Samson, Delilah and Warwick Thorton

by John Villeneuve

Much like Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, Samson & Delilah proves to be an endurance test in misery due to poverty and marginalization. That is not to say that the journey is not worth taking. It is. The naturalistic presence of non-actors, Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson, root this movie in reality, and the assured, no-frills direction (Warwick Thorton, making his feature film debut) never wallows in excess or gimmicks. Obviously Australians are proud of this film (and they should be), for it is their submission to the Academy for Best Foreign Film.

The film opens in a dry, desert-like setting, populated with shacks and camp sites, where a community of aboriginals live a life in which even the bare necessities are a luxury. There are no schools, no services from the outside world, and presumably, no jobs. Extra money is made by old women who create paintings of extraordinary beauty, but who are exploited by wealthy city-dwelling art dealers. The paintings are produced by making an endless series of coloured dots, the repetition of which reflects the unchanging daily life of each inhabitant. Every morning a ragtag group of musicians bang out the same song on a porch, every morning people and stray dogs forage the barren land for food, hoping for a kangaroo, and every morning Samson wakes up to inhale petrol before carrying on with his day, riding in a wheelchair because he is too stoned to walk. The highlight of his waking life is seeing Delilah, a local girl who escapes her existence by listening to Spanish music, and taking care of her artist grandmother.

In essence, they are a banished people. So when Delilah’s grandmother dies (removing a vital economic resource from the town), Delilah is introduced to the cruelest of ironies. Blamed by the town’s folk for neglecting the grandmother, she is condemned as cursed, beaten, and banished from the community. Only Samson defends her. After shearing her hair off as a kind of self-imposed punishment, Delilah leaves with Samson, into a world not their own.

After some time, they find themselves living under an over-pass, deep in the city, befriended by a homeless man who’s greatest dream is a dwelling of his own. Samson’s addiction to petrol further complicates their situation. His brain is so crippled by his substance abuse that he doesn’t even notice when, one day, Delilah is kidnapped from the street while just feet behind him. However, unlike the biblical myth, it is Delilah who remains strong, with or without hair. It is because of her that they are able to survive hunger, extreme violence and racial indignity. There are no Sandra Bullocks poised to magically sweep in and save them.

What gives Samson & Delilah added power, is it’s non reliance on dialogue. The actors speak to each other, for the most part, with facial expressions. Director, Thorton, chose well when he picked these two young people. Half of the battle in achieving the depths of feeling and naturalism a film of this sort can accomplish is in its casting. And like recent films, Ballast and Frozen River, there is no excessive editing, or genre-confused cinematography, just straight-forward story-telling, and confidence in one’s themes. In fact, there is a moment in Samson & Delilah, dealing with violence, that a lesser director would have exploited. But Thorton doesn’t do this. He just shows us the aftermath, making the horror of what must have been more indelible. It is choices like this that makes one feel that we are in the presence of a great new director. And though it is his first film, it is still one of the years’ very best.

As far as its Oscar chances, I think they are scant. Remember that we are living in a time where the rich continue to get richer, and the poor, poorer. Hollywood eptomizes the rich elite. I don’t think that they are going to promote the need for an equitable distribution of resources and wealth. Nominating Precious, I feel, is as far as they will go. And they will probably counter-punch that recognition of Precious with a ludicrous nomination for The Blind Side’s star. For them to nominate Samson & Delilah would be a kind of recognition that things must change. My hunch, though, is that they like things just as they are.