The Tall Man documents the death in police custody of aborigine Cameron Doomadgee on Queensland’s Palm Island in 2004 and the subsequent inquests and trial of Sergeant Chris Hurley.
The background to this tragic story is very bleak:
the appalling treatment of indigenous people in Queensland by settlers, government and police;
the forced relocation of the unwanted and ‘undesirables’ to Palm Island’s virtual prison;
the continuing consequences of the stolen generations and separated families;
the culture of apathy and denial within the police, forensic pathologists and the justice system;
the code of coverup;
the ‘them and us’ attitudes of some in the Deep North towards their Southern cousins;
the legacy of Christian missions on indigenous beliefs and values;
the sorry state of reconciliation in parts of Australia.
One of the best things about this documentary is that it lets the people speak for themselves. There is no heavy narration or running commentary. Of course that doesn’t necessarily make it objective or without a point of view. As I wrote about the book’s author Chloe Hooper:
It’s easy to feel that she was trying to nail him for the still unexplained violent death of Cameron Doomadgee.
Writer/director Tony Krawitz has been essentially true to the book. He explained his approach and views in this interview:
The audience can draw their own conclusions, just as Chloe Hooper’s readers had to. Some voices are missing, especially Sergeant Hurley and other members of the police force. We have to rely on extracts from his interviews during the investigation and subsequent legal proceedings.
Some aspects are left out such as detailed coverage of the riots and subsequent prosecutions. Some recent developments since publication have been added. It’s hard not reach for clichés such as disturbing and confronting. It’s also hard to leave the theatre with any feeling of optimism about most of the issues outlined above.
If you miss this quality production at the cinema, SBS should be screening it later and hopefully will be available on SBS OnDemand.
A quick review of Bran Nue Dae by Anne Thompson from the Sundance Film Festival:
Friday morning in the Spotlight section (for films that Sundance programmers love that have screened elsewhere), Aboriginal musical Bran Nu Dae scored lots of laughs at the Racquet Club. Here’s how one attendee described it in a text message: “Grease meets Gods Must Be Crazy meets 10 Canoes! Geoffrey Rush makes surprise leading role. Fun, fun, fun! The audience screamed and cheered at the end! Very audience friendly and appealing with big heart and theme. Very Aussie cheekie." Sundance Watch: Redford vs. Gilmore, Howl, Restrepo, Bran Nu Dae
If you haven't seen it yet, it's still screening in Oz cinemas.
The last thing I expected from the latest blockbuster, Avatar in 3D, was to come away satiated. And not just because it’s so long. My fairly low expectations were easily exceeded, with the possible exception of the plot. James Cameron’s old fashioned, escapist entertainment is pitched at pubescents and above. That’s despite the M classification in Oz.
This is a cross genre movie. It’s part sci-fi with clear ancestors in Stars Wars, Dune and Jurassic Park, part fantasy with dragons aplenty borrowed from Excalibur and Lord of the Rings, plus cowboys and indians thrown in for good measure. There are echoes of the Age of Chivalry as the White and Black Knights joust futuristically, more Monty Python than Camelot. This time they are following the U.S. Marine’s creed, which seems to have two distinct versions.
The story is easy to follow if a bit laboured. It doesn’t really require most of the protagonist’s narration and video log voice-over. It is suitably predictable but then it’s action, not suspense or mystery. It also helps when the aliens know a little English.
The cast earn their pay but our hero is essentially two-dimensional. There isn’t much depth to any of the characters but who was expecting it. Sam Worthington as Jake Sully makes a better human-Navi hybrid than a disabled marine but that’s a no-brainer. His potentially witty lines don’t have the impact of Harrison Ford quips but Sam’s not quite in his league. Nevertheless he’s another in the long line of graduates of Australia’s NIDA who play many of the big roles in Hollywood.
Worthington is well complemented by Sigourney Weaver as the head scientist and Zoe Saldana who plays Neytiri. I’m still pondering why Weaver’s character smokes. Product placement perhaps or a way of giving her more depth. Stephen Lang is the archetypal villain as the Colonel.
