Samson and Delilah
Directed by Warwick Thornton
Australia
By Helen Fylactou
Samson and Delilah is the love story of two teenage Aboriginals struggling to survive in and out of a Warlpiri community in the Northern Territory of Australia. Thornton manages to stay clear of the heavy-handed proselytizing that can burden social realism. He doesn’t make the characters in his film heroic and the film is not accusatory to the audience. The audience is meant to come to their own conclusions while Thornton artfully conveys the burgeoning effects of poverty, drugs, and exploitation on the indigenous communities of Australia.
The film opens with Samson (Rowan McNamara) waking up to the sound of his brother’s band. Samson sits up and reaches for the cup of gasoline that he keeps next to his bed. When Samson emerges from his bed, the audience is shown the community for the first time — a community with one general store, run-down homes, and red desert as far as the eye can see. In juxtaposition to Samson, Delilah’s (Marissa Gibson) morning rituals include waking her grandmother, Nana (Mitjili Gibson), and helping her with her medications.
Delilah spends the afternoon watching Nana create art pieces that are quickly collected by a man in exchange for a few dollars. Delilah admires her grandmother’s work, yet is dispirited by the man who is buying it. The appropriation of the Aboriginal community is a central theme throughout the film. As the film continues, Samson and Delilah leave their community and walk through the nearby city of Alice Springs, in which Delilah spots Nana’s artwork hanging in a trendy Native art gallery where the painting is selling for $22,000 and is labelled as “direct from the artist.” The film follows the teenagers through a succession of realistic struggles faced by the Aboriginal community, such as rape, abuse, drug addiction, and poverty.
One of the most profound images in the film is of a payphone ringing in the middle of this isolated community and no one bothering to pick it up. This image is introduced at the beginning of the film and later repeated when Delilah calls the phone hoping that someone will answer and help her and Samson. No one picks up the phone and the audience is haunted by this image and by the sound of the phone ringing. There is little dialogue throughout the film. Silence is used as an instrument to demonstrate that Aboriginal communities are being “silenced” and ignored in their continuous calls for help.
Warwick Thornton’s impressive debut connects the audience to the vulnerable pair without words and without obligation to make you comfortable. He relies heavily on a trust between himself and the intelligence of his, predominantly white, audience. The white Australians in the film are portrayed as ambivalent people who seem to be uninterested with what is unfolding in their own backyards, in their own country’s Aboriginal communities. Samson and Delilah is a thought-provoking and truly moving film that is guaranteed to be a festival favourite.
