Bad Blood and Bitterness COLONISATION AND THE WESTERN IN WARWICK THORNTON’S SWEET COUNTRY
Whereas Samson & Delilah drew much of its power from the intimacy of its scale and its close proximity to its titular characters, Sweet Country widens its angle of view, employing a period setting and a broad cast of characters.
Warwick Thornton attracted global accolades with his feature-film debut Samson & Delilah in 2009, and has been the subject of fevered anticipation ever since. In the intervening years, he has remained prolific in his work as a cinematographer (particularly for The Sapphires, Wayne Blair, 2012), documentary maker (especially We Don’t Need a Map, 2017), visual artist (Mother Courage, 2012), and fiction director (notably, the ‘Big World’ segment of the 2013 adaptation of Tim Winton’s anthology The Turning). While Thornton’s efforts in these various domains have been warmly received, the plaudits have not come close to the acclaim that saw the director win the Caméra d’Or at Cannes in 2009. And, if his 2013 episodic documentary–fiction hybrid The Darkside was too slight for critics and audiences to get a firm hold on, the rapturous applause that greeted Sweet Country at the 2017 Venice and Toronto film festivals have confirmed Thornton’s return to the global stage.
Sweet Country had its Australian premiere at last year’s Adelaide Film Festival (AFF), which previously supported The Darkside and Samson & Delilah via its investment fund. This latest
