Love in a Hot Climate

Last week we went to see Samson and Delilah, a tale of “true love” set in Central Australia. The near wordless film follows the two eponymous teens who live in a remote indigenous community where life is little else than ennui, petrol sniffing and poverty. The boy has a brutal, uncaring brother, the girl a loving but ill grandmother. Boy is given to petrol sniffing, girl to making “dot art’ with her grandmother. The initial scenes establish both the monotony and limited nature of the community and the timid, part hostile yet burgeoning relationship between the protagonists (memorably captured by a wide eyed Delilah observing Samson’s frenzied dance). Briefly Samson moves into Delilah’s place, the grandmother, much prone to humour, calls him Delilah’s husband. The grandmother dies and a few events later, the teens are on the run in a stolen car and in Alice Springs. Here things take a downward spiral with Samson taking with greater vigour to petrol sniffing, Delilah trying unsuccessfully to hawk her paintings and both teens living rough in the open. Their protector of sorts is a drunken indigenous man (Gonzo) who is as voluble as the teens are silent. More brutalisation later, an event puts Delilah in hospital from which she emerges to drag Samson off the street and to a remote outpost that offers some glimpse of a more hopeful future for the two.

The bare bones of the story are used to illustrate a number of themes by the director, Warwick Thornton. Primarily the film is concerned with the innocence and potential of young indigenous people and how they are systematically failed by adults at almost every level. Thornton also implicates indigenous adults – there is little love from the adults who surround the teens and many scenes bring this home to the viewer. The theme of indigenous teens on the run was touched on earlier, in Ivan Sen’s Beneath Clouds. Sen’s movie is a little more fatalistic – though in both the female protagonist holds more hope for an escape from a dysfunctional life. Sen’s film is also concerned with identity themes as one of the teens is part indigenous. Thornton is concerned purely with indigenous experience. Also his movie is about hope and grace – this allows him to infuse his film with humour and a few light touches even when things look exceedingly grim. In both movies, the outside world intrudes now and again. Beneath Clouds has more direct scenes of police assault. In Samson and Delilah, there are watchful mall workers, galleries where Delilah’s grandmother’s art is sold at exorbitant prices, the cafe society through which Delilah wanders trying to sell her paintings.

There is also a distinct Christian influence in the film, not least in its final message of the possibility of redemption and finding your own small Eden. This is not overt, I am not sure if the director is a practising Christian. At one point Delilah enters a church when at her lowest, then leaves when the priest arrives. The most overt suggestion (at least to this viewer) is perhaps in the ending scenes when Delilah appears bathed in light before Samson – we ourselves are not sure if she is dead or living. Delilah herself is representative of something pure, uncompromising and uncorrupted through whom Samson may well find grace and redemption. There is also plenty a reference to the cutting of hair – though this appears to be an indigenous custom and merely a faint nod, if at all, to the original Samson and Delilah legend.

The backdrop to the film is the Central Australian desert, which is both harsh and beautiful. It is probably difficult to get such a landscape wrong and Thornton doesn’t – the images are beautiful and tactile. Similarly Thornton uses his music well establishing separate mood pieces and themes for Samson, Delilah and Gonzo. His film is also helped along by its performances, in particular the two teens who carry the film. It is hard to say what future roles they will do; Australian cinema has little place for a full fledged film career for most indigenous actors.

Most movies made here on indigenous society play on themes of the noble wise savage or white-black politics (with the exception of Rolf de Heer’s charming film of an indigenous story, Ten Canoes). Thornton and Sen’s films are the only ones that I have seen that deal in a clear sighted way with the problems in indigenous communities today. Perhaps this is helped by the fact that both directors have roots in the indigenous community. Both therefore seem more vital than so much Australian film – along with its directors you too see the vulnerability and beauty of indigenous youth and hope for a better future for them.

Post Scripts

Samson and Delilah won the Camera D’Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

Interview with Warwick Thornton here.