Sweet Country

Director Warwick Thornton

SWEET COUNTRY              B+                  

Australia  (113 mi)  2017  ‘Scope  d:  Warwick Thornton

Special Jury Prize winner at Venice where it premiered, Aboriginal writer/director and cinematographer Warwick Thornton of 2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #8 Samson and Delilah takes us into the Australian Outback at a time when whites were grabbing up all the Aboriginal lands.  Revealing some of the ugly truths about the nation’s colonial past, the film is told from an Indigenous perspective, where according to the director, “A lot of our history was written by colonizers who wanted to write these stories about themselves to put themselves in a favorable light.  A lot of it is a lie.  Now we're starting to write down our history with our version of events.”  Set in central Australia in 1929 (though it feels timeless and could easily have been 100 years earlier), the film is shot near Alice Springs and the MacDonnell Ranges, the birthplace of the director, where the vast and spectacular lands are an outstanding example of an ancient landscape untouched by man, barren and empty, with picturesque gorges sculptured by the elements over time.  In something of an assault to the senses exposing a more primitive, raw edge even before the film begins, viewers hear a jarring sound design filled with racial insults and threats that remain off-camera, yet this unorthodox technique prepares viewers for what follows.  In a film where no one person is essentially a lead character, where all contribute to the whole, the only certainty is the hardship of the land, where Sam Neill plays Fred, a preacher who works as a local farmer, who believes all are equal under the eyes of God, and has an Indigenous couple working for him, Sam (Hamilton Morris) and Lizzie (Natassia Gorey Furber), treated fairly, sharing meals and dinner prayers together.  Their lives are interrupted by the presence of a neighbor, Harry March (Ewen Leslie), an ex-soldier still haunted by visions of the war (WWI), deftly shown through flashback sequences, drinking himself into a stupor every night trying to forget, yet he asks for help digging fence posts on his land, borrowing Sam and Lizzie for a couple days while Fred goes on a temporary excursion out of town.  Closer details, however, show a merciless treatment by the new settlers towards blacks, dispossessed, thrown off their land, living in slave-like conditions where they are treated as property for the exclusive use of whites, overworked, usually working for free, treated like livestock, and forced to sleep with the horses.      

Shot in just 22 days, the film has an expansive feel about it, covering a lot of ground, using an expressionist style of photography along with a naturalistic sound design that allows viewers to feel they are right there, given a front row seat, watching history unfold.  Interjected into the story is a somewhat rebellious half-breed Aboriginal youth, Philomac (played by twin brothers, Tremayne and Trevon Doolan), who seems to straddle both worlds, rarely speaking, stealing regularly, however, often getting himself into trouble, but somehow always slithers out of it.  His developing conscience is at the center of the picture, as he’s a work in progress, much like the nation as a whole at that stage.  Philomac lives with his father, the principal white landowner of the region, Mick Kennedy (Thomas M. Wright), subjecting him to all manner of abuse, yet also treating him like a favored son.  The contempt shown to the Indigenous population is on full display throughout this film, as it typifies how whites view them.  This is most clearly expressed by Harry March, however, in particular during one of the most disturbingly graphic scenes, as one by one he casually closes the shutters of his home on Lizzie, literally locking her inside and making her a prisoner, creating a feeling of dread and slow suffocation until it’s pitch black, using only sound to express the horrors of sexual assault.  Threats to Lizzie suggest March will skin her husband alive if she utters a word about it.  In the aftermath, he kicks them out, as if that was the sole reason to ask for help in the first place, though he really had his eye on a much younger teenage niece that was alertly sent away beforehand.  In conversations with Sam, he could tell the man was touched in the head and not acting right.  But when Philomac arrives on his property, March zealously chains him to a rock, but he’s clever enough to escape anyway, making his way across the desert back to Fred’s ranch, hiding in a nearby structure as he hears March approaching on horseback, drunkenly bellowing for Sam to let him in, knowing Philomac is in there (he isn’t), shooting out the windows and kicking in the door before Sam shoots him dead.  Shooting a white man is about the worst offense possible, as any Indigenous person is presumed guilty by white society, living outside any democratic process, as they were not citizens at the time and had no right to vote.  Most weren’t even paid in wages, but forced to receive alcohol or tobacco instead.  In Australia, Aboriginals weren’t even recognized as “people” until a Constitutional referendum in 1967 included them in the census for allocation of federal seats in Parliament (Australian referendum, 1967 (Aboriginals) - Wikipedia).  Knowing the laws weren’t meant to protect them, Sam and Lizzie set out into the Outback, where a posse led by Sergeant Fletcher, Bryan Brown from BREAKER MORANT (1980), sets out after him. 

