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Critics Consensus: Powerfully performed and beautifully directed, Charlie's Country uses its protagonist's personal saga to explore poignant universal themes.
Critic Consensus: Powerfully performed and beautifully directed, Charlie's Country uses its protagonist's personal saga to explore poignant universal themes.
All Critics (36) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (34) | Rotten (2)
The upright art-houser is told in English and Yolngu, with English subtitles, but the message would be clear without any dialogue: Australia is no country for old Aborigine.
Australia offers few sights as sublime as that of David Gulpilil.
A series of chapters in noble effort and misadventure alike, all captured with fluid camerawork trained on Gulpilil's every move or his long passages of mesmerizing stillness.
The film gets some of its power from the fact that Charlie's story tracks pretty closely with that of the actor playing him. But just some of its power.
Using a combination of bleak realism, fatalistic humor and a healthy dose of sentimentality, Mr. de Heer traces the downward spiral of a man who has become a refugee in his own homeland.
Part of the movie's mischievous charm lies in De Heer and cinematographer Ian Jones' sophisticated use of Steadicam, which moves almost exclusively with Charlie, often seemingly in a struggle to keep up with his brisk, determined walk.
David Gulpilil stole my heart with his performance in Charlie's Country, an Australian film that represents Indigenous culture in a way that is not told solely from a white perspective.
There are laughs here as well as moments of devastation, thankfully, and genuine joy.
Charlie's Country is a deceptively simple film, with very little action and a virtually absent soundtrack-but it's much more than that.
This is entirely Gulpilil's show, and even in the simplest, quietest moments he's riveting. It's one of the key performances in any of de Heer's films and, basically, magnificent.
It's a beautifully photographed, unrelentingly bleak picture that works as a Rorschach test for the viewer's empathy.
Resonant and powerful.
"Charlie's Country" is a different kind of Australian apocalyptic movie than the ones we're used to seeing. While on a much smaller scale, the movie is no less concerned with the current state and fate of the Aboriginal population. That is embodied in Charlie(David Gulpilil, who also co-wrote with director Rolf de Heer) who once danced in front of Queen Elizabeth to celebrate the opening of the Sydney Opera House. Through a series of tragicomic misadventures in the present day, he comes to realize that the old ways are gone forever. What makes his situation even worse is that the old ways of Aboriginals were not replaced by anything. At best, they are treated like children. At worst, they are treated like criminals.
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