Two days: Samson and Delilah, DST and bookshelves.

[ataxi]

On Friday night, after a great and supernaturally cheap meal at Sparrow Indonesian on William St, I saw a great new Australian film called Samson and Delilah, and want to pass on the recommendations I've already received. The film is about Aboriginals.

As I see it, Samson and Delilah has two or three good ideas in it that taken together

Comments

[ext_2025]

Antony Green notes that the Perth no vote was lower this time than last time. The country voted about the same. http://www.abc.net.au/elections/wa/2009/daylightsaving/results-graphs.htm

[saiyanprince]

Don't worry, we all hate farmers too.

[alias_sqbr]

I really need to get around to watching that film, sookishness about emotionally draining stuff be damned.

fyi, afaict: "Aboriginal Australian" is a currently accepted term. "Aborigine" is outdated and somewhat offensive, but grammatically correct. "Aboriginal" is an adjective :)

My main reaction to the DST vote is "Good! Now people will stop arguing about it!". This may be naive.

[ataxi]

I'm not going to use the term "Aboriginal Australian" unless an indigenous person tells me to. It's damn clunky.

I prefer indigenous person where possible, and I should avoid the pitfall of elegant variation. I'd like it if the term "indigene" was considered inoffensive, but I guess it's probably not.

[alias_sqbr]

Having looked up Wikipedia I am less sure of my statement than I was initially, so fair enough. Though both "aboriginal" and "indigenous" are ambiguous without the "Australian", especially when talking online, I say having gotten into a confused conversation once with an "aboriginal" American :)

[strangedave]

I would be interested to hear your slight reservations.

We found the film incredibly emotionally powerful, but we are probably still a bit close to the source material to make a truly objective judgement (we kept being overwhelmed with homesickness at the most mundane locations).

[ataxi]

My slight reservation is about the way the story concludes, and how that ties in with the overall emotional trajectory of the film.

I'm not sure the filmmakers made the right decision there, but I'm not confident making that call, either with respect to the film as a work of art or with respect to its politics.

The fact that you and doctor_k_ both found yourself "close" to the material seems to endorse the quality of the observation that I see as a big strength of the movie.

The three films I have in mind as containing contrasting depictions of Aboriginality to S&D are The Tracker, Rabbit Proof Fence and The Proposition. As far as landscape is concerned, these three strike me as the cinematic equivalents of Heysen, postcard porn and Fred Williams vs. Sidney Nolan. As far as Aboriginality is concerned, they don't get far beyond the standard pigeonholes of "noble" and "mere" savages, and are far more nuanced in their depiction of the way whites relate to Aboriginals. I don't think it's a coincidence that all of them were regarded as

[strangedave]

We found the end moving, tragic, but quite realistic, and consistent with the emotional trajectory of the story more or less from the very start. I did think at the time that this was an aspect of the story that might not come across as strongly to someone less familiar.

A very good point about movies that are more concerned with white relations to Aboriginals than with a realistic depiction of Aboriginality itself.

It is a difficult line to walk with regards to the 'Heysen' landscapes -- of course, that is the landscape there, it really is quite striking and beautiful just walking around, and it would have required an active, and somewhat artificial, effort to not have any of that scenery in the film at all, but of course it has been so highlighted in other films that is has become a cliché, and the film has carefully position itself to avoid either appearance of artifice.

*spoiler warning*

[ataxi]

(don't read this comment if you haven't yet seen the film