“You know what politics is? It’s not if you’re a bum, but if you’re a smaller bum than someone else.”
I remember seeing Rats In The Ranks (1996) reviewed glowingly by Margaret and David on The Movie Show when it was on SBS, and then eventually this Australian documentary was screened on ABC. Revisiting it through a YouTube upload (it’s also available on Kanopy), this is one of the best Australian documentaries. A big part is that its focus seems so inane and small potatoes, the mayoral elections for Leichhardt Council in 1994, local politics in action. And yet, ego, power moves and campaigning strategies are still all on clear display as Larry Hand, current mayor, seeks to stay in office.
The image of Hand – who resembles an everyday Marlon Brando – near the start of the movie, wearing his leather jacket as he sits in the mayor’s chair in the council chambers, is a perfect meeting point between the mundane and the lofty. Hand’s place isn’t assured with the votes being based on the 12 people on the council, a couple of whom would like to back themselves for the position, including Neil Macindoe, a member of the Australian Labour Party, and Kath Hacking, an older, potentially conservative member who has become disenchanted with Hand. Key players are other ALP members such as Deputy Mayor Janet Butler and her right hand person Trevor Snape, and their swings between supporting Hand, wanting Butler to be a candidate, and loyalty to their political party, particularly when consensus cannot be reached about the preferred ALP candidate (Butler or Macindoe). It’s a low level fight between the operators, the sticklers, and the despots.
Hand makes for a perfect focus as he’s smooth and charming, but quite happy to confide and play to the camera about who he considers to be a “back-stabbing traitor” or drafting up lists of potential votes in his office, often treating the camera as his sounding board. Meetings are held in the cafe down the road, Bar Italia, and there’s always a casual smoke break indoors. Directed and shot on film by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, with access to behind the scenes meetings, it is an engaging and dryly funny movie, eschewing the heightened dialogue we might see in The West Wing or The Thick Of It, with people ending phone calls with “Alright, mate, talk to you later” or people ending a meeting by saying, “Well, better get dinner ready.” And now the film has an unforeseen resonance with the ALP representative called upon to resolve the ALP mayoral candidate’s squabbles (and does not agree to be filmed) being Anthony Albanese, now Australia’s current Prime Minister. To quote Larry Hand again: “It’s a lot of shit I have to go through, an absolute lot of shit… But that’s politics!” Recommended.
VHS Tracking 