The Distance Between Past and Present

Read Time:5 Minute, 30 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Flathead
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Genre: Documentary, Drama, Hybrid
Year Released: 2024
Runtime: 1h 29m
Director(s): Jaydon Martin
Writer(s): Jaydon Martin, Patrick McCabe
Cast: Cass Cumerford, Miguel Angel Jitale D’Amico, Hayden Rimmington, Rob Sheean, Andrew Wong, Kent Wong
Where to Watch: premieres on IndiePix Unlimited December 19, 2025

RAVING REVIEW: FLATHEAD grounds itself in the return of a man to a place that shaped him long before he understood what shaping meant. Cass Cumerford’s late-life journey back to Bundaberg isn’t framed as a grand pilgrimage or a dramatic reckoning. Instead, it plays out as a conversation with the past spoken in pauses, glances, and stories pieced together from strangers who seem to know him without really knowing him. The film meets Cass without nostalgia for the “old” Australia or skepticism about the new one. It wanders with him, the way memory does: less in a straight line, more in unfinished thoughts and gentle contradictions.

The film presents itself as a hybrid between documentary and fiction, and that choice defines nearly every strength and limitation of the experience. The images of Bundaberg feel alive: the texture from the streets, the pace of a quiet afternoon, the sound of locals talking in a pub without worrying about being recorded. Martin, working in black-and-white, leans into observation rather than emphasis. The camera stays close to Cass, but the story roams outward, toward the lives of people who make their own world within a small community often reduced to shorthand by outsiders.

The absence of a conventional arc is deliberate. Cass isn’t introduced as a myth, a cautionary figure, or a romanticized elder returning in triumph to settle unfinished business. He’s just a man returning home, letting memories surface through the people he meets. The film trusts that this is enough, and at times, that trust pays off with an honesty that feels rare. Cass talks about mistakes, glimpses of joy, and grief that settled into him rather than erupting all at once. His reflections land with force because they never seek a resolution. There’s no single wound to heal, and no single forgiveness to seek.

But the hybrid approach also leaves the film feeling caught between intentions. FLATHEAD gestures at a larger portrait of working-class life, yet much of its insight lives only in implication. The film opens with the suggestion that it will explore the experience of working-class Australia as it shifts under economic pressure and cultural change. What it ultimately delivers is more personal and less structural: an intimate study of one man and the personalities around him—friends and acquaintances who fill the frame with their own mannerisms, stories, and fragments of belief. The result is rich in atmosphere but lighter in commentary than the premise initially suggests.

FLATHEAD values mood and place over argument. As a cinematic journey, that restraint can be refreshing. At the same time, viewers expecting the film to develop its statement into a fuller exploration of class, labor, or generational change may feel that the themes remain at a surface level. There are passing suggestions of the weight of history here: the industrial past, the myth of the rugged Australian, the disappearance of a certain kind of masculinity that defined identity in towns like Bundaberg for decades. But those reflections arrive in fragments rather than fully articulated ideas.

Cass himself anchors the film without pushing it forward. He’s compelling because nothing about him feels exaggerated for effect. He doesn’t carry the usual dramatic posture that documentaries sometimes impose on subjects returning to their origins. He talks through his experiences rather than narrating them. The film allows his memories to come through in non-linear ways. It’s easy to feel the weight he carries, and easy to imagine why Bundaberg still holds space in his imagination after so many years away.

The tension between documentary and fiction sometimes makes the film feel like it’s holding itself back. The score amplifies moments that might be stronger left unpolished. Certain scenes feel guided rather than discovered. The film’s hybrid form invites curiosity about what’s real and what’s authored. Though that isn’t inherently a problem, it can slightly undermine the film’s claim to be grounded in working-class experience. Authenticity is present in the faces, the locations, and Cass’s emotional transparency. Yet the film’s narrative architecture occasionally draws attention to itself.

What ultimately defines FLATHEAD is its patience. The film waits for its images to accumulate into a feeling rather than an argument. By the end, what lingers is not a statement about Australia, but the impression of a man trying to locate himself within a version of home that grew without him. The journey offers reflection rather than transformation. He doesn’t become someone new; he allows himself to be someone honest.

FLATHEAD is a thoughtful debut, marked by ambition and a willingness to explore form. Its achievements lie in its attention to detail, its refusal to overstate emotion, and its faith in the expressive power of place. It may leave some viewers wanting more depth on the themes it introduces, but the film never pretends to be a sociological map. It is a quiet study of memory shaped by landscape and the lives that populate it.

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[photo courtesy of INDIEPIX FILMS, PORTMANTEAU PICTURES]

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