Charlie's Country

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.

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.

This movie provides an insight into a world that is difficult for many people to see or understand. The film is beautifully shot, and the scenes and sounds of Australia are magical. The acting is first rate, and the script is very clever. Many of the things Charlie says to European Australians don't make much sense, but in this movie we are able to understand what Charlie is thinking when he says these things, and so we understand perfectly what is meant by every sentence he utters. The sense of longing, and of loneliness is palpable, as is the passionate love of country. The dance scenes with the children are uplifting and lovely. This is a moving and beautiful film, and a huge bridge for building understanding and empathy for a different and valuable culture.

Aboriginal Australian dancer David Gulpilil has appeared in a number of movies over the years: "Walkabout", "The Last Wave", "Crocodile Dundee" and "Rabbit-Proof Fence" are among his most famous roles. His performance as the titular character in Rolf de Heer's "Charlie's Country" might get remembered as his most important role. Gulpilil plays a Yolngu man living on a reservation with a collection of other Aborigines. Even though the army doesn't enter the area to mow people down, it's still impossible for the people on this reservation to live traditionally, as the police confiscate any possession deemed to be a weapon. So then Charlie decides to move out into the bush to live how he wants.

"Charlie's Country" will likely be the only Yolngu-language movie that you will ever see. In fact, it's the first movie that I've ever seen spoken mainly in an indigenous Australian language. The presence of words adopted from English is an ever present example of how much Australia's white population has impacted the indigenous population.

The movie should serve as a reminder of how Australia's indigenous population lives. Once the island's only inhabitants, they're now 1% of the country's population (but 40% of the prison population). Unemployment and alcoholism are rampant - Charlie even mentions how the white people introduced alcohol and ganja to the Aborigines - and it was only in the last decade that Australia's government offered an official apology for stealing Aboriginal children to get raised as servants for white people. Really good movie.

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