Sweet Coun­try

War­wick Thorn­ton was the first Indige­nous Aus­tralian to win the Cannes Caméra d’Or, with his debut fea­ture Sam­son and Delilah in 2009. He was the first Abo­rig­i­nal man to direct a film select­ed for com­pe­ti­tion at the Venice Bien­nale, where Sweet Coun­try won the Spe­cial Jury Prize and Venice Critic’s Award in 2017. Those tid­bits may seem triv­ial. But giv­en Australia’s his­tor­i­cal, sys­temic and con­tin­ued oppres­sion of its First Nations peo­ples, the sig­nif­i­cance is epic – as is this film.

Set in Alice Springs dur­ing the 1920s and inspired by real events, Sweet Coun­try charts the sto­ry of Indige­nous stock­man Sam (Hamil­ton Mor­ris), who shoots sta­tion own­er, drunk­ard and abuser Har­ry March (Ewen Leslie). When Sam and his wife Lizzie (Natas­sia Gorey-Furber) flee, they’re pur­sued across the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry by Sergeant Fletch­er (Bryan Brown) and his posse. Among the crew is god­ly neigh­bour Fred Smith (Sam Neill) and shady neigh­bour Mick Kennedy (Thomas M Wright), lead by Mick’s ​‘black stock’ track­er Archie (Gib­son John).

This sun­burnt saga of jus­tice, endurance and tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty is Thornton’s first fea­ture dra­ma since his debut. The pro­lif­ic film­mak­er has been busy as a doc­u­men­tar­i­an and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er. Cast­ing sev­er­al fledg­ling actors, Thorn­ton draws a soft, empath­ic per­for­mance from Gorey-Furber in her screen debut. Mor­ris’ sense of pathos is sim­i­lar­ly mov­ing, and he holds his own oppo­site vet­er­ans such as Neill and Brown.

With Thorn­ton him­self behind the cam­era, the film cuts to the heart of iso­la­tion and dis­place­ment. Trekking across the fron­tier, the char­ac­ters often resem­ble lit­tle plas­tic fig­ures, sol­dier­ing into the dis­tance. They march toward the mirage of a lucky country.

Much has been said and writ­ten of out­back Australia’s ​‘harsh beau­ty’ and ​‘arid ter­ror’. Most of it reeks of impe­ri­al­ism. It’s hard, per­haps impos­si­ble, to describe the grav­i­ty of land to which you don’t have 60,000 years worth of emo­tion­al con­nec­tion. But as Brown’s Sergeant Fletch­er remarks, ​“There’s some sweet coun­try out here.” He speaks to the weath­ered cliffs, lush water­holes, stark plains and infi­nite sky.

Sweet Coun­try show­cas­es this nat­ur­al splen­dour (that which earned the Ter­ri­to­ry 2.6 bil­lion tourist dol­lars in 2016). It’s notable that, dur­ing the era in which the sto­ry is set, Indige­nous Aus­tralians were – by law – classed among this flo­ra and fau­na. Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple weren’t recog­nised as ​‘peo­ple’ until 1967.

The con­se­quences of white inva­sion endure in present day Aus­tralia. Sweet Coun­try drama­tis­es an his­tor­i­cal (though not his­toric) anec­dote, and it’s infused with trag­ic famil­iar­i­ty. If it weren’t for Australia’s restric­tive firearm leg­is­la­tion, the inci­dents depict­ed here could still lurk with­in the realms of pos­si­bil­i­ty. The atti­tude of char­ac­ters like Har­ry March and Mick Kennedy def­i­nite­ly ring true. For­tu­nate­ly, film­mak­ers like Thorn­ton, Laris­sa Behrendt, Stephen Page and Tracey Mof­fatt are mak­ing tracks toward decolonis­ing Aus­tralian cinema.

This review was writ­ten on the stolen lands of the Kau­r­na peo­ple of the Ade­laide Plains. I acknowl­edge their ongo­ing rela­tion­ship to the land and pay my respects to Kau­r­na Elders – and to all Abo­rig­i­nal and Tor­res Strait Islander peo­ple – past and present. Sov­er­eign­ty was nev­er ceded.