Samson & Delilah

This movie is one that demands something from the movie goer. It needs to grow on you slowly. The pace is slow and if the audience is patient and prepared to give something back to the film it will affect you. I found it repetitive at first but rather than switching off I stayed with it and was glad I did. The acting is excellent. It is not a movie for the feint hearted and it is depressing. It should be. It is a film about hopelessness. Its hard to like Samson yet there are moments he smiles and your heart goes out to him. Della is superb as is the old woman and the drunken man who lets them share his home. Films like this should be made as there is an honesty you rarely see, the film is not dogged by political correctness. There is a danger people will not feel compassion for the characters as they are not glamorous likable people. The more you allow the film to touch you and you open your heart and your mind you will feel great compassion and love.

Don't go by the fact, it's an Australian film made by a virtually unknown aboriginal writer-director-cinematographer Warwick Thornton on a shoestring budget with untrained first-time actors. "Samson and Delilah" is a movie Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog or Federico Fellini would have been proud of at the pinnacle of their glory. (And in the true Australian tradition, the next movie by Warwick Thornton may turn out to be a total dud – whatever happened to Stephan Elliott? – but I hope not.)

It's made in the austere style of minimalist emotions pioneered by Bresson in 1950s and 60s. There is no background music, other than a few recordings the two characters listen to on radio or tape; and hardly any dialogues (the two 14-year old aboriginal protagonists don't exchange a single word throughout the film).

Getting bored? Don't be. It's a profoundly touching and satisfying art film, the like of which we have not seen too many in the history of world cinema. It would easily be in my personal top-50 best movies of all times. However, if the best of Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog and Federico Fellini bore you, then please don't bother.

Samson and Delilah, for the most part, appears to play out like True Romance as directed by Abbas Kiarostami; a love story of sorts between two relatively down and out people slowly chugging along in their lives, and yet pertaining to whatever law exists, within a working community torn apart by squalor and down-trodden existences whom decide to high tail it out of there in an attempt to start over out in the wider world. It is to first time director Warwick Thornton's credit that he manoeuvres a story about two disparate youngsters of opposing genders down a path that more-so resembles something such as Malick's Badlands than something in the vein of True Romance; Samson and Delilah a really rather wonderfully executed coming of age piece set amidst the lower echelons of Australia's indigenous community, a political parable linked to Australia's indigenous communities' 'place' in Australian society and a rather sweet, underplayed love story with ample attention to the duality those therein share.

The film begins with one half of the titular duo waking up on this, another hot; lazy; sluggish morning in dusty Outback Australia. We wake up into the film with him, a young boy named Samson, played by Rowan McNamara and here cutting rather-a dash as Lasith Malinga, whom lives alone with his brother in a small wooded house in a small street doubling up as an entire community. Samson enjoys sniffing motor oil, a batch of which he has tucked away in a plastic bottle enabling him to remove the lid once in a while so as to inhale a fix. In other areas of living, the man is positively Neanderthal; the drawing on walls calls to mind that of crude scribblings on caves one might have done millennias ago, his lack of speech going hand in hand with his ambling around from place to place – attempts at 'wooing' a female ending as we predict whilst the clubbing of a wild animal during a bout of Heaven-only-knows-what instills a crude, highly primitive sense about the guy. Upon waking up, he tries to steal a quick five minutes on his brother's guitar, a musical instrument requiring grace and precision, and he does so very badly before he is forced off it: dismissing those whom go on to strike up a good sound as a four-man-band.

Additionally awakening on this morning is Delilah, and additionally played by first-time actress Marissa Gibson; a character whom must care for her elderly grandmother, her last surviving relative and make sure to provide her with the correct medicine and such in what is a demonstration of precision and grace instilled into an activity which Delilah is able to execute. Delilah and her relative additionally spend their time creating neat mosaics on basic canvases so that they may be sold in a nearby town, activities again which require creativity and precision which it's established the man Delilah shares the title of the film with lacks. Samson and Delilah converge, once, outside of a store during this day; very little is said but much is implied through body language and suggestion, an early coming together a demonstration of the pair of them communicating through action and reaction which will go on to forge the essential characteristics of their bond.

In the evenings, music is again an item that arises; for Samson, the tuning into an FM radio as a DJ churns out popular music for anybody willing to send in a request is the order of proceedings; his lack of having a definitive taste and therefore having to feed off of what everybody else wish to hear prominent. Delilah, on the other hand, tunes into a very specified brand of music; a tape cassette of Latin American music which she enjoys by herself in the confines of an automobile on its tape player. These characters could not be any further apart in this sense, and yet opposites begin to attract; a final instance of binary opposition as the catalysts which push them together being the shooting of Delilah through hues of red as Thornton constructs an objectification of Samson around her gaze: his wiry shirtless dancing to blued out compositions having her come to feel what she previously did not.

The film mutates into the having of them leave the slum, a branching out into the wider world driven by two tragic instances that befalls either character; instances specifically linked to internal problems with whatever little family each of them has, a breaking up through whatever means or for whatever reason ultimately the item that pushes the disparate pair together. The leaving of the township for a homeless existence beneath a flyover bridge sees them maintain a solid partnership for the best part without ever actually saying anything; an unusual characteristic that will for some carrying with it problems more broadly linked to realism but in actuality, is probably some sort of sociological metaphor for the general marginalisation of Australia's indigenous people (that is to say, the literal taking away of their voices) by the state itself. Thornton strikes us as a competent director, his cine-literacy rendering this on screen silent romance one of which is executed with the sort of vigour imbued within, whilst most probably drawing inspiration from, something such as Chaplin's City Lights. Regardless of sources of inspiration, and more-over the mere labelling of it as "Kiarostami does Natural Born Killers by way of City Lights", the film is an exciting; enthralling debut from someone whose future work ought to be looked forward to with great anticipation.

A really good film showing the grim realities of Aboriginal life through the 'love-story' of Samson and Delilah.

What really impressed me with the film was the fact that both lead roles were played by amateurs. Both played their characters incredibly and (hopefully) have long and successful acting careers ahead of them.

Sure, there was little dialogue between them (Samson only says one word in the whole film) but to be honest as the film went on I grew to like this. Yes, you could argue that more dialogue would have developed their characters more, but by the end I had become comfortable with it and was glad that the director had taken this approach.

The cinematography is superb and the topic both harrowing and sad.

I scored the film an 8 because the last 10 minutes is basically romantic nonsense. Really the film should have finished at the car accident, but after a film that had so little light and positiveness then I can understand that it needed the solace that the 'romantic' ending gave it.

This is an uncanny film which shows a side to Australia most Australians would prefer not to know. First Time Director Thornton presents a series of small tragedies without preaching, moralising and mostly without words, in a similar way to Cronenberg's masterpiece Spider. He creates an uncomfortable atmosphere, which is confronting but wholly realistic.

The main characters rarely speak. Delilah speaks only in an aboriginal tongue. Samson says one word in the whole movie, and that is a laboured attempt to say his own name. Other characters speak English freely, creating a point of difference between Samson and Delilah and the world they encounter. It also alienates them further.

This film gives a snapshot of the effects of substance abuse, extreme poverty, the violence within aboriginal society as well as the violence directed at it and worse of all the general apathy of the white population to these issues. The acting is unpretentious, the soundtrack sparse and conversation is absent.

The tragedies experienced by aboriginal people have no simple solutions. The first step toward a solution is to be aware that there is a problem. This film does that in spades. The sparse non-verbal presentation makes the viewer have to work to interpret the images shown. In the process one may glean an intuitive understanding, which is often the role of art.

Highly recommended.