With a nod to Rolf de Heer’s THE TRACKER (2002), Fletcher’s rage knows no bounds, developing a manic obsession to track him down, where his feverish anger drives him into the heart of tribal lands, where unforeseen consequences are all around him, including deadly scorpions, tribal attacks, and a mutiny in their midst, suddenly finding himself all alone.  Singlehandedly entering a desolate stretch of white desert (shot in the dry salt flats of Lake Gairdner), a lone speck under an oppressive sun, lost in a sea of emptiness, pushed onwards by madness and delusion, recalling the brilliant desert scene in Stroheim’s Greed (1924), where sheer arrogance plunges him further into the depths of his own doom, eerily shot by Thornton (co-shot with his son Dylan River), mixing close-ups with extreme wide shots, resorting to stark imagery and surreal hallucinations, creating an insurmountable confusion, yet somehow he manages to survive, though still filled with sadistic contempt for the man who got away.  In a strange reversal of perspective, we see Sam and Lizzie actually tracking Fletcher, planting footprints for him to follow, luring him into a death trap, always remaining just out of range, but the hardship becomes too much for Lizzie who announces she’s pregnant.  This has a profound effect on the outcome, as the presumed outlaws suddenly turn themselves in, seen sitting in the middle of the street one morning before Sam is locked up and threatened with a hanging.  The town itself is dangerously unbalanced, with white men largely outnumbering the women, mostly due to land opportunities driven by the cattle industry.  When a judge arrives (Matt Day), there’s no church or courthouse, so seats are set up on the middle of Main Street, with a table for the judge.  Bringing civilized decorum to an unruly town that’s never had to follow rules, Thornton uses an interesting device to illuminate the moral hypocrisy of the town’s lynch-mob mindset, all gathered together in the center of the street to watch a movie, of all things, in this case The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), the first full-length narrative feature film, an Australian outlaw epic with sympathies clearly leaning towards the escaped outlaw (gunned down in a police shoot-out 26 years before the release of the film), painting police as comical hooligans, a film that was so successful with the public that a law was introduced (fearing civil disobedience) banning “bushranger” productions, or films about escaped convicts, which remained in effect until the 1940’s.  As much as the town loves and identifies with Ned Kelly, something of an Australian folk hero, they fiercely condemn Sam Kelly (yes, given the same last name) with a pathological bloodlust.  It should be pointed out that at Coniston Station in 1928 (Coniston :: The Coniston Massacre), just 400 kilometers from Alice Springs, more than 100 Aboriginal men, women, and children were slaughtered by murderous shooting parties that went on a two-month shooting binge in retaliation for the death of a local white man who took liberties with a married Indigenous woman, murdered by her husband, with a court inquiry declaring “the killing of all blacks to be justified” afterwards, the last legally sanctioned massacre against Aborigines, where an Indigenous population that was estimated to be about 500,000 in the late 18th century had shrunk to just 31,000 by 1911.  With subtle character development, using dialogue sparingly, and both flashbacks and flash-forwards in presenting a strangely compelling narrative, along with non-professional Aboriginal actors, the director’s use of various desert landscapes is simply stunning, creating a poetic exploration of racism and colonial exploitation. 

