Charlie's Country

Australia's official submission into this year's Best Foreign Language category at the Academy Awards, famed director Rolf de Heer's raw, uncompromising and impressively beautiful film is easily the most accomplished and important tale to come from our shores in quite some time and acts as a very personal journey for one of our country's most recognisable actors, David Gulpilil.

To understand the power of Charlie's Country and the telling nature of its tale, one must look into how the film eventuated and what it harboured for Gulpilil in particular. Despite his success as an actor that started off in Nic Roeg's Walkabout in 1971, Gulpilil had found himself on hard times, the victim as sadly many indigenous people face in the country of alcohol abuse that saw him incarcerated in a federal penitentiary. Friends for many years after their collaborations in 2002's The Tracker and 2006's Ten Canoes (Australian film's worthy of being tracked down) de Heer visited Gulpilil in jail where the seeds of Charlies Country were formed when Gulpilil expressed a great desire to once more work with his friend and director. From there a story that was close to Gulpilil's heart began to be formed and it's where the quiet understated power of de Heer's work stems from.

With a mere look, or with the camera following his every move through the vast beauty of the Australian outback or the more scary surrounds of Darwin, Gulpilil commands the screen and de Heer controls this wonderfully, not at all afraid to let Gulpilil's face tell us all we need to know. In what is undoubtedly a match between the actor and the real man, Gulpilil inhabits this man Charlie with a grace and understanding as he struggles to come to grips with his mother country slowly but surely coming under more influence from the white man. This small scale story of one man's trials and tribulations masks a much larger overall problem Australia has at its core regarding the treatment of our indigenousness people and a failure to properly combine the old and the new without losing the connection to the land and customs that for thousands of years have been integral to the culture of these people. All these elements within Charlie's Country play out in such a manner that never becomes overbearing, for there is subtle humour here (water buffalo anyone?) and grace from all involved that gives Charlie's Country not only a heart but a recognisable humanity.

It shouldn't be surprising that Charlie's Country is a finely crafted and effective movie, for de Heer has long shown his ability to create memorably moving films and his previous collaborations with Gulpilil are some of the finest ever made in this country concerning indigenous culture. From Gulpilil's award worthy turn (which was rewarded with a Best Actor win at this year's Cannes Un Certain Regard festival), Graham Tardif's beautiful piano score and de Heers professional direction, this is Australian filmmaking and storytelling at its best and a moving portrait of modern day life in the harsh realities of the outback and the lives our indigenous people live in particular.

4 and a half hand crafted spears out of 5

At the heart of Charlie's Country, the third collaboration between Dutch-Australian director Rolf de Heer and his co-writer and famed aboriginal star David Gulpipil is an engaging and compelling performance from the latter filmed on location in the Australia's Northern Territory. Gulpipil, with his weathered features and charismatic presence is forever watchable, especially in the first half of the film, which is mainly located around "his country" on the peripheries of a remote community. It is here where we find him at the film's outset experiencing a kind of indigenous "mature life crisis".

Charlie is becoming increasingly unhappy with his position in the community. Fed up by the demands and expectations created by the continual "humbugging"of himself by extended family and community members, he finds he gets short shrift from government employees, when seeking assistance (in the form of a house mind you). He also feels his personal liberties are being infringed upon by laws and regulations he doesn't fully understand and certainly hasn't consented to, imposed by the mainstream white culture, which also fails to give him due credit for the services he provides in the form of requested tracking tasks and hunting advice. He decides to leave the community and go and live traditionally in his country by himself, but naturally things don't necessarily turn out as planned.

Gulpipil has said the story he wrote with de Heer is semi-biographical, being based on his experiences living in and around the filming locations, which by the way, are wonderfully captured through the lens of cinematographer Ian Jones. That may be so, but as one who has actually lived and worked in these same communities for a good part of my life, I found the continual depiction of stereotypical racist and near-racist behaviour by the white supporting characters both tiresome, factually incorrect and very much an indictment of lazy writing on the part of de Heer and Gulpipil, especially considering the story is well and truly set in contemporary Australia.

de Heer has a long tradition of featuring racist bullying policeman in his indigenous-focused films and he carries on the tradition in Charlie's Country, where we see the local police in Charlie's community, as well as in Darwin, the capital city, barely hiding their contempt for those of indigenous background. However completely disregarded is that the police force these days has a significant aboriginal component itself, especially notable in remote communities. Ludicrously, we even have one of the cops from Charlie's remote community, played by Luke Ford, magically pop up in Darwin hundreds of kilometres away, so he can violently arrest Charlie and reinforce again these aggressive racial undertones.

Similarly the derogatory language and behaviours displayed unilaterally by the doctors, judges and public servants (apart from a solitary female social worker) put the lie to any cultural awareness programs continually adopted and implemented by members of those professions and by and large valued by Australian society.

This is a movie which whilst imparting an important tale worthy of attention, utilises absolutely no finesse in many characterisations. There are no greys, no degrees of ambivalence. Every thing is unfortunately just black and white, where the white is seen as overbearingly oppressive and both uncaring and damaging of the black culture. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I love this film. First I loved 'The Tracker' because at last the indigenous man is not a victim or worse, a joke. Now comes Charlie's Country. To Australians the very word 'country'signifies the relationship of indigenous Australians to their country. To an international audience I wish to say this: to me a sign of true art is that there are moments of transcendence. Times when it is impossible to connect rational dots any more. Life flows. Then we awaken from this willing trance and watch superb film making happening, telling a real story, not some bullshit story but real, y' know people, my people. In this Rolf de Heer & David Gulpilil have created a play of universality, the essence of being human will be recognised by any viewer especially those who have experienced how devastatingly concrete the raw use of State power is upon an individual; let alone an individual from a totally different culture, a living culture. Welcome to the new world order. And gratitude to these two men who created this film.

Albeit I am bias toward Australian tales of it's indigenous mob. This move is a very well done story of an Aboriginal mans trials and tribulations of life in a white mans world. Well worth the watch!

Director Rolf de Heer who also created another classic aboriginal cultural issues flick, Ten Canoes 2006 plus other classic flicks, Bad Boy Bubby 1993 and Dance Me to My Song 1998 has created another gem in Charlie's Country.

Starring David Gulpilil who has been in other classic aboriginal cultural issues flicks, Walkabout 1971, Rabbit-Proof Fence 2002 and Dead Heart 1996 and other classic flicks, Mad Dog Morgan 1976, The Right Stuff 1983, Dark Age 1987 and The Proposition 2005.

Also starring Luke Ford who has been in other classic television series, Bikie Wars: Brothers in Arms 2012 and a series of Underbelly 2008-2013.

I enjoyed the realistic portrayal of day to day life.

If you enjoyed this as much as I did then check out other classic aboriginal cultural issues flicks, Mad Bastards 2010, Mystery Road 2013, Sweet Country 2017 and Toomelah 2011.