MovieChat Forums > Samson & Delilah (2009) Discussion > Nothing like a real aboriginal community

Nothing like a real aboriginal community


I finally saw this movie and I'm really surprised by all the positive publicity and reviews, and no one seeming to mention how unrealistic this was of an actual aboriginal community.

This was filmed at an abandoned place with a small cast. That was so obvious - because there was absolutely no sense of a real community. People are constantly talking, laughing, arguing, kids playing, women gathered in circles - chatting, playing card,s painting etc. Men hanging out together, telling stories. There was none of that in this movie. In all my years of living and working in remote communities, I have never seen people just hanging out alone, a teenager having no one to hang out with. In reality, the old women sit around together, teenagers walk around together, kids are always out playing.

Communities are like big extended families. Yes, there is violence, especially in the more dysfunctional places, listlessness and sadness. But there is also a lot of activity and people sharing and joy. People are rarely alone like everyone in this movie. It made no sense why there was no one else at the clinic - normally a community clinic is abuzz with activity, or at the church. If someone dies, the whole community comes together to mourn. Depending on the community, there will be indigenous ceremonies or a church service, or often both.

It makes me sad to think that for many Australians, this is the only glimpse they get in to an indigenous community. This movie didn't capture the highs and lows of life in a community or of the strong sense of community that exists.

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How could it be the active, vibrant community that you described when there were barely a dozen people there? It was clearly some kind of dead end, unfinished or abondoned community subsisting on the paintings of Delilah's gran's (and presumably others') paintings. I don't know whether such places exist, but even if not, it not hard to see it as a metaphorical representation of the position of Aussie aboriginees. If you want to criticise the film, that would probably be a more suitable level on which to offer it.

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But you admit that there are "aboriginal communities"? I'm not from Australia, so I don't know. But are there such places - somewhere quite far away in the desert, a group of aboriginal people living, in a settlement which is too small to be a town, in houses which are not really houses, not really having any jobs most of them. Perhaps not quite so depressing as in this movie, but still more or less of the same kind. Is this how many aboriginals live in Australia?

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People are constantly talking, laughing, arguing, kids playing, women gathered in circles - chatting, playing card,s painting etc. Men hanging out together, telling stories.


You left out the rampant drug and alcohol abuse, constant domestic and street violence, cramped and unsanitary living conditions, and habitual child abuse. If anything, the one in the film is an idealised vision of such a place, in that it seems almost tranquil. Kill the band, and you'd have a perfectly peaceful place for paint-sniffing and scenic reveries.

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