Madeleine's Madeleine

Director Josephine Decker

 

The director chats with Ashley Connor about shooting a scene

 

Actress Helena Howard with director Josephine Decker

 

MADELEINE’S MADELEINE                    B+                  

USA  (93 mi)  2018  d:  Josephine Decker

The emotions you are having are not your own, they are someone else’s.  You are not the cat — you are inside the cat.

―opening line spoken in a blur

This is a workshop film, developed out of innumerable improvisational rehearsals, most leading nowhere, but at some point something clicked.  Revitalizing the outdated mode of Living Theater, apparently drawing the lines of what appears to be a Redux version of Rivette’s Out 1 and Jacques Rivette R.I.P.  (1971), a mammoth 775-minute epic work that evolves out of theatrical rehearsals, never really preparing for the staging of a live performance, but simply putting in the work to examine one’s commitment to process, where theory supersedes reality, which takes a backseat in this film.  Instead this entire film takes place between the lines, real or imagined, exploring what’s taking place inside one’s head, enamored with the idea of creation itself, with ideas spewing out of a vacuum of nothingness, drawing upon personal experience, encouraging people to reach deep within, then overpraising the outcome, pleased with the theatricality of the moment, offering rewards for the improvisational effort, though not necessarily for any meaningful breakthrough that connects with the audience.  Instead it’s a series of moments, each broken down into collaborative improvisational workshops that highlight and accentuate the personalized nature of what they are doing, drawing attention to the creative process, but not necessarily leading us anywhere.  It’s a unique form of theatrical experimentation, where the courage of conviction is impressive, though it’s extremely limited in terms of having an overall impact.  Instead it builds a stream-of-conscious collective that is constantly changing, yet evaluated and reflected upon throughout, where the audience is intrinsically engaged, even if they don’t know how.  While Rivette throws a narrative bone to the audience, using a clever board game whodunit style mentality, offering clues with accompanying detective intrigue throughout, Decker (a performance artist turned filmmaker) refuses to use any compromise measures, remaining narrative free, allowing free association techniques to weave their way through the entire film, including dramatic mood swings and more than a few queasy moments, creating a cinema of discomfort, challenging the audience to see through a maze of illusion, only occasionally offered strands of connecting tissue.  Something of a head trip, people are continually placed outside their comfort zones, including the audience, but most especially the central characters who are urged to expose their innermost insecurities and fears, creating a dark palette, often overshadowed by a bold sound design that brilliantly counters what we see onscreen, offering a counterpoint, with brash percussive music composed by Caroline Shaw that includes choral music, where the film largely accumulates multiple layers of an untold story, arguably the best edited film of the year, casting a web of intrigue, emphasizing the confusion and personal horrors associated with things we feel but cannot see.      

