Shades of Indigenous Belonging in Samson & Delilah

This paper explores different levels and shades of Indigenous belonging through an analysis of Warwick Thornton's film Samson & Delilah. The film is a contemporary story that does not displace its Indigenous characters by assigning them, and their connection to country, to history, but rather by situating its characters (and their struggles) very firmly in the context of country and in the context of contemporary struggles, thereby ironically creating a sense of untimeliness. This does not mean, as we argue in this paper, that the film is out of step with history, but rather that it is out of step with Australian film history, in which there has been a tendency to position Indigenous Australians in one of two main paradigms: either as 'noble savages' living in harmony with and on the land, or as lost and hopeless city dwellers, divorced from 'their culture.'
This paper explores the untimeliness of the way in which Samson & Delilah constructs a sense of belonging, and argues that its critical and commercial success can largely be attributed to precisely that untimeliness, which not only creates the film's sense of realness, despite being very carefully crafted and structured, but also makes the film very timely indeed.