Modern Love
The debut film from Australian director Warwick Thornton, Samson and Delilah – a road movie about two homeless teens trekking across the Northern Territory – has won many plaudits internationally, including the Camera D’or at Cannes and Best Film at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. The filmmaker describes it as “Romeo and Juliet but set in an Aboriginal community.”
Tara Brady, 31 Mar 2010
Few films can claim to have made a splash quite like Warwick Thornton’s Samson And Delilah. A powerful and exhilarating road-romance between two homeless Australian teens trekking across the Northern Territory from one set of dangers to another, Mr. Thornton’s debut feature has already scooped the Caméra d’Or at Cannes and has been named Best Film at the recent Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, the Australian Film Institute and just about anywhere where statuettes are handed out in earnest.
“Addiction stories travel,” Mr. Thornton tells me on a recent publicity stopover in London. “Wherever you go in the world, there are teenagers in love and in trouble and on the street. It’s a story everyone has some experience of. And I’m a romantic, you know? I always had it in my head I wanted to make Romeo And Juliet but set in an Aboriginal community.”
The writer-director took rather more specific cues from his own boyhood growing up as part of the Kadjey tribe around Alice Springs. Having left school at 14, Mr. Thornton taught himself how to read and write and pursued his cinematic education through the documentary sector.
“I was very lucky to get that break,” he admits. “My family were very easy going so when I decided I wasn’t going to school, that was fine; it wasn’t my fault. And of course I wanted to hang out with my mates instead. So there’s nothing in this film I didn’t see growing up.”
Samson And Delilah is not, he insists, a campaigning film but it does express a poignant case on behalf of the young Aboriginal male; “You see it in Europe as well,” says the director. “Kids who are stuck between modernity and tradition. The Aboriginal male is under pressure to look after man’s business and go through traditional rites of passage; at the same time he’s bombarded with MTV pictures of gangstas and getting rich quick. It’s psychologically very difficult and very fucking complicated. Substance abuse can sometimes be a nice place to hide in your dreams. I don’t have any answers, I just have questions and information.”
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