Sweet Country (2017)

Directed by: Warwick Thornton | 112 minutes | adventure, crime | Actors: Bryan Brown, Matt Day, Tremayne Doolan, Trevon Doolan, Anni Finsterer, Natassia Gorey Furber, Gibson John, Ewen Leslie, Lachlan J. Modrzynsky, Hamilton Morris, Sam Neill, Sotiris Tzelios, Thomas M. Wright

In his impressive feature debut ‘Samson and Delilah’ from 2009, director and cinematographer Warwick Thornton outlines the contemporary problems facing his people, the Aboriginals. In a society where they are seen as second-class citizens, they suffer from poverty, addictions and low literacy. Thornton’s sketch of the underprivileged Aboriginal people fighting prejudice in a modern version of the Biblical love story of Samson and Delilah. With ‘Sweet Country’ (2017), the Australian filmmaker shows that the problems facing the Aboriginal people have been created by the white oppressor, and the way in which he has dealt with the original inhabitants of Australia for decades. Land of the Aboriginal tribes was taken, their culture and traditions destroyed and people humiliated. In ‘Sweet Country’, set in 1929, Thornton and screenwriter David Tranter (also of Aboriginal descent) collide the worlds of the native and the new inhabitants against the breathtaking and unforgiving desert landscape of the outbacks around Alice. springs.

The simple story of ‘Sweet Country’ is based on a true story, Tranter once heard from his grandfather, about a lawsuit in the 1920s. An Aboriginal, Wilaberta Jack, was arrested and tried for the murder of a white man. In the film, Wilaberta is called Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris); Together with his wife Lizzie (Natassia Gorey-Furber), he lives with the friendly pastor Fred Smith (Sam Neill). Sam and Lizzie are actually lucky, because Fred considers them – as befits a righteous Christian – as equals and treats them with dignity. In this he is an exception, because other Aboriginals have a hard time with their boss. The only mistake Fred makes is lending Sam and Lizzie to his new neighbor Harry March (Ewen Leslie), a recently returned soldier who wants Sam’s help renovating his fence. March turns out to be a ticking time bomb, an embittered and violent man who treats Aboriginal people with disdain (he calls them ‘black cattle’). When March assaults Lizzie and Sam feels threatened, the situation spirals out of control. The skirmishes escalate into a shooting, with Sam killing March in self-defense. As an Aboriginal, he thinks he will lose a possible trial in advance, Sam and Lizzie flee into the wilderness. A ‘posse’ led by Sergeant Fletcher (Bryan Brown) begins a manhunt for Sam and Lizzie, with the aim of ‘justice’.

‘Sweet Country’ looks like a western. Not only because of the mostly sand-colored landscape, the hats and the flying bullets, but also because of the taciturn characters. However, in Thornton’s film they are more layered than in the average western; you tend to think that all whites are bad guys and all aboriginals are heroes. But if you look more closely, (almost) no one is one hundred percent right or wrong. Everyone tries their own way to survive in this rock-hard world and Thornton puts his finger on the sore spot. And it is still a sore spot for many Australians, all these years later. Thornton consciously omits the music from his film, so that the surrounding sounds demand all the attention. The story is also stripped of all frills. Through snippets of flashbacks and forwards, Thornton reveals what has been or is yet to happen; sometimes he plays with the ambient noise, other times it remains eerily silent. But always there is that awe-inspiring landscape, for which the director feels a deep-seated love. Nature is unrelenting and makes no distinction between white and black. Nature does not retaliate by firing a bullet or staging a mock trial, that really comes from the people themselves.

With ‘Sweet Country’ Thornton made a confrontational and extremely wry film that makes you think. At a controlled pace, with sparse dialogue and supported by the overwhelming beauty of the merciless Australian outback, he reminds his audience once again that since 1929 we’ve made little progress in how we interact with each other: it’s sad. to realize that, ninety years later, humanity is still acting out of fear and mutual mistrust.