Sweet Country — a film that competed at last year’s Venice Film Festival where it won a special jury prize — sees Australian filmmaker Warwick Thornton tackle the Western, a genre well suited to examining issues of race and colonisation.
Artfully conceived and executed, Thornton’s period outback western mixes potent themes and striking imagery. It’s hard-hitting and tough to watch as harsh cruelty takes centre stage in the guise of murder, rape and discrimination. The themes are slavery and lawlessness; the imagery (through Thornton’s lens) includes expansive red skies, desolate vistas and silent rusty red rock faces. The narrative weaves its way through the imagery, offering a glimpse of life in the late 20s when Aboriginals are treated as ‘black stock’ and local lawmen believe they are the law. It’s a haunting film that involves from the outset and most importantly we are able to understand the characters – albeit stereotypical – and as unlikeable as they mostly are.
The film begins with a close up of the bubbling black liquid contents of a cauldron in the dead of night. Disturbing sounds of violence are heard but not seen in the background. Thornton uses the same approach during the rape scene, in which the window shutters are closed. While the resulting darkness may not offer images of what is going on, we have no doubts. Nick Meyer’s astute editing proffers brief flash back and flash forward sequences that exacerbate the density and richness of the characters. Playing with time brings a different perspective.
The landscape is the star, but there is great support from Sam Neill as the man of God in a godless town who believes that ‘all are equal in the eyes of the Lord’, Bryan Brown as the cruel local sergeant who makes and lives by his own rules, Matt Day as the just Judge whose makeshift courtroom is outside the local pub and Hamilton Morris, the non-pro Aboriginal newcomer with extraordinary facial features, who is the catalyst for the action. The rest of the cast is excellent, too.
This is fiercely powerful storytelling, simple and muscular in one way, but also conveying nuance and sophistication in its depiction of character; it gives us a plot which meanders like a creek-bed, taking odd turns and looping back on itself, interspersed with unsettling flashbacks to violent episodes of the past and almost subliminal flashforward-premonitions and glimpses of the violence which is yet to come.
Just like Samson & Delilah enticed us into a claustrophobic reality, the ironically named Sweet Country does the same. The lack of a music soundtrack is conspicuous but the sound of Johnny Cash’s rich, dark tones singing the gospel tune Peace in the Valley feels just right – as a rainbow appears in the dark sky bringing a window of hope.
Sweet Country will be released in the UK on 9 March 2018.
VIEWED THROUGH A LENS 