Baz Luhrmann's "Australia"....NOT!
I had just about abandoned all hope that this marvelous 1978 sleeper from Australian writer-director Fred Schepisi would ever see the light of day on DVD, until I was pleasantly surprised to see it pop up on the "new release" rack of my favorite neighborhood independent video store last month (I quickly snapped up the last copy). Adapted from Thomas Keneally's novel (which was inspired by true events) this semi-epic culture-clash tale concerns the travails of the title character, played with explosive intensity by non-professional actor Tommy Lewis. Jimmie is a half-caste Aboriginal, living in New South Wales in 1900. He struggles between the pull of his native culture and the insistence of white sponsors who want him to "do the right thing" and assimilate into "civilized" society. This is easier said than done; it seems that the harder he tries to please everyone, the more he is shunned by all. Jimmie sublimates his reaction to the enveloping systemic racism and roiling inner...
Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
This is a very good film. Not as devastating as Rabbit Proof Fence but nonetheless a tragic testimony to the effects of racism and ethnic abuse. It does not preach but simply presents the events without obvious bias. Racism begets racism and when Jimmy has enough, his monstrous acts toward innocent white are not sanitized. But still, we see the reasons for his brutality. A superbly acted film and the Australian landscape is sspectacular.
Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
This film is an excellent example of the prejudice faced by the aborigine peoples of Australia and the white people who treated them much as the black people of our country were treated for so many years.
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