Samson & Delilah
Samson & Delilah is Warwick Thornton’s first feature film as writer/director
SAMSON & DELILAH is Warwick Thornton’s first feature film as writer/director after a number of successful short films and an impressive career as one of this country’s top cinematographers.
Despite its title it bears no resemblance to the biblical story. It’s about two kids, young teenagers in a community in the central desert. Samson, (ROWAN McNAMARA) is a petrol-sniffing layabout who would play music if only his brother would let him.
He fancies Delilah, (MARISSA GIBSON) who looks after her grandmother – played by her real life grandmother, MITJILI GIBSON – and helps her with her artworks.
Delilah is a very self-contained young woman. When her grandmother dies and the community blames Delilah, quite ferociously, she and Samson take off for Alice Springs where they live on the fringe, unable to get life together.
This is for me one of the most wonderful films this country has ever produced. It is exquisitely made, it’s full of discipline. There’s not a spare moment in it.
The two young performers are mind-blowingly good. You enter into their world and you’re rivetted there for the fairly short duration of the film.
There is a European sensibility to it. There’s very little dialogue and there are long sequences, but with Thornton himself behind the camera – handheld in trying conditions – it looks fabulous.