Two people can look at the same image and come away with two completely different understandings of what the image is. This is a fundamental aspect of the human ability to interpret, and something that crops up regularly when it comes to discussing art such as films. As much as I try and give the impression that I know what I’m talking about when writing about what a given image ‘means’, I also try and underpin that with the understanding that this is all my interpretation of things. I could be on the completely wrong track from what the image maker intended to convey, or I could be almost on the same wavelength but missing some vital piece of context, but all the same, I don’t tend to write what I think unless it actually is what I think.
That conflict of understanding, of pulling different ideas from the same inspiration, makes up the bulk of the imagery in the latest film from Warwick Thornton, who we last highlighted on here with the fantastic meatpie Western Sweet Country. It follows an Aboriginal boy (Aswan Reid) who gets left in the care of a remote Christian boarding school, run by Sister Eileen (Cate Blanchett). Throughout, Warwick’s cinematography relies on symbology to express the conflict between the iconography of Christianity and the iconography of traditional Aboriginal spirituality. Telegraph poles in the shape of crosses, an ominous black cloud preceding the arrival of a train, the New Boy’s ability to create a spark of light which invokes the central Sun on the Aboriginal flag; just from the visuals, there is a lot going on.
From there, it specifically looks at the conflict between the New Boy’s cultural heritage and the new one being imposed on him by Sister Eileen. In that contrast, the film raises some interesting points about how both perspectives view rather fundamental imagery tied to Christianity. On a more secular level, it brings up how Christians regard the crucifix as a symbol of someone who died to forgive the sins of all mankind, where others will see a man bleeding to death and wonder why no one is trying to help him down. Then there’s the snake, a creature which led to the Original Sin that Jesus died to forgive, but also a representation of the Rainbow Serpent, the central figure in the shared Aboriginal creation myth. So, when the New Boy brings snakes into the chapel, the Sister sees this as blasphemy, whereas to the Boy, it’s him acknowledging the preciousness of life.
While the plot as written relies on the imagery to the extent of, at times, coming across a bit Malick-y, there are still some interesting script-specific ideas going on too. With Sister Eileen, there’s a running sub-plot about how she has to pretend that the Don of the school is still alive so that they can keep getting supplies, even resorting to some pantomime shenanigans to maintain the lie. It’s a relatively brief but important addition to the plot, as it brings up how the institution of faith treats those within its own ranks, let alone how it treats outsiders it seeks to assimilate.
Indeed, assimilation is a crucial aspect of what’s really being portrayed, with Sister Eileen bringing the New Boy into her flock because she believes it is what she must do as a servant of the Lord, whereas what’s really going on is that the New Boy’s own culture, his own belief, is being overridden at the behest of colonisers. Along with contrasting the visual vocabulary of both cultures, the film also puts in the effort to directly tie Christianity, colonisation, and industry together through symbolic imagery.
It's in that assimilation that the film earns its biggest emotional moments, creating this profound sense of loss as the New Boy is instructed to forsake the ways of his people in place of ‘the right way’. The image of Jesus on the cross, enhanced with some remarkably gentle CGI to give the appearance of movement and even breath, takes on an even more mournful tone, as if he is looking down upon this child and weeping blood at why he must take part in the erasure of the Dreaming when, functionally, his own deeds throughout are what Christians would consider pious. It’s a pragmatic view on faith, which I tend to prescribe to myself, and by evening the playing field as far as what beliefs ‘matter’, Thornton highlights the entire practice not one of spirit, but one of identity. The vital part is that the New Boy, like so many Aboriginal youths before him, is being taught that the practices of his people do not matter. That the spark that lives within those people isn’t really there. Never before did I think that Benny Goodman could sound so goddamn depressing.
True to form, Thornton doesn't pull any punches in his criticisms of Christianity and its position within the larger mechanism of colonisation, even when he’s operating primarily within visual language that ventures close to Soviet montage in how it compares two images to mentally create a third. Whatever lulls exist within the run time (which, at nearly two hours, happen every so often) feel less like dead zones and more like moments for the audience to keep processing what they’re looking at; like a kind of cinematic meditation space. As someone who, for the longest time, has struggled to square the circle in terms of how Western Christianity mingles with and infects the belief systems of non-White populations (for all the nuances concerning it, the Black Church in the U.S. is a total anomaly to me), I got a lot of the ideas presented by this film and even got a kick out of examining the dual interpretations of the images. It’s a film that asks a fair bit from the audience in terms of visual literacy, but for those willing to learn, it’s quite powerful stuff.
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