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NFSA Restores: Muriel's Wedding – 'You've made it'
Title:
NFSA Restores: Muriel's Wedding – 'You've made it'
NFSA ID
1771411
Year
1994
‘Do you ever think you’re nothing? Sometimes I think I’m nothing. Useless.’ So says Muriel Heslop, the flawed protagonist of the PJ Hogan Australian classic Muriel’s Wedding, played to perfection by Toni Collette.
This clip is from the NFSA Restores digital restoration of Muriel's Wedding.
Muriel’s Wedding – culturally significant, a box-office hit and a fan favourite – was an ideal candidate for the NFSA Restores program, thanks in part to the opportunity to collaborate with the original creatives.
We researched film components held within the NFSA collection over a number of years, resulting in the original international Original Print Negative (OPN) and the domestic Interpositive being scanned for vision restoration by Spectrum Films, and the 2-inch master mix being restored by Soundfirm, as they did in 1994.
Director PJ Hogan collaborated with the NFSA throughout each step of the restoration process, and producer Jocelyn Moorhouse and director of photography Martin McGrath signed off on the final restoration.
In the multitude of stories that explore the path to self-fulfilment and acceptance, Muriel's Wedding (PJ Hogan, 1994) stands out. It’s famously powered by the timeless sounds of ABBA, of which composer Benny Andersson has said 'even the happier songs are melancholy at their core' (as told to biographer Jan Gradvall).
But it’s the simplicity, honesty and quiet realisation of moments like Muriel’s confession in this clip that 'sometimes I think I’m nothing' that explain the film’s enduring success. This is a film that shows how it’s not the unknown or the hidden that takes us by surprise in our darkest times: it’s what we have known about ourselves all along but try to ignore. In Muriel’s case, what she shows to the world does not reflect what she truly believes about herself.
Notes by Amal Awad
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.