- Title
- Shades of Indigenous belonging in Samson & Delilah
- Creator
- Huijser, Henk; Collins-Gearing, Brooke
- Relation
- New Scholar Vol. 3, Issue 1, p. 69-83
- Relation
- http://www.newscholar.org.au/index.php/ns/issue/view/6/showToc
- Publisher
- New Scholar Editorial Board
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2014
- Description
- Warwick Thornton's 2009 film Samson & Delilah was surprisingly untimely on a number of levels. In terms of its cinematic approach, it is a film that provokes a sense of untimeliness, as it seems out of step with other contemporary Australian films. This applies firstly in terms of the way in which the film consciously uses time in its structure-for example in the way it uses a cyclical motif to reinforce the specific way in which time impacts on the main characters' everyday lives, while at the same time using this cyclical motif to provide humour and light relief. Secondly, the film can be seen as untimely in the sense that it is firmly grounded in the present, which is unusual for a film set in outback Australia and one that focuses on an Indigenous story. Samson & Delilah is a contemporary story that does not displace its Indigenous characters by assigning them, and their connection to country, to history. Rather, the film situates its characters (and their struggles) very firmly in the context of country and of contemporary struggles, thereby ironically creating a sense of untimeliness. At the same time however, this means that in subtle ways, the file creates a sense of place, and by extension a sense of belonging (for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous experiences) that works on two different levels: inside the film for its characters, and outside the film for its audience. None of this means that the film is out of step with history, but rather that it is out of step with Australian film history, in which there has been a tendency to position Indigenous Australians in one of two main paradigms: either as 'noble savages' living in harmony with and on the land, or as lost and hopeless city dwellers, divorced from their culture. Neither of these paradigms allows for the many different experiences of belonging which Indigenous peoples inhabit. For the purposes of this paper, we wish to consider the notion of belonging as being more than feeling at home in a place. Rather, our use of the term includes subverting conventional belonging narratives about the national imaginary-which are built on repressing colonial violence-so that Indigenous experiences of belonging are not assimilated or appropriated by Western frameworks and expectations, but are represented on their own terms. Although there have been notable exceptions within these paradigms-for example, films such as Beneath Clouds (Sen) or The Tracker (De Heer), both of which resist assimilation and appropriation to some extent-that commercial reception of such films that stay more firmly within the conventional paradigm, such as Rabbit Proof Fence (Noyce) or Australia (Luhrman). Thus, for a film that can be seen as untimely in these various ways, Samson & Delilah's reception has been interesting. Pre-release buzz and very favourable reviews (Pomeranz) ensured that it had a strong opening week, and it ultimately grossed AU$3.17 million in its 20-week Australian run (Swift). The reviews were partly based on the film winning the Camera d'Or at Cannes, and the film went on to win the awards for Best New Director and Best Film at the Australian Film Institute Awards (Price). This paper will explore the sense of belonging that Samson & Delilah creates, both for its characters and its audience. We will argue that its critical and commercial success can largely be attributed to precisely that sense of belonging, which not only ensures the film's sense of realness, (despite its being very carefully crafted and structured), but also creates a contemporary sense of Indigenous belonging, that is grounded and falls outside of the usual cinematic paradigms.
- Subject
- film critisicm; indigenous belonging; Samson and Delilah
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1296738
- Identifier
- uon:19300
- Identifier
- ISSN:1839-5333
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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