Those looking for a message will probably find it, but be warned it’s not much of an allegory. It may have upset some conservative commentators, but not all tree-huggers, gaia greenies or animal libbers will embrace it either. The indigenous people are full-on meat eaters.
Ultimately god/gaia is an anti-colonial, anti-globalisation, save-the-planet, peace warrior. She’s called Eyra on Pandora. The 'mother" doesn’t take sides, she just gets even.
Speaking of trees, who said size doesn’t count! Avatar is a visual extravaganza. 3D has come a long way in the decades since I last peeked through the red and blue. Still a way to go but the smudgy glitches are outweighed by the overall sensual impact. The music score adds to the mood despite being over the top at times. I couldn’t work out if it was tongue-in-cheek when slipping into ‘here come the cavalry’ or Indiana Jones orchestration.
The Na’vi aliens grow on you although they’re not nearly as interesting as the prawns in District 9. The Banshee flying dragons are impressive, as are the other ferocious forest creatures. Like 3D, computer graphics can be taken for granted now.
So one for the story, two for the acting and three for the technology.
There has to be an Avatar II. We all know that the white man always came back with more troops to finish the job.
Screen Australia today announced that the feature film Samson & Delilah is Australia’s official entry for nomination consideration for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards®. Screen Australia 29 September 2009
The film of Bran Nue Dae premiered to enthusiastic audiences at MIFF 09. Director Rachel Perkins* and a first class Australian cast have brought the musical to life with energy and fun. Rachel has described the process of bringing this much loved stage musical to the screen as frightening and fun. This indigenous Shakespearean-style comedy is all fun.
Young, star-cross'd lovers are separated. Willie is an aborigine at boarding school in Perth in 1969. He dreams of reuniting with his sweetheart Rosie (Jessica Mauboy) who is back in Broome. He is played by Broome schoolboy, the angel-faced Phillip "Rocky" McKenzie. Geoffrey Rush is the wicked Father Benedictus who wants him to follow in his footsteps into the priesthood. He is determined to stop Willie from getting back home. Willie's unlikely saviour is Uncle Tadpole (Ernie Dingo) a drunk, a conman but a charmer.
Along the way we meet two hippies in a combi wagon (Missy Higgins plays Alice with style), Roadhouse Betty (Magda Szubanski) and the raunchy Roxanne (Deborah Mailman, also stylish).
As befits a classic comedy, many complex relationships are revealed at the finale on the famous Cable Beach. In the words of its theme song:
There's nothing I would rather be Than to be an Aborigine
* Rachel Perkins directed the indigenous musical film One Night The Moon, which has been turned into a stage production opening in Melbourne’s Malthouse soon.
According to the producers, Blessed “is a film about mothers and children, about love and beauty, about being lost and finding your way home.” Director Ana Kokkinos, of Head On fame, has given us another disturbing exploration of surviving in the twenty-first century.
It is a very grim, gloomy look at ordinary lives in Melbourne’s western suburbs. They are outsiders: single parent families, migrants, indigenous stolen generation, the old to the very young. A lot of it is not a pretty picture: shoplifting, burglary, child abuse, poker machine addiction, clothing outworkers.
It’s the underclass, the working class who are unemployed or underemployed and exploited. Alienation is a sad, everyday fact of life. they are desperate people in a society that is failing them.
The story uses dual timeframes of a single day. Firstly we see the children’s crises unfold from their perspectives. Later the day is repeated using the parents’ experiences as the focus. The threads are tied together by the use of characters that link the narrative both directly and indirectly.
There are haunting scenes:
Two mothers visit the mortuary. One regains some hope, as the other screams unforgettably in despair.
A mother and father sit in a hospital emergency waiting room, separated by an empty seat and a crowded past.
A man cries for his stolen youth and his lost mother.
A woman cradles the unborn child in her womb, both facing a seemingly hopeless future.
The cast is outstanding, showing the depth of both experienced (Miranda Otto, William McInnes, Frances O’Connor, Deborra-Lee Furness, Monica Maughan, Wayne Blair) and new (Eamon Farren, Sophie Lowe, Harrison Gilbertson, Eva Lazzaro, Reef Ireland ) talent in Australian cinema.
