Samson and Delilah

Samson and Delilah
Australia, 2009
101 minutes
Director, Screenplay, Cinematography: Warwick Thornton

Winner, Caméra d'or 2009
Festival de Cannes 2009, Un Certain Regard

There are some films where it’s no consolation telling yourself “It’s just a movie”, because you know that they reveal an appalling truth, irrespective of the fact that these are actors playing parts. The Australian film Samson and Delilah, whose director Warwick Thornton took out the Camera D’Or for best first feature, is one such film.

From the first frames we seem to inhabit the skin of these Indigenous teenagers, and Thornton’s unflinching depiction of their physical and emotional world is all the more powerful for the almost total lack of dialogue between them – early on we surmise that Samson (Rowan McNamara) has speech problems and may be partially deaf – it is never spelled out, but would explain certain incidents. He only utters one word in the entire film (his name), and Delilah (Marissa Gibson) only really speaks to her aged grandmother, charismatically played by Mitjili Gibson.

I found the film quite harrowing, which is no doubt the desired effect, but I didn’t expect to be so completely absorbed into the world of these youngsters. The moment when Samson, having ‘lost’ Delilah for the second time, covers his head in a blanket and begins to quietly keen with grief, is a moment of utter human despair, and we feel ourselves there with him, in his haze of petrol fumes and hopelessness and loss. Thornton’s close-up photography and extraordinarily subtle direction of his two young principals, whose faces express what no dialogue could, conveys an almost unbearable tenderness, even as we recoil in horror at their plight.

Yet when the protagonists are in the ‘big town’ trying to get food and money to survive, Thornton skillfully distances his audience, turning us into uncaring supermarket workers, indifferent café dwellers, an arrogant gallerist, a suspicious priest (in a church with a black Madonna and Christ-child, a nice touch). Suddenly we see the characters we have been empathising with, through other eyes - as dangerous-looking Aboriginal kids, trouble best avoided. Thornton makes us ask the questions: Are we these cold-hearted people? The next time we see a brutalised Aboriginal youngster will we try to imagine how it came about? Or try to help?

This is skilful and potent film-making, and a towering achievement for a first-time director, but especially for one dealing with a subject many Australians would prefer not to think about. And there is truthfulness too in an, if not happy, then at least hopeful ending. It is not about being saved, but saving yourself, and love is probably all we’ve got.

Go see if you haven't already.