Toomelah

As demonstrated with his first feature Beneath Clouds, Ivan Sen is an exceptional filmmaker and Toomelah is another illustration of how complex and entrancing a seemingly simple story of his telling can be.

Daniel, a quiet spoken Aboriginal boy is on a meandering quest that sees him ditching school, getting drawn into a stoush over a girl, sent on errands for mum to score a stick or show aunty (a silent returned-war-vet like, stolen generation victim) round town. His biggest test ultimately comes, however, when he wanders into the company of local drug-dealer, Linden.

When word of this gets around, his elders attempt intervention, but as their actions, with alcohol dependence (dad), drug-use (mum) shows, navigating the "right" path proves difficult. Rather than return to school, Daniel's involvement with Linden and co. evolves from silent but curious witness to informing, and eventually escalating, the turn of narrative events when ex-con, Bruce, returns to town and challenges Linden's local drug-distribution business.

What's immediately arresting about Toomelah, is that while it is Australian, set on an Aboriginal mission in northern NSW and in English, it is (necessarily) sub-titled and as such watching it, is as if watching a foreign film.

The young protagonist played by Daniel Connors is captivating on screen and continues in a long line of similarly extremely watchable child-led journeys (such as Edmund in Rossellini's Germany Year Zero and Hushpuppy in Beast of the Southern Wild) that all tackle with innocence lost. In the instance of Toomelah, informed by issues Daniel's elders, and those many other indigenous people, face: lost language, loss of place, substance abuse, incarceration; the hero's journey is navigating through these obstacles. As a result, the narrative is at times sad, dangerous, and penultimately tragic, but the film is hopeful upon conclusion and ultimately, for my money, a must watch.

Toomelah used to be a mission for aboriginal Australians. In the far north of the State of New South Wales, it was too far away to attract any attention from the state capital, Sydney, although it was right on the border of Queensland. Not until a community nurse resigned after exposing the abuse of children was any help offered, when the Australian government started an "intervention". Housing, sewerage and water supply were improved. To-day, the location of this film is still an aboriginal settlement. Its people are keen on education for their children, but substance abuse remains a problem.

Ivan Sen, who had been brought up here, walked the 15 Kilometres from the nearest town, Boggabilla. This is rich agricultural country, with cotton cropping. Sen's movie (yes, he does the script, the filming, the music) ignores the wealth of this sub-tropical demi-paradise. Poverty and neglect are apparent. Young Daniel carries the picture with very little to say. He is the observer, the cadet druggie. His father is alienated, devoted to methylated spirit. His mother tries half-heartedly to get him to go to school, but his disruptions force his expulsion. His Nan is his only consolation. He tries to relate to a visiting aunt, but she lives in the past. A violent episode, triggered by Daniel, brings resolution and redemption and hope.

This movie is well worth a look. The music is good. Sen is "handy" with the camera. I think perhaps that he could have used a tripod and a focus-puller. Sen edited the film himself. A few more seconds of cutting would improve it.

Toomelah is a movie but when I watched it it looked like it could have been a documentary about how Aboriginals live their lives in their ghetto or mission. The white men came, took away everything they had, a bit like with the Native Americans, and left them unemployed, uneducated, with drugs and alcohol as their only means of life. The acting isn't bad, with clearly people that live in those conditions in real life. The story is very simple and depressing, but a bit too slow to make it a good movie. Well at least, that's my opinion. It's not a documentary but I'm sure that if you would go to one of those camps this story would be close to accurate. No future, no hope, drugs and alcohol to get away from this deadly routine.

I watched this film as I lived in nearby Goondiwindi on the Queensland/NSW border during the 60's and thought it would be interesting to take a look at a place so near, yet so marginalized and isolated that it might just as well have existed in the farthermost reaches of Siberia. The film quietly and breathtakingly conveys a sense of the isolation and hopelessness of a forgotten section of society. Toomelah is now a former mission where the residents live in dilapidated trailers and squalor.

In the 60's the indigenous Australians did not have the vote, nor did they have Australian citizenship and the Aboriginal pay rate was considerably lower than that of the white male and even that of women. Even if one was working, the pay was so low that it condemned them to eking out the most basic existence. Nearly 200 years after Europeans arrived in Australia and displaced the indigenous people, they had not been fully assimilated and the government did not seem to know what to do about them, wishing that they would just go away. Most white Australians living in the cities, never met an Aboriginal and could not care less about them. Many did not even consider them human. The official policy had been to destroy their ancient hunter gatherer culture by splitting up families and sending the children off to mission schools far away to be taught English and the European life style. Former missions like Toomelah are what was left. By the time of the film, things had changed somewhat and the indigenous now have citizenship, but many still live in isolated communities like Toomelah.

The inhabitants of Toomelah exist day to day. That is all. They don't appear to have any work to go to and kill time in between going to jail by sitting around drinking, using drugs and feuding and fighting. Little Daniel already sees no future other than hanging out with gangs and fighting. His mother is a drunk and uses drugs, his father is a meth head and he is too disruptive at the school where they don't seem to be engaging much with the children. There really is no beginning or end to his story. No one comes riding in to save Daniel from a life of crime. The gang he takes up with end up in jail after a rival gets a severe beating watched by half the town who do nothing to intervene. We can hope that he goes back to school and stays straight, but that is not likely. I don't know what the answer is. Certainly isolating indigenous people in small communities off the beaten track and forgetting about them is not the answer.

There has probably been no greater culture clash than that of the indigenous people of Australia and the Europeans. The native south and central Americans south had organized societies with cities and agriculture. The natives of north America had some agriculture and a nomadic tribal existence, but the native Australians had a primitive nomadic hunter gatherer tribal culture based on what was available to them. They had no crops, no beasts of burden, no cattle, horses, fruit, and existed on foraging. Within two generations they had been displaced by European settlers introducing sheep, cattle, crops, building permanent structures and clearing the native people off the land so they could exploit it. The people of Toomelah are the descendants of the displaced and those who displaced them.

If you care about people from different cultures, this film will stay with you, especially if you ever wonder about what might happen to us if our culture was suddenly destroyed and we were left to fend for ourselves as best we could.

Very slow moving and boring. Story follows young aboriginal boy in deprived setting . Very hard to keep interest and gave up ! All characters lack interest and not easy to relate to . I would give this a miss and try a David Gupilil film .