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A Review of SWEET COUNTRY (2018)

Sweet Country is a long ride of a film and it feels like it. On the surface it appears to be a simple, by the number western, but as it creeps along, it slowly reveals a film about the pain and price of Australia's bloody past-- and indeed the bloody past of most all of western history. It’s not a film that you walk out of the theater feeling unsatisfied by. It’s a full, rich film that is also pointedly merciless and exhausting. It is a film that asks for as much as it gives.

Sweet Country tells a seemingly simple story that would fit perfectly between Shane and High Noon (or Unforgiven and The Proposition) about an Aboriginal farmer (Sam Kelly played by newcomer Hamilton Morris) wrongly accused of murder. A posse is formed and a manhunt ensues. And throughout all of this are the complicated domestic lives of people living at the edge of the dying British Empire.

It’s also a film that rides a line between traditional Westerns, revisionist Westerns, and Australian westerns (of which there are a surprising amount). As well trod as that genre (and sub-genres) is, Sweet Country stands out because it’s a film about the conflict between natives and settlers that is from the perspective of the natives (both in front of the camera and behind the camera). Not only is the story more interested about the Aboriginal people (and those that are stuck between two worlds as “half-castes”), but the camera itself seems to give them all of the best shots. And why wouldn't it be? In this world (ie: history), the best white people on offer are either abject racists, madmen, or well-meaning but complicit in the despoiling of Australia. While I can’t say that Sweet Country has a rich and bold Aboriginal voice, what I can say for certain is that it’s a movie that has a unique voice and that alone makes it worth seeing.

The stand-out among these is Warlpiri actor Hamilton Morris, who plays the runaway that the entire film centers around. Who has a face that belongs to another era—namely the golden age of Westerns. That man has a face and a carriage about him that just belongs on the big screen. And, like some of the greats of the American Western, he isn’t much for speaking. He lets everyone do the acting around him. Morris is an interesting choice to center the film around him as he very clearly isn’t a seasoned actor, he brings a verisimilitude to the picture that you don't often see in movies about native people. Hamilton Morris (what a name!) feels like a fulfillment of promise of "sensitivity" regarding native people that so many other films promise and then completely fuck up.

Sam Neill is also present doing his Sam Neill thing. I’d say more, but it’d be simpler and better for everyone if I just reminded you that Sam Neill is the best. He's great.

One of the bolder choices that Warwick Thornton makes is that Sweet Country is completely without non-diegetic music. From beginning to end, the only music you hear comes from a character. It’s

It’s funny because when I think of Australian and Westerns, I think of one of the best scored films of all time, The Proposition. 

Sweet Country is a film without distractions. Instead of making the film feel empty or lifeless, the lack of a score preserves the film’s tone. It’s a joyless world and it’s a joyless film. To add music would be to garnish it in some way that wouldn’t be true to the film.

It also leads to the only legitimate laugh in the entire picture. Again: Thank you, Sam Neill.

Another stand out feature of the film is the landscape (which is maybe the only unqualified strength of Hostiles). As full of bugs and snakes and god knows what else, Warwick Thornton (doubling as cinematographer) makes the Australian back country look like a place that you would want to visit-- or at least a place where you could stare longingly at the Abyss in peace.

It makes you pine for a world that somehow entirely gone and yet somehow still here. In that way, Sweet Country stacks up to the best films the genre has to offer. Sweet Country is a nearly joyless, nearly heartless film that fills its almost two-hour running time with a weight that matches the subject matter. It shows the Australian past as the heartless, soulless thing that it is and because of that, it isn’t something that anybody is going to be storming the gates to go and see. That only seems to make it even more vital as a work of art. Thinking on it, that’s probably the point.

James Kislingbury is a writer, a podcaster, and has never been south of the equator. You can donate to his Patreon . You can buy the book he edited here (and on eBay). You can also follow him on Twitter. Also, if you well and truly give a shit hmu on my Paypal. Want to buy me a coffee? Get at my Ko-Fi.

Be Careful What You Wish For Lesson #447

A REVIEW OF HOSTILES (2017)

Hostiles is the type of film I wanted to make in college. It’s a harsh, brutalist gaze into the American west that parlays with the complexities of violence, race, and man’s place in the universe. It’s a film that harkens back to the classics of the genre, as well as to the great works of western civilization. It’s a smart, well designed, well shot, and well scored film with some terrific performances. It’s also, ultimately, overlong and careless with its characters and its sharpest scenes are offset by mushy, needless side plots. Hostiles is a bummer, and not for the right reasons.

