Samson & Delilah

Harsh, genuinely Beckettian and rather good, this grim parable about the destruction of the Australian aboriginal culture, through the destruction of the two titular characters, broadens out to have universal appeal beyond its immediate category.
There are very few lines of dialogue, rendering a sense of purposelessness, hopelessness, and rendering what speech there is as absurd. Samson's inability to speak is both a denunciation of the raping of aboriginal culture (a micking reminder for the disconnected victims), a symbol for the lack of possible speech in the absurd world, and a literal analysis of petrol-sniffing. The most powerful moments are when the title characters are victims of violence, this is just sheer pointlessness driven by anger and boredom, a simulacra for existential nothingness. The scene where the guitar's unpleasant feedback attacks the audience's ears, and the malevolent women with clubs, are especially noticeable.
The film's main subject is in many ways petrol sniffing, which is dealt with while at the same time it stands for something much wider. We never quite understand what it's like, why the experiences are so, which is an upside in that it can stand for more than just the phenomenological experience, and a downside in that it can all seem a bit odd and isolated (but only rarely, to repeat this is a very decent film). The story isn't hyper-real naturalism, it's a parable in many ways.
This film is confident and willing to go along with its own powerful premises, letting things slowly unfold. The shooting of the area is not exactly original, tracking shots of migrating birds etc, but the mundanity of what is usually shown as spectacular and life-affirming shows us how frankly pathetic the situation is.
Does this film cop-out at the end? The song is good, but not entirely appropriate. It is quite a sweet 'love story' at the centre, and this gives the film some compass, but maybe we would have preffered a sparser approach at the end.
The acting is not specially wonderful, although we should give kudos to Samson as the finest of the bunch. The fact that he looks so startling is partly a criticism that people of the race are never seen on screen, and partly of the film's brutal aesthetic couched in what should be beauty, but fails to be (to the film's thematic credit).
All told, this is an inteeligent and at times well made film. There are a few slight twinges towards cliches, but generally it is a spare, startling, ambitous and, to use that word again, confident film. Thumbs up.