McInnes plays the only father in this patchwork of relationships. He convincingly captures the essence of this lost soul, who is petrified, in both senses of the word, by life. Otto and O’Connor each leaves us with a lasting image as she dances, one of hope and the other of desperation.
Blessed is a dark drama that should touch you to the core.
Last Ride is another quality Australian film from Madman.
This road movie moves inexorably to its dramatic, sad but inevitable ending.
Chook (Tom Russell) is a ten year old whose father Kev (Hugo Weaving) is teaching him about outback survival while on the run. Chook doesn’t quite get it. The kid doesn’t even know who Butch and Sundance were.
Kev tries hard to be the caring father but his history is against him. The cycle of physical and psychological abuse handed on from his own father is hard to break.
Kev reckons that he and Tom are mongrels. He fits both meanings of the word. His frustrations with the world and his son are habitually spoken through his fists. His attempts to do “his job” of looking after the kid always seem to backfire.
Much of the plot is either predictable or telegraphed (with the resolution neatly achieved with the help of its modern technological descendant). There are sub-themes that are not fully developed but very topical. Kev claims that his great grandfather was an Afghan camel driver and his great grandmother was a full-blood aborigine. This prepares us for important modern Muslim and indigenous encounters during their travels.
Hugo Weaving is his usual effective self. Unfortunately he does not quite capture the character. His accent and attractive personal manner don’t fit the part of violent misfit living outside the law. True to recent performances by child actors, Tom Russell steals the film with an impressive follow-up to his role in Daniel. The rest of the cast are hard to fault.
Director Glendyn Ivin has presented a tight piece. The Flinders Ranges setting, which is beautifully photographed, is worth the price of the ticket. It’s one of Australia’s special places. The scenes driving across a salt lake covered with water are magic.
Graffiti at the start of the film tells us that “when Kooris rule… always bet on the black”. However, Kev’s gamble is bound to fail. In 21st Australia there is no place to hide in the outback. National Parks and caravan parks have replaced most of the remote camping spots. Kev's macho, Wild West view of life just doesn't work anymore.
Samson and Delilah is a film that all Australians should see. It is confronting and disturbing: poverty, unemployment, petrol sniffing, violence, clashes within aboriginal communities and with so-called mainstream society. Nevertheless in keeping with the optimism of its writer/director Warwick Thornton, it offers some hope.
I’m one of the biggest romantics in the world and, from day one, these two kids had to live. That was the most important thing. It would have been quite easy for them to die and that’s just wrong, that is so wrong. I couldn’t live with myself as a writer. I need them to live for me as a human being, to feel stronger.
This is a very personal story about teenage love, more Romeo and Juliet if anything. The one bit of good fortune they have is that they are the right skins for marriage. The hair-cutting connection to the biblical story of Samson and Delilah is based in an ancient aboriginal custom.
Their courtship and bonding are unique, as Samson doesn’t speak. Traditional communication such as sign and body language are a necessity.
This drama cannot be divorced from its social and political context. The seeming hopelessness and helplessness of remote aboriginal communities like this one screams out for not just understanding but some way forward. Some will not be happy with the solution presented here as it involves traditional homelands, demonised by some Australian commentators as “cultural museums” that offer little positive for the future.
Samson lives out the despair of many young men caught in this cultural chaos. Their lives revolve around western music and fading attempts to maintain traditional connections to land and family. Chronic boredom and lack of purpose exacerbate the aimlessness.
Delilah spends her time supporting the only functioning member of her family who is around, her Nana (Mitjili Napanangka Gibson). When the inevitable happens the pay back aunts follow ritual in punishing her but offer little other help to this 14 year old.
Their escape to Alice Springs reflects the everyday life of many aborigines who have looked to towns for some solution. We see the exploitation of indigenous artists, local hostility to the homeless, the massive gulf between tourists and the people they have come to see. Gonzo, played by Warwick’s brother Scott Thornton, is a riverbed refugee who finds solace in cask wine and his own songs. He is their sole support in Alice. When he looks to religion for his salvation, they do not follow this well-trodden path.
