Charming and brutal

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

This movie is not a romance. That needs to be made perfectly clear right from the start.What this story is about, is knowledge, power & choice - and the lack of it in Australian Aboriginal communities.SPOILERS BELOW.Delilah is a teen in a tiny world of stagnant heat and no future outside it. She cooks for herself and her grandmother, cares for her like an infant, wheels her grandmother along sandy roads to the doctor's and church and helps her make paintings which they sell to a white middle-man for a living. In her minimal free time, she sneaks away to listen to French music.Samson is a teen with a speech disability (possibly more) who wanders aimlessly, sniffs petrol and is sweet on Delilah. His liking is not reciprocated, but like a child he persists - and like water wearing down a rock, the audience can see that he'll get what he wants eventually, if only for Delilah's lack of power to have her choices respected.Then her grandmother dies and, bizarrely to a cultural outsider, Delilah is blamed for it. Physically and verbally beaten and accused by three women with sticks, (the movie makes no effort to actually educate its viewers about why this might happen) she is without support or care or compassion.Samson packs her unconscious body in the communal truck and drives away. Thus begins their 'journey of survival' - with kidnapping and theft.The resulting difficulties - a near-complete inability to function within white society, no awareness of aid establishments, shoplifting, homelessness, hunger and (for Delilah) abduction, violence, implied rape & hospitalisation - do *not* equate to a romantic story of a woman who suffers for love. She suffers because she has *no other choice*, because she doesn't know what else to do, because she has no-one to help her and the only person who cares - Samson - is equally ignorant and without options, but plus an addition.This is a story about a girl who has had everything stripped from her except for a boy who doesn't really exist outside his petrol sniffing. There is no background of love, no childhood of friendship, no deep connection to offset his utter uselessness - there is just a girl who is drowning and will hold on to any line she is thrown - and Samson, to his credit, does seem to want to care for her - even though he never really does.The ending is intended to be happy but is in reality quite depressing - assuming it all isn't just a petrol delusion. Delilah has swapped her infirm grandmother for a brain-damaged Samson and appears to have resumed the exploitative relationship with the white middleman her grandmother sold her paintings to. About the only net positive is that both teens have escaped their community.Watch this movie to get a glimpse into an alien culture inside Australia and then go read a more educated breakdown of it - but do not delude yourself that this is anything other than a story of dis-empowered suffering.

Ssooo... let me get this straight. When someone you love dies in the Aboriginal culture, you cut all your hair off? And your home tends to be a small community of derelict buildings, where the only thing to do all day is weave carpets, play the same monotonous tune on a guitar or mess about in a rusty wheelchair? Damn, that sucks. And to top it all off, both of our main characters get beaten to within an inch of their lives by their so-called 'friends'. No wonder they both leave together in a stolen van for pastures new. What's most shocking is they decide to return later.Despite the title, this isn't really a romance. Samson's infatuation with Delilah seems to be like a moth flying round a light... he's fascinated by something he can't comprehend. Here we have a guy who sniffs petrol, speaks once in the entire film and is completely unpredictable in his behaviour. He probably would be committed, if he didn't live so far from civilisation. So it's no big surprise the minute he sees the comparably normal and straight-laced Delilah, he wants to know what makes her tick. Alas, under his influence, she starts acting oddly too, especially when they meet the tramp under the bridge...But I don't want to give too much away. Sufficed to say though, that major events that occur here, which would dominate any other film, are just brushed under the carpet five minutes later. The laid-back Aussie way, I guess. The performances do what was intended... Delilah is a nice girl we'd like to serve us in the chip shop, and Samson is a crazy (though with moments of tenderness) we'd cross the county line to avoid. It has a very loose story structure and will never be heralded as a shining example of cohesive writing but for what it is, it works. No more, no less. 6/10

