CHARLIE’S COUNTRY
Legend of Australian cinema David Gulpilil offers an unflinching portrait of the life of an ageing indigenous Australian man living in remote community Ramingining and his struggle to navigate a reality heavy with the legacy of dispossession and continuing structural injustices. Through Charlie’s eyes, his relationship with grog, cigarettes and ganja, his anger, his attitude towards the police and white law gain a rarely communicated context, and an insight into these manifestations of cultural trauma and policy failure seldom afforded.
Every assertion of autonomous self-expression Charlie attempts seems thwarted. He tries to go hunting and his gun is confiscated by the police because he doesn’t have a license. He is told by his white doctor he needs to eat better, but the “white man’s junk food” available at the local store has seen his health deteriorate and rotted his teeth, so he endeavours to hunt again but has his spear confiscated as a “dangerous object”. Furious, he tries to go bush and live off the land, but existing poor health and exposure sees him go quickly downhill. The double-standards of white cultural influences and norms constrict and mock Charlie at every turn.
David Gulpilil proves again his consummate skill as he communicates these frustrations and the desire to escape the pain of them with a good dose of humour and resilience that magnifies their pathos. Charlie’s Country is captivating and tear-inducing, but there are laugh-out-loud moments too.
Underneath this experience, Charlie’s memory of his celebrated performance of traditional dance at the opening of the Sydney Opera House, before the Queen, is something he clings to for reassurance; an anchor of positive self-identity (even his source of cultural worth is mediated by white culture). A better metaphor for the superficial and tokenistic cultural value placed on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures couldn’t possibly be invoked to stand against the harrowing injustices of Charlie’s everyday life. And the film becomes a little meta here too, when Gulpilil’s own story as Australian cultural icon is taken into account. Gulpilil co-wrote the film with long-time collaborator and director Rolf de Heer, and it undoubtedly draws at least in part from his own experiences and those close to him.
The film is startlingly poignant and the gravity of its truth is heart-wrenching, but it’s the strength and resilience of Charlie and his friends that is the most overwhelming. In the end, when Charlie is able to move from memory into practice and teaching, and once again experience his culture as living, his strength and vitality appear to lend hope to the film’s finale. It’s importance for Australian audiences, both indigenous and non-indigenous, cannot be overstated.5/5
