Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Samson and Delilah is a terribly sad and touching tale of an Australian aboriginal boy and girl. The film, which won the Caméra d'Or award at Cannes for the best first feature, and "golden camera" suits its warm, luminous images, has a long downward trajectory that rights itself just in time toward the end. There is the comfort of a moment of mild hope when the teenage couple settles, after desperate times, in a remote Outback location. We leave them at peace, the girl returning to her craft of making paintings for sale to Alice Springs galleries, the boy attempting to end his substance abuse. A romantic song declares that they will always have each other, thus underlining that this is not a tract or horror film but a love story, and that a cinema of identity is also a cinema of hope. Songs are well used, and so is light. Thornton shows a sure touch and knows how to tell a story, conveying clear messages in long wordless takes that draw you in and grab your heart.This is a first feature by a young aboriginal director, who wrote, shot, and directed (editing is bey Roland Gallois). Thornton takes us into the lives of his characters with sensitivity and delicacy, and all the vividness of an Italian neorealist film. Samson (Rowan McNamarra) lives in a nearly empty house with his brother, who spends the day out front with a little band playing the same reggae song over and over. Samson grabs a guitar and tries some riffs every day, and is chased away. He consoles himself morning and night by sniffing gasoline. He becomes attracted to Delilah (Marissa Gibson), who sleeps nearby and cares for her aging, ailing Nana (Mitjili Gibson), and spends part of each day making paintings with her. These are bought by a gallery owner for a small fee and sold in Alice Springs for tens of thousands of dollars. Deilialh also pushes her grandma in a rickety wheelchair to a ragged health center and to a chapel where she sits a while and prays.Samsom's overtures to Delilah are crude. He scribbles a message on the wall, throws stones at her, and throws his mattress over the fence into her property. Their relationship is largely wordless. When anyone around does speak, it's in aboriginal language, except to exchange a few words with The Man, in this case the gallery owner. The early encounters between the pair are rough but also playful and funny.One day follows another, though the two kids seem to be waking up closer together. Delilah amuses herself sitting in a car listening to a cassette tape of Latin music. One evening Samson does a wild, sexy dance where she can see. Eventually the morning comes when Delilah wakes up to find her grandma dead. In mourning the girl cuts off her hair with a bread knife. Higher than usual, Samson attacks one of the musicians, and is beaten. The girl is beaten with sticks too, by family members who accuse her of causing her grandma's death by misusing her or not giving her her medications.Impulsively Samson and Delilah run away to Alice Springs in a stolen truck. He siphons off a bottle of gas from a car to keep going, and begins sniffing gasoline almost continually. From then on things get worse and worse. They wind up sleeping under a bridge near a once reasonably well off aboriginal man called Gonzo (Scott Thornton) who has declined through drink. Gonzo, who has a gaiety about him, and speaks only English, provides the kids with food, mostly noodles. They shop at a grocery store and Samson steals some extras. They're close now, a couple too miserable to make love but linked by affection, always together, huddling close at night, still hardly speaking. But in this dire situation Samson's gas sniffing becomes more constant and his condition more comatose, so he barely seems to notice when Delilah is swept away in a car by white boys to be raped and beaten. She returns later under the bridge, all bloody. And it gets worse.Somehow they're rescued only to be taken back where they came, where they're beaten and chased off again for past crimes. And this is where things get better, because they drive off to Delilah's first home and find a kind of refuge.Samson and Delilah is unbearably sad and rather like a fable, yet also full of realistic detail, such as the white people in Alice Springs, and the bad conditions the aboriginals live in in the Outback. In a detailed discussion of the film and its context Richard Phillips of the World Socialist Web Site explains how recent discriminatory laws in Australia have forced aborigines out of remote settlements like the ones shown here into more crowded and urban compounds where the health and social conditions are rapidly declining. Phillips says what young aboriginals in the Outback suffer today is generally still harsher than what happens in the film. In particular he says, Thornton, for reasons of his own, doesn't show the abuse by police aboriginals suffer around Alice Springs.This film is another step toward an aboriginal cinema made by aboriginal people (in contrast to a few fine efforts by outsiders like Bruce Beresford's 1986 The Fringe Dwellers). It's very different from the beautiful but relatively escapist 2006 Ten Canoes (co-directed by Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr), which dramatizes a traditional fable. Both approaches to aboriginal culture and experience are valid and both stories need to be told.Included in the New Directors/New Films series co-sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and screened at both MoMA and the Walter Reade Theater in March 2010.

Did I see the same movie? I think I saw S&D on ABC TV a few weeks ago (already on free to air TV with no ads, must be a good movie I do not think) it had the same "actors" and "story line" IE non existent. So I must have the unfortunate experience. Who are these reviewers that give it a ten, were you paid? Comparing it with other Aussie movies is ridiculous, it must rate as the worst Aussie made movie of all time, and there have been some corkers. No wonder the Government tried to educate these kids and bring them into the twentieth century back in the fifties. There was one or two moments:- When the old woman slaps Samson about the head for stealing the community truck, nobody else seemed to care - should have been more of it. When Delilah is knocked down, it probably saved her life, the care she got in the hospital turned her around, they both would have been dead had that not happened!

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.

Well what can I say? I love Australian Cinema and sat down to watch this film with great anticipation. 5/5 stars from multiple reviewers, the descriptive hyperbole meter off the scale and the French throwing more palm leaves before it than an pre-easter procession. Couldn't lose.So what went wrong? Well to start with not much....the stock and the glass used, soaked up the outback light and colour as well as I've seen, so Warwich Thornton knows how to shoot (Though it must be said, when doing panoramic shots of country-side do not and I mean, DO NOT hand hold the camera).The pace and quiet of the film is something I enjoy a lot and I was initially intrigued by the characters. It was not long though before it became apparent that the two leads were not very good actors. This hurts a film that has little dialogue because it's only through the acting you can elucidate what's going on....and in this film there isn't much happening so that's kind of important. None of the cast were much chop.It's impossible to do a spoiler for this film because so little happens and what does happen is so disconnected from what happens before and after that it doesn't matter anyway. Actually there may have been stuff happening it's just you are so disengaged from the characters by then that you don't care.This film may be an attempt at realistic observation of it's setting and to this end it succeeds but any Australian current affairs programme over the last 30 years has done the same thing (with better narrative)so why bother? I am glad I saw this on television for free because I can honestly say....do not under any circumstances spend money seeing this film. Aside from the imagery every other aspect of this film is amateurish, turgid and at least 77 minutes too long for the half interesting idea at it's core.