Thornton brings out the best in his inexperienced cast. The performances of relative newcomers such Marissa Gibson Rowan MacNamara are remarkable. They handle the tragic and comic moments with equal ease.
The Real Time interview, the official website and its downloadable Press Kit have detailed insight into Warwick's motivation and methods. Both well worth a visit.
Everybody owns a reason for being. In everybody’s journey through life there is the good fight.
Samson & Delilah is my reason for being. It is my good fight. (Warwick Thornton)
If you think times are tough, then make sure you see Frozen River to put life in first world society into perspective. It is the story of two women who put their lives and freedom on the line for their children. Melissa Leo’s stellar performance was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress in a Leading Role. Hollywood doesn’t have many good roles for women of a certain age but the independents keep finding them.
This story is set on the U.S./Canada border. The St.Lawrence River runs through a Mohawk reservation when it isn’t iced-over, dividing New York State and Quebec Province. Leo plays Ray Eddy whose husband has skipped off with the little money they had to indulge his gambling addiction. She is a middle-aged mother of two boys whose one ambition is to buy a “double-wide” trailer home for them. Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham) is a young Mohawk widow who wants to get back her baby son.
People smuggling creates their partnership and cements their friendship. Together they brave the ice, the underworld and the police to pay for their dreams. This is a film about the under-class: not the superficial stereotypes of trailer trash and indolent indigenous, but individuals, with all their idiosyncrasies, barely surviving even in good economic times.
Apparently the filming was completed in 24 days on a Panasonic Vericam. Ironically it’s now a Sony Classics Picture. It’s another independent movie that outshines most of its rich Hollywood cousins. Writer/director Courtney Hunt has given us a well-structured script that is tightly realised. There is nothing quite like being short of money to focus the mind. It’s certainly true of our protagonists, even if they do make a number of shaky choices.
Hunt deals with several controversial issues including border protection, refugees, the war on terrorism and tribal culture. Not to mention personal and legal responsibility. If you think her treatment of these themes has simple political correctness, then look more closely. As the women tread outside the law they maintain their own strong personal morality. But don't expect Thelma and Louise. There is no glamour in a convertible here. They'd freeze to death.
A couple of examples will no doubt rile those who see these issues in black and white. Most of the illegal aliens are Chinese. Ray doesn’t feel right about smuggling Pakistanis, with almost fatal consequences. She’s not even sure where Pakistan is but she does not want to chance trafficking terrorists.
Ray’s 15 year old son T.J. steals credit card details from a Mohawk woman to get money for a Christmas present for his little brother. His punishment by the Tribal Patrol is to apologise face to face to her. Full stop.
Throughout the film he spends time renovating a pedal-driven carousel. It had very distant echoes for me, of the 1956 film of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical Carousel. It is about an unemployed father-to-be who gets killed committing a robbery to help finance his child’s future. What goes around?
You’d better move fast to catch this one at the cinema, which it deserves.
It seemed fitting to see Baz Luhrmann’s movie Australia on the Australia Day long weekend. The opening credits tell us that it's about the stolen generations, an aboriginal story set against a backdrop of cattle empires, love and war. It has been promoted as an old style blockbuster and its sheer length and star cast put it in that territory.
It is more adventure and romance than historical epic. A Western in northern Australia. The Man from Snowy River meets Wagon Train with a touch of Gone with the Wind and High Noon. Nicole Kidman (any relation to the real-life cattle baron?) as Lady Sarah Ashley has the icy, priggish edge of Grace Kelly. The bombing of Darwin owes a lot to the burning of Atlanta. Hugh Jackman as Drover combines Henry Fonda's outsider with John Wayne's brawler.
Perhaps it should have been a musical as it relies for much of its thematic development on The Wizard of Oz. Baz isn’t afraid of this pun or many others. We even have Somewhere Over The Rainbow evoking the rainbow serpent of the aboriginal dreaming. The tune is used more often than Waltzing Matilda during the story. Nullah (Brandon Walters) is the film’s own Dorothy. He follows his quest, firstly droving a stock route and finally embarking on a journey to his grandfather’s country for initiation ceremonies. He even watches Judy Garland at an outdoor cinema in Darwin.
