SWEET COUNTRY - Day 9 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

SWEET COUNTRY is a film of power and beauty that knocked me for six and took a while to digest. It stands as one of the best films of this year's LFF, and certainly one of the most important.  It contains a unique directorial vision, a unique true story, and provocative questions for all of us at this time of heightened fear of the Other.

The film is set in post-World War One Central Australia, on a series of small cattle farms. The hero is an aboriginal cattle farmer called Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris), a decent man who works for another decent man, station owner Fred Smith (Sam Neill). Unfortunately, their oasis of mutual respect goes against the prevailing tide of racism and injustice in this wild frontier.  A newly returned solider (Ewen Leslie) manipulates Fred into lending him Sam, his wife and niece, to work for him for a few days.  This good turn sets in motion a series of events that culminate in Sam shooting the white man in self-defense and going on the run.  Act Two sees Sam and his wife being chased down by the local lawman (Bryan Brown) and Act Three sees him face whatever justice a black man can get in 1920s Australia.  To say more would be to ruin the plot.

There's so much to admire in this film that it's hard to know where to begin. To state the obvious, the director Warwick Thornton (SAMSON & DELILAH) has a unique interest in bringing Australia's alternative history to the screen - in showing the violence and exploitation that doesn't show up in textbooks. Instead of Aussie folk hero Ned Kelly he wants to give us  a true indigenous hero - Sam Kelly - and he wants to ask us if he'd fair any better in the justice system today.

But the great and wonderful thing is that Warwick Thornton's projects are so much more than just pedagogical. He has a really unique directorial vision. For a start, filming this story as a western allows him to tell us something about the wild frontier (in)justice at this time.  Second, he makes bold choices, all of which seem to pay off.   I loved his use of quick flash-backs and flash-fowards to add nuance to his characters and build suspense for the audience.  For instance, the ostensible bad guy in the movie is basically a racist bully, but he's also a very traumatised war veteran who's self-medicating with a lot of alcohol. I also loved the equally bold choice to have no musical score in this film, but to really ramp up the tension by focusing on the sound of every footstep, locked shackle and cocked rifle.  But most of all, I just love the visual vastness and harsh beauty of the landscapes as a context for this very small-scale human tale - with these people quite simply dwarfed by greater forces - whether nature or institutional injustice.  There's a deep humanity to the tale - and Hamilton Morris' performance in particular.  And I can't think of anything more chilling than Sam Neill's final line in the film.

SWEET COUNTRY has a running time of 110 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto, Adelaide and London 2017. The film is rated 15 for strong violence, injury detail, violence and racism as a theme. 

London Film Fest 2012 - Day 5 - THE SAPPHIRES

So I went to what I thought was going to the press screening of the Sundance acclaimed John Hawkes starrer, THE SESSIONS, but it turned out I was actually at the press screening for THE SAPPHIRES.  My bad, but ins way good, because it meant I came to the film without a clue, with no preconceptions, and totally open to it. And what a ride it was!  Because while dressed up in the narrative structure of a romantic comedy, this movies just unique:  telling the true story of a 1960s Aussie aborigine girl band and their feckless Irish manager performing soul music for the US troops in Vietnam.

The result is a genuinely funny, feel good movie that's full of great tunes, but that doesn't gloss over the grim politics of the time: he racism towards Aborigines, and African Americans, and the horrors of Vietnam.  It even touches on perhaps the most shameless chapter in Aussie history, when fairer skinned Aborigines were forcibly separated from their parents and "civilised". 

Kudos to Aussie director Wayne Blair and to writers  Tony Briggs (real life son of one of the Sapphires) and  Keith Thompson for finding that perfect balance between joyful energy and political awareness.  I also thought the production design of wartime was impressive, particularly given the film's low budget. In front of the camera, Chris  is utterly charming as the Irish manager - seriously, is he the most charming man in cinema today?  And as the four girls, Deborah Mailman, Jessica Mauboy,  Shari Sebbens and Miranda Tapsell all do a fine job.

Of course there are gripes.  The girls often resolve arguments by singing, even in the much flagged unescorted drive to a gig, the sense of peril is never that high, and more often that not it's painfully obvious that the girls are lip synching.  Still, it's testament to the film's energy and joy that one of that bothered me too much.

THE SAPPHIRES played Cannes, Toronto, Telluride and London 2012. It was released earlier this year in Australia and France and is currently on release in New Zealand. It opens in the UK and Ireland on November 7th, in Germany on February 7th and in the Netherlands on 21 February 2013.