What can I say about Samson and Delilah? It’s bleak, depressing, gritty, tender, sweet and funny. With barely a word of dialogue spoken throughout you’d be forgiven for thinking it would struggle to pack any heavy emotional punches. Similarly, after reading the synopsis, it would be easy to dismiss it as “poverty porn”. Happily, both these assumptions are wrong.
Samson and Delilah could so easily have been another piece of vacuous avant-garde cinema were it not for the talent of its two leads. Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson say more with their faces than other actors do with a thousand words and their naturalness, coupled with the realism of the film, often make this feel like a documentary. Theirs is an unforgiving world of loneliness and social isolation. Yet buried within the poverty, exploitation, boredom, violence and drug abuse are flashes of humour and moments of real tenderness between the two that keep the film from over-indulging in the squalor and decay of Aboriginal culture. If all that sounds a bit schmaltzy rest assured that director Warwick Thornton doesn’t go the other way either, and often the happiness experienced by Samson, Delilah and viewer is bitter-sweet. Don’t miss this beautifully shot gem of a film.
Elsewhere: The Guardian | Germaine Greer: What a petrol-sniffing Aboriginal boy tells us about Australia today