If you're looking for a geography lesson, forget it. The country is all over the place. 'Far Away Downs' isn't 'Victoria River Downs'. It is strangely located near the 'Never Never', an unlikely desert in Top End Oz. Nevertheless, the landscapes are extraordinary, featuring the best of the Kimberley and other northern locations. The spectacular views of ancient escarpments and national icons, such as the Mitchell falls and the Bungle Bungle, are themselves worth the ticket price.
If this is an historical romance, forget the history lesson. Darwin is a visual treat with all the splendour of Moulin Rouge. It displays Baz's knack for bold, stylised, over-designed sets.
The bombing of Darwin in February 1942 has little to do with reality. The Hotel Darwin, which survived the bombing only to be demolished in 1999, is nowhere to be seen. There is no reference to the mass desertion by troops and little mention of looting. The Japanese troops on Mission Island are pure fiction.
The indigenous history is politically correct and has only a small number of annoying anomalies and inaccuracies. David Gulpilil as King George represents aboriginal culture before European occupation. He dominates the film as always, though the narration is left to young Brandon. Gulpilil's witch doctor mirrors the Wizard of Oz. The young mixed-race boy Nullah foreshadows the future for many Arnhem Land people, living in two cultures, clinging to their dreaming and identity in a world dominated by white bosses.
Luhrmann or one of his writing team is obviously a fan of Xavier Herbert. Much of the plot and theme draws on his novels. Lady Sarah's horse is Capricornia and the grog is Poor Fella Rum. Poor Fellow My Country is one of the longest novels in the English language so an analysis of similarities would be tiresome. Herbert has a credit.
The cast includes a Who’s-Who of Australian actors. Hugh Jackman is thoroughly PC, a 21st Century Gary Cooper, taking both an aborigine and a woman into the local hotel’s public bar. He breaks traditions that would last till the late 1960s in both cases. Hugh is no Clark Gable and his romance with Nicole lacks the fire or the depth of Rhett Butler and Scarlet O’Hara’s passionate clash.
Jack Thompson’s performance as a good-hearted drunk is mercifully short. David Wenham makes an excellent villain with all the requisite longstanding resentments. Bryan Brown is typecast as the tough, ruthless cattle king with a latent conscience.
Of the other indigenous actors, Ursula Yovich as Nullah's mother Daisy and David Ngoombujarra as Magarri give the strongest performances. Their characters' heroic self-sacrifices are high and low points of the storytelling.
Australia is a story about aboriginal dispossession and forced assimilation. However, this is not a political history. Its “truths” are simple and much disputed by commentators who attack the “black armband” view of history. Usually without any sense of irony!
We enjoyed the film for what it really offers: a sentimental journey. This is Jedda with a happy ending that is never in doubt.
In 2006 part of my teaching job at Maningrida Community Education Centre was as Careers teacher. During the year a poster was circulated by a casting agency for the upcoming Baz Luhrmann film, Australia. They were looking for indigenous children and were hoping for assistance from schools in identifying prospective "child" actors, both Primary school age and adolescents. As part of this process, I helped one of our Year 12 students to make an audition tape which was unsuccessful.
I have no criticism of anyone involved in this search for talent. All the protocols about gaining permission from parents were followed as far as I know. No one came into our school, possibly because of its remoteness.
The photo above is from the film's official website. This story reminded me of another Arnhem youth who went to school in Maningrida, David Gulpulil. He first appeared in the 1971 film Walkabout. The film was controversial partly because of the nudity of both 15 year old Gulpilil and 16 year old co-star Jenny Agutter.
It is doubtful whether Walkabout would have screened uncut if it was released in today's current child-protection climate. Apparently the film was only available in a censored version for many years.
Many issues have been raised by the controversy surrounding Bill Henson's photography of children and his search for talent at St.Kilda Primary School. They warrant a detailed, dispassionate discussion such as David Marr's attempts to put this into some kind of context. I doubt anything approaching a mature dialogue is possible after the emotive outbursts we have experienced so far.
