I felt this film like a kick in the guts, and as I gasped for breath, the film embraced me with the restorative power of earth and human kindness. It might be going too far, however, to claim that the film shows the redemptive power of love, or to suggest that the absence of dialogue heralds a new and visual cinematic style.
I want to suggest that the absence of dialogue is, in this case, part of the work of art that contributes to portrayal of a world in which (after Spivak) those who are subordinated cannot speak.
As provoking as this film is, the outcome of a work of art is unpredictable and uncontrollable. It is not a documentary. A low budget film, short on actors. This world has no peers for the teenage protagonists. They are alone and outside, even in their own community. Both are beaten and cast out. The music played by Samson's brothers is played by wrote, without a spark. Delilah's role is to care for her grandmother. The daily routine passes, sunrise after sunset, suggesting more than literal time passes.
Take some of the visual imagery. The earth is lived in. The opening shot features the curtain lilting in the breeze, the image chillingly alters when Samson sits up to sniff solvents. Samson bathes in the sandy creek bed, his art is to kill a kangaroo, a cute travel documentary style shot of the animal is followed by his effortless art in killing it for food. The canvas on which Delilah and her grandmother paint is a part of daily life, to sit on, stand on, sleep on. The value of art in other hands cannot be comprehended or, despite a price tag, measured. Artists have always been outsiders, exploited.
Does the film show courtship or freeloading? Delilah starts as carer, with a purpose, loses that purpose and acquiesces, and only regains her purpose as carer at the end. The boy walks on in a daze while, pantomime-like, she is dragged off and raped, or struck by a car, in full view of the audience but behind his back. Her apparent return from the dead provides him with salvation, but not necessarily redemption. The curious Christian imagery – the church turns her away (or she forsakes the church), yet she places a cross of twigs inside the rough stockman's hut in the closing sequence. Indeed the curious European imagery of the closing sequence leaves you wondering.
The image of the first stone hitting her back still strikes – you know that must have hurt. The cutting of her hair, the sound of the serrated knife – you don't need to know the customs (or indeed if there is a custom or a mythic reference) to feel what it means. The sequence at the end when she bathes him in the stock trough, white soap on his black skin, the first (maybe second) time she has touched him in the entire film. The rifle crack when she shoots a kangaroo for food. She has rediscovered the power of having a purpose, not the power of love.
I want to suggest that the absence of dialogue is, in this case, part of the work of art that contributes to portrayal of a world in which (after Spivak) those who are subordinated cannot speak.
As provoking as this film is, the outcome of a work of art is unpredictable and uncontrollable. It is not a documentary. A low budget film, short on actors. This world has no peers for the teenage protagonists. They are alone and outside, even in their own community. Both are beaten and cast out. The music played by Samson's brothers is played by wrote, without a spark. Delilah's role is to care for her grandmother. The daily routine passes, sunrise after sunset, suggesting more than literal time passes.
Take some of the visual imagery. The earth is lived in. The opening shot features the curtain lilting in the breeze, the image chillingly alters when Samson sits up to sniff solvents. Samson bathes in the sandy creek bed, his art is to kill a kangaroo, a cute travel documentary style shot of the animal is followed by his effortless art in killing it for food. The canvas on which Delilah and her grandmother paint is a part of daily life, to sit on, stand on, sleep on. The value of art in other hands cannot be comprehended or, despite a price tag, measured. Artists have always been outsiders, exploited.
Does the film show courtship or freeloading? Delilah starts as carer, with a purpose, loses that purpose and acquiesces, and only regains her purpose as carer at the end. The boy walks on in a daze while, pantomime-like, she is dragged off and raped, or struck by a car, in full view of the audience but behind his back. Her apparent return from the dead provides him with salvation, but not necessarily redemption. The curious Christian imagery – the church turns her away (or she forsakes the church), yet she places a cross of twigs inside the rough stockman's hut in the closing sequence. Indeed the curious European imagery of the closing sequence leaves you wondering.
The image of the first stone hitting her back still strikes – you know that must have hurt. The cutting of her hair, the sound of the serrated knife – you don't need to know the customs (or indeed if there is a custom or a mythic reference) to feel what it means. The sequence at the end when she bathes him in the stock trough, white soap on his black skin, the first (maybe second) time she has touched him in the entire film. The rifle crack when she shoots a kangaroo for food. She has rediscovered the power of having a purpose, not the power of love.