Cannes'09 Camera d'Or Winner: Samson and Delilah review
The Cannes Film Festival's Camera d'Or (Golden Camera) for best first film went to Warwick Thornton for Samson and Delilah. An Australian aboriginal, Thornton said, "I grew up on the streets, getting into trouble with the police. Cinema saved my life."
The film is very assured for a debut film, with a strong sense of atmospherics, story telling, cinematography and lively music-all by Thornton himself. A 99 minute film with almost no dialogue, it is a love story set in the aboriginal Outback between teenagers whose existence is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. It is a powerful comment on the marginalisation of aborigines--and the undeniable unreliability of men--yet highlights how young optimism fights circumstances. Samson (Rowan McNamara), a petrol-sniffing lout trails Delilah (Marissa Gibson; both are non-actors), who helps her grandmother make aboriginal dot paintings to earn some money. She resents his presence, but can't help being attracted to him. After both are beaten, they take off for the city and befriend a beggar who is turning to Christianity "so I can get three meals a day."
The film is certainly brutal and tedious in parts. Although Delilah is abducted by white youth in Samson's presence, and later crumples when a car slams into her, Samson is too spaced out to even notice. Yet, Delilah has a quality that is both Christ-like in its forgiveness and masochistic, and keeps returning to care for Samson. In a reversal of the primaeval age they live in, she's the lover-mother-provider, bathing him, shooting a kangaroo for lunch and feeding him lovingly, while he lounges spaced-out, as the closing song resounds: "All I have to offer you is me." I'm not sure it deserved that 10-minute standing ovation at Cannes, though. I wondered if it had a little to do with the fact that the director is aboriginal.
First appeared in DNA
Comments( 2 )
Meenakshi, If there were ever a
Meenakshi,
If there were ever a category called 'flash review', your piece would be a good exemplar. I wish I knew exactly how much (or indeed, how little) needs to be said about a film to make a review tantalising.
Thanks!
Tanmoy
I wonder if the success of the film has
I wonder if the success of the film has less to do with the race of the Director but due to the poignancy of the storytelling and uniqueness of the circumstances of its characters. the fact that its a story that's never been seen before in film, executed in such a way as to demonstrating excellence in scripting, cinematography and quite simply excellence in judgement of audience ability (i.e. he didn't treat us like morons who can't see, read, hear or feel) that is rarely seen in any films these days from any country?