[ad_1]
By Marian Wilhelm
Innsbruck – The law was the last to come to the border and was the first to be broken. The director Warwick Thornton uses this expression to describe the supposed boundary of the civilization that British colonialists have drawn to their home country, Australia. "Sweet Country" deals with this clbadic western theme of law and arbitrariness. As an Australian western, it is based on the stories of the grandfather of one of the two writers. One of them was the aboriginal Wilaberta Jack, who was in court in the 1920s for the murder of a white settler. His alter ego Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris) is now the main character of "Sweet Country".
In the Northern Territory, he works for white preacher Fred (Sam Neill). Contrary to the prevailing racism of the time, for him "all are equal in the eyes of God".
With a World War II veteran (Ewen Leslie), open racism and severe trauma hang in the nearby farm. Sam's wife is raped by the newcomer who has severely abused the teenager Philomac. The situation intensifies: Sam shoots the white man in self defense. Without trust in the judicial system, he accompanies his wife (Natbadia Gorey-Furber) in the outback. The obsessed sheriff Fletcher (Bryan Brown) follows them as a hunter with the help of a native tracker and Sam's boss who wants to protect him. A pursuit of Westerners across the backcountry landscapes full of heat and dust begins and ends with a strong contrapuntal finale.
Director Thornton ("Samson and Delilah", 2009) does not trap himself in his second overloaded movie. It tells a time and its conditions and takes all its characters seriously. "The film should show that racism is not a simple and insignificant evil, but rather a systematic reality of the time."
Australian history is in "Sweet Country" the background of a living genre plot and negotiating genre. Thornton is a cameraman trained in pictures, from which to develop individual scenes. The images of the landscape impress as well as those of the faces: flooded with light, haggard and dusty as in the films of Sergio Leone. Warwick Thornton, Warwick Thornton, said, "When I was a kid, I watched a lot of clbadic American westerns – and I could not really identify with them. The Indians were always the bad guys. And I am an Indian, from an indigenous tribe – in a land that has been stolen. Then I discovered the other western. Films in which only foreigners knew a form of morality. These films have inspired me to see the potential of the genre to tell my story. "
Although the moral fronts in" Sweet Country "are fairly clear, Thornton does not play the role of a historical prosecutor as a director.He tells not only his story, but also from the point of view of Sams – and has recruited many artists from the Aboriginal tribes of the Arrernte around Alice Springs, about twins Trevon and Tremayne Doolan, who play the ill-treated Philomac
That Thornton meets all his characters at the level eyes characterizes "Sweet Country."
And when the sheriff arrives at a screenplay premise of a former Australian western improvised in a scene, the circle of love of the cinema gets farm
"Sweet Country" premiered last year at the Venice Film Festival and received the Special Jury Prize.
Source link
