Goldstone

Director Ivan Sen on the set with actress Jacki Weaver

GOLDSTONE            B+                  

Australia  (110 mi)  2016  ‘Scope  d:  Ivan Sen                      official site

Like the Tony Hillerman detective stories taking place on the Navajo Indian Reservation that show insight into what it means to be an Indian in the 21st century, several filmed by Chris Eyre, a Cheyenne-Arapaho Native American, including SKINWALKERS (2002) and A THIEF OF TIME (2004), with more than a few similarities to Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River (2017), this film offers an Indigenous perspective in the remote Australian outback, creating a clash of racial and cultural interests, featuring an oppressive film noir atmosphere that literally reeks with malice.  In a follow-up to his hugely successful earlier film MYSTERY ROAD (2013), Aaron Pederson returns as Indigenous detective Jay Swan who enters the murky waters of a land that has been compromised for well over a century, evidenced by sepia-toned archival photographs that open the film, which resemble similar American photographs of the first railroads being built across an open frontier, which included a mysterious Chinese presence that has all but been excluded from the history books.  Despite getting himself tossed into the pokey for swirling on the road and driving drunk, Swan’s introduction to local white cop Josh Waters (Alex Russell) is a contentious one, searching for a missing Chinese migrant girl, continually warned that he doesn’t belong there and that he should turn back around and head home.  Literally every single white person he meets offers this exact same advice, all of which suggest a small cabal of nefarious criminals and thieves.  With much of the land fenced and declared off-limits, containing extensive mining deposits, where dynamite blasts are a regular occurrence, Swan’s rented trailer out in the middle of nowhere is shot up by a greeting biker gang party that officially sends the message that he’s not wanted around there.  To his credit, Swan is not deterred, a man of few words, in the Eastwood mode, with Josh helping him relocate to an even more isolated cabin.  Viewers know things will get more interesting once vehicles start taking the dirt roads, which are offshoots of the more traveled paved roads, which stretch for miles in a straight line, obstructed by absolutely nothing along the way.  Sen, an Indigenous director who also writes, shoots, and edits his films, while also writing the music, likes to use aerial shots that reveal the extent of the emptiness in the vast landscapes that lead to nowhere, where the clearly visible geometric straight lines of the roads imposed by the whites is a sign of cultural oppression, as it expresses an artificial structure imposed on nature.   

Swan is officially introduced to several town notables, including Johnny (David Wenham), the Furnace Creek Mine boss, who is attempting to buy, or more likely steal, huge parcels of Aboriginal land for an unspecified development project, Tommy (Tommy Lewis), the corrupt head of the Aboriginal Land Council, and then, of course, there’s that lethal smile from the town mayor, Maureen (Jacki Weaver), easily the most diabolical character in the film, all of whom make nice little speeches about how they like the way things are in these parts and they don’t need any outsiders stirring up the pot.  Swan has apparently heard and seen all this before, recognizing signs of government authorities trampling on the rights of Indigenous people, yet he’s a world weary character with a mind of his own, which includes wandering into the restricted areas where he sees a transport plane bringing a handful of Asian girls to the vicinity, signs of sex trafficking, but as Josh quickly reminds him, he has no proof.  Nonetheless, viewers see the girl’s passports taken away, as each one is paying off a family debt, essentially becoming prostitutes for the mining workers, where they are treated much like they have been for the past hundred years.  There are quirky developments that make this film interesting, as there’s a woman in a pink trailer with a neon sign that advertises Pinky’s, where she’s basically a woman for hire, but shows a cunning spirit that suggests an entrepreneurial mindset, as she’s pretty much left to operate on her own with no hassles from the police.  This little detour doesn’t get Swan any closer to his missing person, but it does offer a glimpse into Swan’s distressing past and gives him a lay of the landscape, as everybody in this town is paid off and gets a cut of the action, which allows them free access to do as they please.  Another detour leads him to Jimmy, David Gulpilil from Walkabout (1971), RABBIT-PROOF FENCE (2002), and THE TRACKER (2002), now affectionately described as the “old man,” an Aboriginal elder, a keeper of the spirits, who actually knew Swan’s father, as he was part of the “Stolen Generation,” where as many as 100,000 Aboriginal kids were abducted from their families and raised as whites.  Jimmy takes him on an exploration of a sacred site, a spectacularly tranquil creek that wanders through a breathtakingly beautiful rock formation that contains Aboriginal rock paintings, suggesting a timelessness, literally worlds apart from the corruption and utter desolation surrounding it.  It’s Jimmy’s daughter Maria (Ursula Yovich) who reminds Swan, “This land, you belong to it.” 

