Samson and Delilah
Written and directed by Warwick Thornton
With Marissa Gibson and Rowan MacNamara
In cinemas
Samson and Delilah is an accurate but harshly unrelenting portrayal of life on a remote Aboriginal community in Central Australia.
It depicts the daily reality of community life through the eyes of two fairly typical Aboriginal teens: neither in school — as far as we can gather, there is no school in their tiny community — nor employment. Neither are there many leisure opportunities for Samson or Delilah, beyond listening to music or, in Delilah's case, painting with her grandmother.
A clever use of repetitive filming communicates the boredom, listlessness and lack of direction apparent to many who have spent time on communities. Similarly, the extreme poverty in which Indigenous Australians live is shown rather than told: the empty fridge, which sends a hungry Samson off to sniff petrol to assuage his hunger, or the simple meal of a tin of tuna emptied onto a battered, tin plate.
Delilah's days are dictated by caring for her sick grandmother. Samson, without such family responsibilities, entertains himself as best he can: playing and listening to music, sniffing petrol, courting Delilah. "Courtship" takes the form of sitting outside the shop when she goes for supplies, asking her for food or money.
In what becomes an almost uncomfortably repetitive, uneventful portrayal of life, we can't help but feel empathy with Samson's escape through sniffing petrol. His substance abuse is not dramatised, over-stated or moralised. It is simply one of the few activities with which he can pass his time — an activity that, during the course of the film, begins to destroy him but is also one of his few comforts.
While repeated scenes and phrases are very common in the oral Indigenous tradition, there is only so much of it — largely without dialogue — that a non-Indigenous audience can take before we begin to feel that something surely must happen.
But if we are hoping for something exciting, something positive, we are again reminded that this is life on an Aboriginal community, a life (as a song in the film tells us) where "roses rarely grow".
A situation arises in the community that leads to Samson and Delilah doing a runner — he with his petrol, her with her blanket. They end up in Alice Springs.
The film sensitively tackles the social contradictions of Alice Springs through the eyes of the two who have come in from the bush and are sleeping under a bridge.
In the window of an art gallery, Delilah sees one of her Nana's paintings for $22,000. We are instantly reminded of the poverty her Nana lived and died in. In another scene learned that — after paying off her food bill — she'd received $200 for the painting.
Life for Samson and Delilah is more brutal than that from which they'd run. I couldn't help think of the impact the current Northern Territory intervention has had on Aboriginal people's mobility.
Many Aboriginal welfare recipients are given "store cards" in lieu of 50% of their payments. Unable to use them at their local community store, they flock to Alice Springs or other regional centres to shop. But, often, they get stuck there.
If they are lucky, they may have family in one of the (increasingly over-crowded) town camps. Or, like Samson and Delilah, they may end up sleeping in the dry riverbed.
Alice Springs brings a whole new level of brutality: racism and violence, distance from family networks, the constant threat of being attacked, "moved on" or caught stealing food.
There is not a lot of joy in this film. The difficulties that led Samson and Delilah to leave their home are matched only by the horrors that met them in Alice Springs. When, eventually, that situation becomes insufferable, the two do make it home.
But "home", though set in the stunningly portrayed landscape of the MacDonald Ranges, is not glorified or romanticised. There is no promise of a happy ending. What the future holds for Samson, Delilah and all Aboriginal people living in the remote communities across Australia, is not predicted in the film.
The film situates itself firmly in the present, makes no judgement but hints a future of continuing poverty and tragedy if change doesn't come — soon.
If I had to criticise the film, I would point out that situating a story in present-day reality on an Aboriginal community, without reference to the past, to what its members have been through or how it came into existence, runs certain risks.
It runs the risk of the wrong conclusions being drawn about the "viability" of these communities, about the causes of the violence and dysfunctional society we're witnessing.
Aboriginal people fought long, proud battles for the right to return to their homelands, to manage them themselves, rather than live in missions. The situation we see in the film says more about the level of government neglect and refusal to fully grant self-determination than it does about the Aboriginal people living on the communities — or under the bridges.
Then again, perhaps this film is simply a love story, an adventure story, not an overtly political piece of social commentary. It just so happens that the romance, the adventure, unfolds in contemporary, remote Aboriginal Australia, not Hollywood.
While the very act of making such a film is implicitly political, the lessons, conclusions — and the potential action those conclusions lend themselves to — are left to the viewer.