Helena Howard is Madeleine, a precocious biracial teenager who may suffer serious mental health issues, stressed out by her overprotective relationship with her mother Regina (Miranda July), causing huge mood swings of depression and futility, feeling like a caged bird that can never fly, frustrated at home, disconnected at school, hoping to find her voice through an experimental and culturally diverse theatrical troupe led by an ambitious and very pregnant white director, Evangeline (Molly Parker), who attempts to establish some degree of order through the inflicted group chaos, acting out troubled feelings as a kind of group therapy, using facial masks to hide their identity, finding situations that don’t fit, like animals that can’t speak, or people in distress that can’t escape, creating a kind of unified dance choreography, each mirroring the other.  But where this all leads is unclear, as Evangeline nurtures Madeleine while continually changing her mind about how she envisions their mission, often baffling her own troupe, who work hard establishing character, only to throw it all away for something as yet unknown.  The continuing thread throughout it all is Madeleine, the newest and youngest member, who seems to have the most emotionally invested, constantly encouraged by Evangeline, like a teacher’s pet, who is clearly a substitute for her own mother, yet places her in dangerous and potentially unhealthy situations.  What isn’t clear is how much if this is imagined and how much is real, recalling Spike Jonze’ Being John Malkovich (1999), as the entire film could be taking place inside the mind of a distressed teenager, who is acting out her innermost feelings in imaginary ways, perhaps inventing an alternate reality, but filled with real instead of imaginary people, always placed in difficult situations, like a labyrinth, where she’s forced to find her way out.  What’s real in the film are the internal feelings causing the distress, something most can easily relate to.  How it’s handled, on the other hand, is starkly unique, delving into a deeply disturbing interior world, then offering untried art therapy solutions that may or may not be beneficial, much like evaluating a Montessori school against a public school, as one rigidly relies upon grades and test scores, while the other accentuates a more free-form individualized approach.  Like falling into the fever dream of a rabbit hole, this impressionistic mosaic of a fractured psychology describes the many levels of artistic intent, including anxiety and self-doubt, yet underneath is a fierce independent spirit yearning for expression, inhibited and throttled somewhere along the way, growing distorted and disfigured, even grotesque, searching for a missing ingredient or healing path that wipes all obstacles out of the way, becoming a swirling symphony of voices all searching for the purity of that one grace note, like a cleansing breath, an uncluttered thought, or a moment of clarity. 

Her mother shows concerns that Madeleine’s out of control, off her medication, becoming more and more unreachable, prone to making poor decisions, like an instance when she invites a few young boys into the basement to watch porn movies.  All of this suggests she’s crying out for attention, growing ever more desperate, resorting to any means necessary, where the theatrical troupe becomes a means to express the inexpressible, becoming a surreal, nightmarish adventure, much like Bergman’s HOUR OF THE WOLF (1968), which is itself a struggle for personal sanity, using dreams that rise to the surface in an examination of the creative forces within.  In Madeleine’s eyes, her mother, and perhaps all authority figures, are synonymous with the overcontrolling Nurse Ratched from Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a cruel, overbearing, and nitpicking force of cruel dehumanization, eventually taking radical measures to drive her out.  This power play may all be taking place in the deep recesses of Madeleine’s mind during a recent hospital visit to the psych ward, perhaps sedated into a state of powerlessness, where the film is a recreation of her mixed emotions, with layer upon layer of competing forces all fighting for expression.  What’s perhaps most surprising is Evangeline’s interest into delving into Madeleine’s admittedly damaged personal life, making that the feature attraction of the entire troupe, which feels not just personally invasive, but more like theft, delving into racial appropriation while calling it a “group” collaboration.  Yet she is thrust into the spotlight, even when it appears unhealthy to do so, where the expression of pain and disappointment is often written all over Madeleine’s face, plunged into extreme depths of emotion, from the giddiness of her first kiss to being a loner, an outcast, a primal screamer, cruelly forced to share the limelight with her own mother, immediately overshadowed by her unwelcome presence, inappropriately invited to join the theater group by Evangeline, catapulting into centerstage status, becoming the new class darling, pitting mother against daughter, forcing Madeleine to take extreme measures to claw her way back into favor.  Along the way it’s a bumpy road, a glimpse into personal crisis mode, where survival instincts kick in, yet we sense an acute vulnerability, especially her degree of loneliness and isolation, often struggling with identity and self-esteem, and fighting to overcome overwhelming odds.  Like Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980), this unflinching autobiographical journey may initially be misunderstood, though it’s likely to be considered among the more creative efforts in recent memory, a bold declaration of fierce independence, which feels like fighting your way out of a dream.  The film is daring and unconventional to be sure, but to what end?  In some ways it’s reminiscent of Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color (2013), in particular the mindboggling narrative incoherence, relying upon a stream of impressionistic imagery mixed with a completely mysterious sound design, producing something obtuse and phantasmagorical, which may make sense to a few, who will love it, while the rest will simply tune it out as indecipherable.  Not sure where this will end up, as it’s received much critical acclaim, but viewers are sure to be baffled by what it’s all about.