Charlie’s Country is the third collaboration between director Rolf de Heer and actor David Gulpilil following 2002’s The Tracker and 2006’s Ten Canoes.
The film sees the always adventurous, poly-stylistic de Heer at his most classical, which isn’t to suggest that he’s sacrificed form in the name of content – i.e., the marginalisation of Australia’s indigenous peoples. Just as the title suggests matters of land entitlement, Charlie’s Country is ostensibly Gulpilil’s film, convincingly making the case that there are few things more cinematic than the weathered face of this most iconic and soulful of screen presences.
Since his debut role in Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout as a native guiding two stranded English teenagers through the Australian outback, Gulpilil has been a permanent fixture of Australian cinema, though Charlie’s Country is the first film to dramatise, in semi-autobiographical fashion, his off-screen hardships, particularly his alcoholism and incarceration (both he and de Heer collaborated on the screenplay).
It opens in a small Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory, with fluid, gliding Steadicam shots tracking Gulpilil’s Charlie as he goes about his daily routine. Though white law enforcers rule the area and threaten to eventually drive Charlie out, this opening scene slyly evokes the classic Western scenario of the local sheriff navigating his sleepy small town, showing Charlie on good terms with its black and white inhabitants alike. The tone gradually evolves from spry to mournful as Charlie drifts toward homelessness in Darwin, with the most haunting section being a wordless stretch showing him camping alone in the bush just after leaving home, the ghosts of his ancestors ever-present.
It’s easy to overrate Charlie’s Country based on its content, especially in light of recent comments made by our Prime Minister regarding the degree to which Australia was allegedly “unsettled” prior to colonisation. Fortunately, the film is as good as it is worthy: a plain-spoken yet impassioned plea for equality that finds universal resonance in a national crisis.
3.5/5 stars
Charlie’s Country opens in cinemas on Thursday July 17.