Basically, we should all be glad nobody is stupid enough to give me eighty million dollars to write Cormac McCarthy fanfic.

Man. This poster is pretty good.

What Hostiles gets right is a movie that feels like the American west. There’s a frisson to the film that isn't something I think that I’ve ever seen in films before. It's a film that properly understands the scope and scale of the American west, which is a concept that is as hard-boiled and overdone as any location in all of cinema. And yet, in Hostiles, the sheer size of it and how small you feel within that landscape presses down on you for every moment of the film. Hostiles is shot and lit and directed with a skill and a sensitivity to time and space that, even in its most confounding moments, always feels significant.

The main problem with the film is that it’s forty minutes too long. More specifically, it runs out of plot about an hour into the film. Hostiles sets up a scenario in the first half of the film (a man protects Indians from other Indians, with one big complication in the middle. A basic Campbellian set-up) and then, for some reason, discards that premise (off screen, no less) in favor of a completely different story (featuring well-known cowboy actor Ben Foster who I am concerned might be stuck in a time warp of some variety). It’s baffling. And it’s boring. It’s a contrivance that grinds the movie to a halt that it never quite recovers from. As much as we all love revisionist westerns, maybe it’s time to go back and steal one thing from the classic era, which is a run time that makes sense.

On the plus side: The performances are top notch. Christian Bale continues to remind us why we give a fuck about Batman and Rosamund Pike continues to be. . . Rosamund Pike—I mean, filthy and sun-burnt Rosamund Pike, but she can’t fool me.

Then you got Jesse Plemons as a feckless West Point graduate (guess what his story arc is—Close! It’s that exact thing you just thought, but duller). You also got Paul Anderson (as the character he always plays, accent and all), as well a strangely unmalignant Stephen Lang. Rounding out all of these character actors is Peter Mullan, the English Stephen Lang (which means he does more theater and could also actually kill you if he wanted to). And, finally, in a currently-playing-at-the-Laemelle-Playhouse hat trick is Timothee Chalamet [sic], who needs to give his agent a raise.

Man. This poster sucks.

Most importantly, though, Hostiles stars Wes Studi, an actor that I’ve greatly admired for years. Part of that is because, well, he’s talented. Another part of that is I am hard pressed to think of a less thankless career than Wes Studi. He’s played an Indian character in just about every western from Dances with Wolves onward—almost always as the bad guy. And as good as he is, man, that’s gotta be exhausting. Still, it’s a testament to his skill as an actor that even in a movie as unfocused as Hostiles, he still stands out. Even in worse westerns (like Dances with Wolves, one of the most profoundly shitty Best Picture winners ever), Wes Studi is a man that stands out. I mean, just look at him.

(Also, shout-out to Adam Beach. Always good to see him working—even if it’s also doing the same, thankless Indian roles time after time. Then again, what the fuck do I know? Maybe he's got a successful kombucha business and he's just doing these movies for laughs. Anything is possible.)

WAIT—STOP THE PRESSES.

HOLY SHIT.

The bearded sergeant with “melancholia” is the stoner kid from Dazed and Confused! Fuck! Holy shit! Fuck! Wooooooah! That dude is awesome! Movie is still not super great, but man, what if they got all these actors together and made something awesome? Wouldn’t that be great?

Man. . . 

Anyways. . .

Hostiles is a disappointment. As a fan of westerns, of brutal American violence, and of good films in general, Hostiles fails to stand out as any one of those things. While it is not without its moments or its charms, as a film, it is an overlong and overindulgent mess. Despite the performances, the end result is a film that meanders instead of being epic and is less episodic than it is confused. Hostiles could have been great. Hostiles should have been great. That’s the biggest bummer out of all of this. 

James Kislingbury is a writer, a podcaster, and greatly admires his scalp. You can donate to his Patreon . You can buy the book he edited here (and on eBay). You can also follow him on Twitter. Also, if you well and truly give a shit hmu on my Paypal. Want to buy me a coffee? Get at my Ko-Fi. Happy new year!