The corruption of the region represents the colonialist mentality from the days of old, which has continued into the present, as no force on earth has stopped it.  Sen approaches the subject with an almost anthropological point of view, where the present is an extension of the past, with each character representing an historical cultural interest, where the pieces may need to be realigned.  When things don’t go the way the scheming developers planned, they resort to murderous plots and ruthless dealmaking, eradicating any obstacles that stand in the way, all of which have a smell of stench attached to them, but in this remote and underpopulated area, that has never stopped them before.  What changes is Josh, as he has a sudden shift of social consciousness and civic responsibility, developing an interest in the affairs of others, including Michelle Davidson as Mei, one of the sex workers, piqued by their obvious unwillingness to talk to him, suggesting there’s plenty more underneath the surface that he’s never bothered to consider, always looking the other way as a matter of convenience.  He never wanted to be the guy to interfere or rock the boat, and was comfortable with the laissez faire idea of live and let live.  After a series of curious inquiries about her situation, Mei, however, stops him dead in his tracks by confronting him with the ultimate question:  “If you find the truth, what will you do with it?”  This realignment of the stars eventually brings the two law enforcement officers together, reluctantly at first, but both are the only ones with an interest in uncovering the truth, though Swan’s had his finger on the pulse from the outset.  It’s the latecomer that swings the balance of power, a multi-racial task force to eradicate the evil elements, which ends up in protracted gun battles that are carefully choreographed and staged, including the infamous biker gang and other hired thugs protecting the capitalistic interests of the unscrupulous mining company and developers, who view the land as essentially worthless except for the money it can produce.  Perhaps these two guys should have joined forces at the outset, as racial stigmas and common misperceptions (not to mention payoffs) may have played into that, while nobody likes to hear someone else tell them what to do, but mutual interests finally turn the tide, becoming a rousing modern western in contemporary times.  Extremely successful in winning Australian Film Critics Association Awards, with Sen winning best director and best cinematography, Pederson winning best actor, while Weaver won best supporting actress, The Guardian (The 10 best Australian films of 2016 | Film | The Guardian) called it the best Australian film of the year.               

Walkabout

WALKABOUT             A                 

Great Britain  (100 mi)  1971  d:  Nicolas Roeg

From start to finish, this isn’t really like anything else, although Peter Weir’s gorgeously abstract later work Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) comes to mind, as this is one of the best films ever made that blends together two different cultures so well, largely because it makes no attempts to explain either one, but simply allows them to naturally coexist without an ounce of sentimentality or pretense.  Beautifully shot by the director himself, showing a fascinating use of editing, this is a stunning work not only in how well crafted it appears, but by the subtle ways it co-mingles and heightens the differences between cultures, offsetting one against the other as a way of better understanding each one.  Opening in an upper class school in Sydney, where all the students wear the same uniforms, the camera veers around a corner of a building and we’re suddenly jettisoned into the Australian outback, a flat horizon for as far as the eye can see.  A family picnic between a father and his two children goes terribly awry when he inexplicably starts shooting at them.  After dousing his car with gasoline and setting it on fire he shoots himself in the head, leaving both to fend for themselves out in the middle of nowhere.  Jenny Agutter is the prim and proper well behaved 15-year old sister to Luc Roeg, the director's son, who plays her playful and inquisitive 5-year old brother.  Showing little emotion, without explaining what happened, the two of them start walking into the distance, walking for several days under a blazing hot sun.  Just when it looks like they may die lost and alone, they discover a small oasis of a water hole under a single fruit tree, which they make their home for awhile.  During the night, animals eat all the fruit and the water disappears, leaving them startled, but they stay, hoping the water will come back.  What makes these sequences interesting are the Terrence Malick directoral flourishes showing creatures that live naturally in this habitat, how strangely different they appear than these properly dressed city children who obviously live elsewhere.  What makes this especially interesting is that WALKABOUT was made two years before Malick’s first film.  Also interesting is the heightened sound design imagining what animals in mass must sound like to one another, as it’s a cacophony of what sounds to humans like noise, unable to distinguish between the sounds.  This is quite a contrast to the swelling, oversaturated strings by John Barry who wrote much of the music for James Bond films, or the introductory sounds of a didgeridoo playing while swarms of pedestrians make their way through the busy streets of Sydney.   

