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MovieMail's Review
Mike McCahill joins the chorus of effusive praise that has greeted this striking Australian drama about two Aboriginal runaways. Fusing mythic and contemporary elements, it's a must-see film, he says.
The heroes of Samson & Delilah - two Aboriginal teenagers bored beyond belief in a quiet outback community - don’t appear immediately Biblical. With their respective parents either dead, disinterested, or behind bars, Delilah (Marissa Gibson) tends to her ageing grandmother, while the larkier Samson (Rowan McNamara) spends his days huffing petrol fumes. Still, like all young lovers, they have music and hope in their hearts. The opportunity - and need - to leave soon presents itself; yet, alas, the city, in Warwick Thornton’s striking debut, is not the paradise for which they came looking.
Set against Ten Canoes - 2007’s altogether gabby evocation of the Aboriginal storytelling experience - Thornton’s film, winner of the 2009 Cannes Camera d’Or and effusive praise upon its UK release earlier this year, operates wordlessly and stealthily. Scarcely one sentence passes between the leads, rather loaded looks and glances. A gallery owner’s abrupt “not interested” speaks for the marginalisation of an entire people, the camera noting in passing the high price indigenous art goes for these days, and the pittance white Australia is willing to pay to the artists.
Yet Thornton - a short film veteran who grew up in surrounds similar to those of his characters - has as much to say about the Aboriginal community’s own shortcomings. This is the story of two youngsters who’ve been left without the means - not just the money, but the language and the self-belief - to mediate between themselves and the wider world: Samson, adrift on a solvent haze, simply doesn’t notice when his travelling companion is bundled away by a pair of passing yahoos.
Thornton, for his part, proves alert both to these characters’ plights, and their extraordinary resilience and resourcefulness: though their trajectory skirts hopelessness and despair, Samson and Delilah finally - and against all odds - arrive at their own personal promised land. An odyssey in the truest sense, it’s an often bruising experience, yet - pushed onwards by Gibson and McNamara’s exceptionally expressive performances - vivid and compelling in its fusion of mythic and contemporary elements.
Offering a rare insight into the issues confronting the youth of a lost generation of Aborigines, Samson and Delilah follows the fledgling romance between two Aboriginal teenagers and has already been hailed by critics as the one of the greatest films ever to come out of the country.
Samson and Delilah’s world is small – an isolated community in the Central Australian desert. 15-year-old Samson spends his days sniffing petrol and losing himself in music, while his classmate Delilah looks after her ailing grandmother. In a bid to escape the isolation and hopelessness of their lives, the two young misfits steal a car and embark on an aimless road trip across the desert. A winner of numerous international awards, Samson and Delilah marks the emergence of a major new talent in writer/ director Warwick Thornton.
"One of the Greatest Australian Film EVER" -
ROGER HOWARD on 19th June 2011
This is quite simply one of the greatest Films I have ever seen.
It is without a doubt one of the Greatest Australian films that there has EVER been.
I have n... more >
This is quite simply one of the greatest Films I have ever seen.
It is without a doubt one of the Greatest Australian films that there has EVER been.
I have never seen a film that captures presnt day Aborginal young life so eloquently as Warwick Thornton's debut 'Samson and Deliah'.
Warwick captures real emotion from actors the way John Cassaventes did in his Directing career.
The film reminds minds of Nickolas Roeg's film Walkabout,in how he captures the Australian Landscape.
I have never seen Australia look so Beautiful in Cinematography in over a decade.
The last time I was totally gripped by young love as in this film ,was Jean-Jaques Beineix 1986 french film'Betty Blue';that was (now) 25 years ago.
I just can not wait for Director Warwick Thornton's new film.
A Amazing new Director to the World of Film. < less
