�������t¶��

While the movie seeks to celebrate what Melbourne still has, it also mourns the “cultural cringe” — a famous phrase coined by the Australian critic A. A. Phillips in 1950 — that led developers and planners to raze some of the city’s most splendid Victorian buildings.

“Cultural cringe” is not so overbearing, at least, that a wrecking ball threatens the city’s most iconic sites — but it also explains why Mr. Berger and his audiences have had to go to such lengths to learn about what came before.

Baker, the actor, who is based in New South Wales, believes “Australians have a little bit of a cultural cringe with seeing their own accent on the screen” and “an inferiority complex,” he said.

Given the political turbulence roiling the nation, the cringefest of recent years calls to mind the concept of “cultural cringe,” coined by the Australian literary critic A.A.

“We are beginning to shrug off the ‘cultural cringe’,” says Blackhall, who speaks proudly about the results of growing language activism around Doric, and the impact of greater exposure to writers and speakers, especially on the young.