Out of nowhere, a young Aborigine boy is seen coming over the hill, a 16-year old boy who is out on his walkabout, a tribal custom where he must learn to live off the land for months by himself to prove that he is worthy to enter adulthood and become a man.  This boy (a young David Gulpilil) carrying two spears is quite capable of finding prey every day, starting a fire, finding water, and fending for himself, though he continually speaks in his own native tongue which is never translated, and never understood by the girl, while the young boy learns to use gestures and hand signals to communicate with him.  Mostly, the duration of the film is wordless and what follows plays out through images alone where we lose all track of time, which is rather stunning in its conception, beautifully integrating landscapes with the open ended possibilities of these young lives, where we are lured into this symbiotic coexistence between life and death, even when there are aspects we may not fully comprehend.  This puts the audience in a similar mindset as these kids onscreen.  Naturally, they follow where the Aborigine kid leads them as he feeds them every day, and even without communicating, they become friends.  Agutter continues to maintain her proper distance, though it’s impossible for her not to notice the young man is wearing only a loin cloth, while the young boy takes to the older one like a brother.  But there are moments where we see Agutter swimming alone completely naked in an idyllic natural setting, where it would be hard for the Aborigine boy not to notice how in the heat of the day, she wears less and less clothing as time goes on.  Without ever speaking, their relationship is vividly intense even from afar. 

As he leads them back to white civilization, the balance of nature begins to change.  There’s a strange scene where they pass by an outpost where a white couple on their ranch are mixing with a group of Aborigines making cheap art objects for sale, showing absolutely no interest for one another’s ways, where it’s a completely exploitative relationship, while this “Tarzan and Jane” couple with a young chimp for a kid tagging along has a bold curiosity and a much more sincere form of respecting one another.  In an even stranger scene, like something out of Lina Wertmüller’s SWEPT AWAY (1974, also not yet made), a group of scientists are in the outback with weather balloons, where the men are leering at one of the scientists who is an attractive woman, staring under her skirt when she shifts her legs, or coming close to talk to her in order to get a better close up view of her exposed cleavage, more overt signs of nonverbal sexual signals.  When our travelers discover an abandoned ranch house next to a paved road, civilization takes an interesting turn, as our couple suddenly have time for one another, but she’s overtly nervous, not yet ready to abandon her prudish yet dignified upbringing.  This is intermingled with a stunning sequence of white hunters in a jeep shooting the wild game for sport and leaving their carcasses behind to uselessly rot under the hot sun, actions witnessed by the Aborigine boy who lays down in a dream of animal bones to purify himself from this callousness.  But this is an ominous sign of natural discord, where Agutter is equally clueless about Aborigine customs, including a heartbreaking mating dance ritual that she fails to respond to, with disastrous consequences.  What follows is a beautiful segway of emotional distance and extreme longing, where a mature audience may be tempted to read signs into this relationship more than the young participants themselves, who remain aloof and don’t yet know how their lives will be forever imprinted by this time they spend together.  This is hardly an idyllic or idealized portrait, but instead remains an elusive and mysterious journey where the three characters are endlessly fascinating, unintended spokespersons or ambassadors for their respective cultures, leaving behind an astonishing blend of sumptuous beauty and haunting devastation, a rare glimpse into our own future of innocence and paradise lost.