{"id":3183,"date":"2018-03-06T20:03:08","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T20:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/03\/06\/sweet-country-review\/"},"modified":"2018-03-06T20:03:08","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T20:03:08","slug":"sweet-country-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/03\/06\/sweet-country-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet Country Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Empire\/ Ian Freer<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"gamma gamma--tall txt--black\">Australia 1929. Aboriginal farmhand Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris) goes on the run with his wife Lizzie (Gorey Furber) after killing a cattle station master (Ewen Leslie) in self defence. Lawman Sergeant Fletcher (Bryan Brown) leads a posse to track the pair down.<\/p>\n<p>4 out of 5 stars<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-3005\" src=\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/-\/media\/XPoQTbnwG5ef8Keldw4HRkKTJE.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"275\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Sparse, textured and bleak, director-cinematographer Warwick Thornton\u2019s\u00a0<em>Sweet Country<\/em>\u00a0is a soulful slice of Australian history mixed with the tropes of a classic Western. In some ways, it is a spiritual prequel to Thornton\u2019s 2009 debut\u00a0<em>Samson &amp; Delilah<\/em>, a contemporary look at Australia\u2019s marginalised Aboriginal community. Both films feature couples on the run. Both offer depictions of a fractured national identity. Both are told with attention to detail and remarkable poise.<\/p>\n<p><em>Sweet Country<\/em>\u00a0begins on a sustained close-up of a boiling cauldron as a violent fight between a white cattle station master and a black farm hand plays out on the soundtrack. It\u2019s a sense of racial tension told through startling economy that courses through the whole film. Benevolent preacher Fred Smith (Sam Neill) lends his farmhand Sam Kelly (Morris) to new neighbour Harry March (Leslie) to work on his cattle station. The bigoted, boozed-up March terrorises Kelly and his wife, to the point where Kelly shoots him in self-defence. Knowing the consequences of an indigenous Australian killing a white man, Sam and Lizzie go on the lam. Soon, a group, lead by bastard-hard lawman Fletcher (Brown), butting heads with Smith, head out to track down the runaways.<\/p>\n<p>At that point, you would expect the start of a typical hunters-and-the-hunted dynamic. Instead, Thornton eschews tension-building techniques \u2014 there\u2019s no score to hype the drama, the cross-cutting between posse and prey is leisurely \u2014 in favour of lavishing care on his characters. In its final act, it becomes a courtroom drama, albeit one that takes place on deckchairs in a dusty street with the gallows being erected before the verdict is reached.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a difficult watch. The violence is brutal, over as quickly as it erupts, and the plot meanders, Thornton sewing in unnerving flashbacks and subliminal flash-forwards pointing to tragedies yet to unfurl. It\u2019s also a tactile film. Shot in Central Australia\u2019s MacDonnell ranges, it\u2019s stark and stunning: you can almost feel the punishing sun, the sounds of hooves on salt flats hit on a gut level. It\u2019s the sweep of Howard Hawks\u2019\u00a0<em>Red River<\/em>\u00a0but de-romanticised by Ozploitation steel.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s the performances that stick with you. Neill offers compassion in abundance, Brown majors in toughness but is able to show Fletcher\u2019s other colours in a scene where he imagines a different life. Yet the professionals are outdone by the amateurs. It\u2019s Morris and Gorey Furber who steal the picture. Morris, especially, is dignified without being sanctimonious. He provides a centre of tenderness in an unforgiving world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gamma gamma--tall weight--bold marg__top pad__top bdr__top bdr__top--light-grey txt--black\">Sweet Country is epic and personal, daring to tell a simple story in a challenging, arresting way. It\u2019s a demanding two hours but leavened by great performances, especially from newcomer Hamilton Morris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Empire\/ Ian Freer Australia 1929. Aboriginal farmhand Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris) goes on the run with his wife Lizzie (Gorey Furber) after killing a cattle station master (Ewen Leslie) in self defence. Lawman Sergeant Fletcher (Bryan Brown) leads a posse to track the pair down. 4 out of 5 stars Sparse, textured and bleak, director-cinematographer &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/03\/06\/sweet-country-review\/\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sweet Country Review - Thunderbird Entertainment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2018\/03\/06\/sweet-country-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sweet Country Review - Thunderbird Entertainment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Empire\/ Ian Freer Australia 1929. 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