Worth: $17.00
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Cast:
Mwajemi Hussein, Deepthi Sharma, Darsan Sharma, Gary Waddell, Natasha Wanganeen, Noel Wilton
Intro:
… bold cinema …
Films that resist interpretation, invite interpretation. This is paradoxically the case with this elliptical, and sometimes downright odd, film from acclaimed Australian director Rolf De Heer. It is easier to say what it contains than what it’s really about.
We open with a woman of colour trapped in a metal cage being dumped in the desert. Her colour matters because the film is definitely about the themes of racism and colonisation. In recent times, De Heer has moved explicitly towards exploring Aboriginal issues (Ten Canoes, Charlie’s Country), building on his previous work about mental and physical illness, and gender and power.
This film follows the journey of the Blackwoman (Mwajemi Hussein) – such is her designation – as she escapes from her cage and goes wondering. The settings of the film take in timeless and borderless desert regions as well as post-industrial areas housing brutal noisy factories. The workers are supervised by gasmask-wearing guards cum Fascist shock troops.
At times, we feel like we are in some sort of post-civilisation, post-hope wilderness like Cormack McCarthy’s The Road. Whether this elicits total despair or an attachment to the seeds of hope, depends upon your disposition as much as a reading of the film.
As indicated, the film doesn’t give you much to go on. Most of it is without dialogue and the only language spoken is deliberately gibberish. This means we can only guess at the motivations of our Everywoman, as she struggles to survive against all odds. Nevertheless, we care, and the film gets under our defences and builds to a visceral and intriguing whole.
This is bold cinema. De Heer has never been an artist to compromise his sometimes-unpleasant vision (Bad Boy Bubby anyone?), but we always admire his purity of intent and his refusal to play safe.
The Survival of Kindness is a challenging work, which will alienate some audiences and may even bore them. For those who can go with it, there is that feeling that De Heer is making an oblique statement about something important in relation to human nature and our uncivilised civilisation.
