Film ReviewsCharlie's Country: you can go home again
June 5, 2015 Anchorage Press
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Charlie's Country was written by Rolf de Heer and David Gulpilil as a collaborative project. The Australian film is a work of introspection and quietude that moves in like the tide, slowly and gracefully lapping onto. David Gulpilil stars as Charlie, an Australian Aboriginal man who is facing the passage of time and feeling the burden of a colonial history. Viewers may know Gulpilil from his extensive career as an actor and dancer; American viewers may know him firstly from his role in the 1971 film Walkabout, in which he plays a young Aboriginal boy who, while on his "Walkabout" rite of passage, meets two young western children who are stranded. Although the movies are not related, in Charlie's Country, Gulpilil once again brings the qualities of resilience and truth he first brought to the screen at the age of 18.
Charlie's Country is a deceptively simple film, with very little action and a virtually absent soundtrack-but it's much more than that. Heer and Gulpilil have written a narrative that is as deeply rooted in Australian history as a baobab tree. Like many peoples who have been victims of colonialism, the contemporary history of Australian Aborigines is wrought with pain and injustice. However, at the core of this history is the persistence of culture and a way of life that is far more harmonious with nature than any concrete jungle could ever be. Charlie's Country is set in the Outback and against wondrous landscapes. The shots are wide and give nature time to display a rhythm set by moving trees and falling rain.
One of Charile's greatest attributes is that his story and character feel very immediate and present, perhaps because the story is about past, present and future at once. Viewers are not only drawn to Charlie, they are under his spell. Gulpilil's performance is beautifully executed. He acts with his whole body, so that even in his 60s, he still glides on the screen with a regal gait, and the scenes where he is sleeping are like slumber melting on the screen. The camera simply loves Gulpilil, and likewise the viewer will love Charlie. The intimate performance makes it so that Charlie and his experience are relatable to viewers without knowing anything about Charlie except that when he was young he danced during the inaugural festivities at the Sydney Opera House, and before the Queen of England herself.
Charlie's Country addresses issues faced by indigenous peoples and others disenfranchised and subsequently powerless to fight oppressive and foreign systems that are forced on them. In the play The Tempest, Shakespeare developed the character of Caliban, a "savage" who is under the control of Prospero, the Duke of Milan. Caliban is a crude depiction of the newly discovered-by-Europeans world west of Greenwich. Caliban, while perceived as a savage, is fully aware of the social conditions and therefore defies his oppressor when he says, "You taught me language; and my profit on't is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you for learning me your language!" There is an undercurrent of this sentiment in Charlie as he is displaced from his own home, loses his way in the city, and those things he has a right to are taken away by Western laws and regulations. And, who can blame him when he is the product of a history that included tragedies like the period known as the Stolen Generation, during which the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent were removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State governments. The removals occurred from 1909 until 1969 or 70. It wasn't until 2008 that the Australian Prime Minister and the government officially apologized for the "Stolen Generation" resulting in Australia's National Sorry Day. Charlie's Country's reminds viewers that healing is an ongoing process and requires dealing with and changing serious social inequities and conditions. Charlie's journey to find home defies the idea that one can't go home again, because home has never left him.
Charlie's Country shows at Bear Tooth on Monday, June 8. For more information visit beartooththeatre.net.
Charlie's Country is a deceptively simple film, with very little action and a virtually absent soundtrack-but it's much more than that. Heer and Gulpilil have written a narrative that is as deeply rooted in Australian history as a baobab tree. Like many peoples who have been victims of colonialism, the contemporary history of Australian Aborigines is wrought with pain and injustice. However, at the core of this history is the persistence of culture and a way of life that is far more harmonious with nature than any concrete jungle could ever be. Charlie's Country is set in the Outback and against wondrous landscapes. The shots are wide and give nature time to display a rhythm set by moving trees and falling rain.
One of Charile's greatest attributes is that his story and character feel very immediate and present, perhaps because the story is about past, present and future at once. Viewers are not only drawn to Charlie, they are under his spell. Gulpilil's performance is beautifully executed. He acts with his whole body, so that even in his 60s, he still glides on the screen with a regal gait, and the scenes where he is sleeping are like slumber melting on the screen. The camera simply loves Gulpilil, and likewise the viewer will love Charlie. The intimate performance makes it so that Charlie and his experience are relatable to viewers without knowing anything about Charlie except that when he was young he danced during the inaugural festivities at the Sydney Opera House, and before the Queen of England herself.
Charlie's Country addresses issues faced by indigenous peoples and others disenfranchised and subsequently powerless to fight oppressive and foreign systems that are forced on them. In the play The Tempest, Shakespeare developed the character of Caliban, a "savage" who is under the control of Prospero, the Duke of Milan. Caliban is a crude depiction of the newly discovered-by-Europeans world west of Greenwich. Caliban, while perceived as a savage, is fully aware of the social conditions and therefore defies his oppressor when he says, "You taught me language; and my profit on't is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you for learning me your language!" There is an undercurrent of this sentiment in Charlie as he is displaced from his own home, loses his way in the city, and those things he has a right to are taken away by Western laws and regulations. And, who can blame him when he is the product of a history that included tragedies like the period known as the Stolen Generation, during which the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent were removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State governments. The removals occurred from 1909 until 1969 or 70. It wasn't until 2008 that the Australian Prime Minister and the government officially apologized for the "Stolen Generation" resulting in Australia's National Sorry Day. Charlie's Country's reminds viewers that healing is an ongoing process and requires dealing with and changing serious social inequities and conditions. Charlie's journey to find home defies the idea that one can't go home again, because home has never left him.
Charlie's Country shows at Bear Tooth on Monday, June 8. For more information visit beartooththeatre.net.