Samson and Delila

Samson and Delila, a 2009 Australian film that won the Camera dOr at Cannes in the same year, is a film featuring the lives of three Australian Aborigines. There is an upcountry Aborigines settlement very interior into the deep part of Australia. The small settlement has power connection and people live in a kind of 'antediluvian' open tenements, however has been made up of modern material, that have only a roof over them. Delila lives with her grandmother who suffers from senility and old-age diseases, for which she is getting treated in the mobile-makeshift hospital. Samson, our hero, has the unusual habit of sniffing petrol very often, on one occasion, he steals petrol from a car and does not use it when his vehicle runs out of the fuel. He wakes up every morning and sniffs petrol and comes out of his house to snatch his brother's guitar and plays on it blaring. He is enamored of Delila, who lives on the native art of making rugs, quilts and mats, along with her grandmother.

Samson follows wherever Delila goes. The old woman also suggests her of accepting him as her husband. All of a sudden the old woman dies, in her sleep, and the girl performs the act of cutting her lock, and is get beaten by neighbourhood woman for not caring the old woman. Samson steals a car of the neighbourhood and takes Delila with him to some city. There they meet an Australian vagabond who lives under a bridge and who also offers them food. They try to live out the days by stealing from a departmental stores and making attempts to sell Delila's decorated wall hangings and rugs. One day as they walk by, a group of white young men kidnaps Delila, rapes and leaves her to her fate. On another occasion, she is hit by a car and fractures her left leg. Unknown of her whereabouts, Samson resigns himself underneath the bridge and swoons out of fasting. Delila returns in a car to carry him to her native tenement, that is not the one she has shared with her grandmother, and the movie ends Delila doing everything to keep the almost invalid Samson up.

Samson seldom speaks in the movie. He deprives himself of his handicap of stammering when he is forced to utter his name for food from the vagabond Australian, the only occasion he has had the opportunity to speak. The movie portrays some of the customs of the aborigines, as Samson also cuts his hair as he has not found Delila as she has met with the accident. The final ritual of burying or cremating the dead is not shown in the movie. The dead grandmother is left there in her bed as the scene jumps to Delila cutting her locks and is getting beaten by the neighbours. The movie also includes scenes that show how the aborigine Delila is finding her art-works difficult to be sold. Whereas a 'Native Items Stores' display quotes a high price for the quilt that Delila's grandmother has made, along with her photograph. As far as the writer of this article is concerned, the movie gives out an opening into the livelihoods of the aborigines as they are torn between their nativity and the invaded cultural traits.