The state-sanctioned assimilation policie's were always at odd's with the moralistic façade that White Christian Australia tried to maintain.
There's a shot in the first 10 maybe 15 minutes of this film where Jimmie is sat at the table with Reverend Neville and his wife. they speak hopefully about his plans to marry a white girl and have 3/4 white children and to work in the mines, to build a home and to, frankly, assimilate. the camera pulls out slowly, eventually revealing a doorframe that literally boxes them in and confines them in their colonial house while they shrink in the frame.
It's a little on the nose but kind of visually explains the whole film in a single scene. These naïve delusions of having Jimmie live the prosperous life of a white man in a society that is still actively subjugating and restricting Aboriginal people were not only misguided but damning. He, and the white nation that tried to erase his culture were doomed from the very start. They are trapped in a predestined bloody mess.
The state-sanctioned assimilation policie's were always at odd's with the moralistic façade that White Christian Australia tried to maintain.
There's a shot in the first 10 maybe 15 minutes of this film where Jimmie is sat at the table with Reverend Neville and his wife. they speak hopefully about his plans to marry a white girl and have 3/4 white children and to work in the mines, to build a home and to, frankly, assimilate. the camera pulls out slowly, eventually revealing a doorframe that literally boxes them in and confines them in their colonial house while they shrink in the frame.
It's a little on the nose but kind of visually explains the whole film in a single scene. These naïve delusions of having Jimmie live the prosperous life of a white man in a society that is still actively subjugating and restricting Aboriginal people were not only misguided but damning. He, and the white nation that tried to erase his culture were doomed from the very start. They are trapped in a predestined bloody mess.
