dealing with the intense emotional loss, as well as financial vulnerability, the woman reveals how overwhelming her grief is when she says she feels that her life has come to an end.

• For some people traumatic events, such as those shown in the clip, can also be life-affirming. Although badly injured herself, a car accident survivor says that her profound grief over losing a friend in the same accident made her physical injuries seem insignificant in comparison, and this attitude helped her to recover. She says this perspective is like 'a little secret inside’ – that is, she knows that after surviving such trauma she is able to deal with other difficult aspects of life.

• The director has chosen to use enlarged images of roadside landscapes as a backdrop for each interview rather than naturalistic settings. These back-projected still images link the interviews stylistically and create a recurring visual motif that, together with the coloured lighting used on the interviewees, becomes a major component of the film’s aesthetic.

• The clip is from a documentary by Australian film director David Caesar, a graduate of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. Caesar has written and directed a number of award-winning documentaries, including Body Work, which won the Best Documentary Award at the 1989 Melbourne Film Festival and Shoppingtown, which won a Sydney Festival Award. His feature credits include Dirty Deeds, Mullet, Idiot Box and Greenkeeping. Caesar has directed Fireflies, CrashBurn, All Saints, Water Rats, Halifax FP and Bad Cop, Bad Cop for television.

This clip starts approximately 45 minutes into the documentary.

A young man is interviewed.
Man I said to the doctor, “Look, will I ever walk again” sort of thing and he said, “Look, son…” He really balled it up me. He told me, “Look, you had 70 per cent chance that you would not walk again. Serve yourself right. You’re a bloody idiot” sort of thing. ‘You could have killed other people, did you think of that?” sort of thing – really balled it up me and, um, all I could think of at the time was, “Look, you know, nurse, can you bring the doctor over here? I want to belt him ‘cos I can still use these” sort of thing, you know.

A young woman is interviewed.
Woman Surrounding me at that time was the fact that David, who was the brother of-of Glen, whose funeral we had been to – had died in that accident, and, you know, even though I had some pretty serious body damage, the, the most incredible grief was surrounding me at that time. Like, phenomenal grief and it made my experience so small in comparison to that that I’m sure that helped me heal.

We return to the interview with the young man.
Man Sorry, after that I just said to the nurse, “Look, what does it take to actually stand upright and walk again?” And she said, “Well, you’ll have to sit upright on your bed and hang your legs off the side of the bed and look pretty confident in balance and what-not and we’ll give you a go on the spinal thing or whatever they called it, the framing device.” And it took ten weeks before I could do that and as I was walking along – I’d been a bit of an idiot on it, you know, doing wheel stands and, “look, I can walk again, no-one can tell me I can’t walk again” and nearly come to grief doing that sort of thing. Next thing the doctor’s come up the aisle. I looked at him and I’ve given him a dirty look and went, “Come on, doc. Come here, you know, I can still do you.’” And he came up and I said, “Thanks very much, you know. You’re the one who got me out of bed” sort of thing.

A woman and her daughter are interviewed.
Mother But when you lose a home, you lose your husband, Rachel’s lost a father…

Rachel Just through one car accident.

Mother Just through one car accident and I can honestly say I nearly lost my sanity. I mean we are going back home to England with not enough money to buy another home. I will survive. I mean we’ve got so far, haven’t we?

Rachel Yep.

Mother We’ve got so far so I’m sure we’ll get a little bit farther but our life, to me, has ended.

We return to the interview with the young woman.
Woman It’s – it’s kind of that thing of having a little secret and only you know what that experience is, of what that pain is and it’s like a little source of strength, really, you know. Because that’s the real thing. That’s, kind of, like, well, you can get through that, you can cut through a lot of crap.