OK, so I finally went out and watched this film and I really did not like it a great deal either. I am Aboriginal and from a small community and now live in the city and I am very familiar with a lot of what the film presents.I think the acting was great and they both came across very real but I think the script or lack of was very unbelievable. I understand why Samson didn't speak, because sniffing petrol actually destroys the brain, but Delilah should have spoke at a lot of times. There is no reason for her not to speak, especially since she seemed at least a bit switched on. I understand her Nan just died and that affected her, but it is just not really real that she would have not have said anything to Samson ever. If she had enough frame of mind to go get paint and canvas and try to sell she would have definitely at least said something to somebody. I think the film maker was trying to be artistic and he sacrificed dialogue for it, and it was not believable to me. I also understand non-verbal communication is a very big part of my culture, but when we are with our own people we talk a lot. I know a lot of people dealing with similar things and they definitely speak. I had no problem with Samson not speaking because of the petrol, but I had a very big problem with Delilah not speaking.Also, people keep saying they communicated through body language and looks, but for the most part they didn't do that either. They did it a little in the first few scenes at the town camp but after that they didn't really communicate at all, it was more like she was just following him around and he was too high off petrol to really care. By not allowing his characters to speak he did not allow them to express their frustrations and anger and this really was a let down.I also did not believe it as a love story. The first scenes of courting made sense but she did not seem to take a shine to him at any part of the movie, it just seems like she stayed with him just because. I mean did she ever even smile at him? Aborginal people are very passionate and it makes no sense to me why they did not really interact with each other or what she liked about him.I think a lot of people who like this film think it gives them a glimpse at remote Aboriginal life, but I think it does not offer any explanations and leaves too much open for interpretation and it seems to me most people interpret wrong. I also am not comfortable with the shoplifting thing and the lack of positive Aboriginal characters. There are never any good Aboriginal characters for our youth to aspire to be like on TV, all we got is sports and music, thats not good.I think the praise this film is getting should have been given to Yolngu Boy ten years ago. That is a film that was criminally overlooked and still is.regarding Samson and Delilah, I liked the portrayal of petrol sniffing but as an "optimistic love story" that it is presented as, I see no optimism in the film just hopelessness (which I personally don't feel reflects reality) and I did not believe it as a love story either.I think it might have worked as a short film but as a feature film it is very underdeveloped and really does not allow people to connect with the characters or the story. I have no problem with people liking art type films, but when it is presented as being real and as a reflection of Aboriginal life in remote communities but it really is not real because it is trying to be artsy, I have a problem.

Having seen this movie on ABC TV here in Australia last week, I have to say that I feel a bit guilty about not seeing this film in the cinema, when it screened a few months backs. This is "black arm-band" guilt no doubt...I had toyed with the idea of seeing it, but never got around to it...wasn't sure how good it would be. Australian films in general (this is the first Aboriginal movie I've seen) can often have poor acting and weak scripts and be otherwise uninteresting once you overcome inertia and finally pay up. So, this inertia I could not overcome to pay up and see it. Anyway, this is a very good movie and it would have been nice to pay money to see it and thus contribute to the film makers.Overall, the acting is of a very high quality, but the movie is quite minimalist and bleak...the cinematic equivalent of a sepia photograph in mood. There is very little dialogue and learning that the actors in this movie are often doing it for the first time makes that situation seem for the best. The physical acting of the two young leads is excellent, and the scene where Samson (Rowan McNamara) dances to music is quite cool (check out the excellent "Making Samson & Delilah" where Marissa Gibson (Delilah) has something to say on this).Set in a shanty town village, "Samson & Delilah" is the story of a blossoming relationship between the two young teen leads. Their circumstances are, like I say, very bleak. It's for this reason that I think that this movie doesn't really have any 'replay' value, but others may no doubt find more hope in it than I did. Despite not really being a 'popcorn' movie you can veg out to often, I highly recommend this movie to anyone.As I've said, the acting in this movie is highly engaging...more so than many movies by white Australians where the content is pitched to American audiences. E.g. Mitjili Napanangka Gibson as "Nana" is a delight. So too is Scott Thornton as "Gonzo"...there is humour and good will in this movie, despite its bleakness.The Age newspaper's "Green Guide" lift-out of 19/11/2009 has a long article on this movie as well as reviews of the movie and the making of documentary which screened a few days later. Reviewer Scott Murray says something remarkable..."And why is there no attempt to explain the poverty?" (p34). Well Scott, personally I think that there WOULD be something to explain if the native Australians lived in anything approaching a decent way of life. It's quite natural for some white people (of which I'm one) to perhaps infer that because black Americans can live in luxury, that black Australians can too, to a large degree. Pretty sure that I've seen police officers here pull over cars with Aboriginal drivers...their logic seems to be that it's incomprehensible to them that an aboriginal would ever be in a position to own such a staple of white society.You should definitely see this movie, and close attention can pay off (I PVRd the movie and was glad I did, so that I could do a 'double take' on certain scenes). E.g. there would be scope for a "Hollywood" type of resolution in this movie, when you see Delilah strolling a mall in the big smoke, and finding something familiar there (an interesting point of comparison would be the film version of "Once were warriors" (which was brilliant art) and Maori writer Alan Duff's more didactic novel (which lessened the story as art). In any case, a writer like Duff might have made much more of the possibilities of that scene in the mall than the movie did).Lastly, for something which definitely has repeat viewing value, check out the Making Of. It's definitely thought provoking in some of the background information it provides about the actors...you would wonder how such information could have coloured people's perceptions of the movie. Challenging, in any case. The featurette is, however, a lot of fun too...in fact, the performances by the two leads is even more remarkable considering what the featurette shows us! And some cultural differences are touched on too...the perception of the two young leads concerning two scenes (dancing and the shop store scene) is illuminating. I think that The Green Guide also mentions some cultural differences in courting practices for Aboriginals in the movie itself...I was interpreting it from a white point of view, so maybe this aspect could be expanded on for any bonus features on the DVD.This movie is bleak, spartan, minimalist and dour, but gee, you gotta go see it. Terrific.