Early on in this beautiful-looking and sweet-natured film, an old man tells a little boy: 'This is our land; it’s alive, it feels you, it knows you."
each perfectly framed shot delivers a payload of emotion
These words belong to Jagamarra (David Gulpilil). He is an Aboriginal elder and he’s talking to his grandson, 10-year old Pete (Cameron Wallaby) about the place they both call home: the northern Kimberley in Western Australia. And Pete doesn’t seem to want to listen. He yearns for the city, his absent mother and a place a long way from heat, dust, and slack-eyed cops looking for trouble.
Jagamara and Pete live in an abandoned desert drive-in. Pete plays in the dirt with old mechanical toys, seemingly imprisoned by a vast sky and an endless horizon where strangers rarely intrude and the rest of the world is a long way away.
To the restless eye, the Kimberley landscape may appear alien and fierce. You can see the heat quivering in the air. The red rocky surface promises discomfort. And it seems a lonely place.
Pete’s a dreamer but not a loner. He has a friend Kalmain (Joseph Pedley). This kid is wild, but not mean, a naughty boy with too much cheek and a low boredom threshold, a would-be ring leader in mischief; he plays with fire just so he can watch the flames dance. He’s a dangerous pal for Pete. Kalmain is one arrest away from juvenile detention.
The rhythm of life here with its familiar signs and steady force is overturned when a mining company emerges out the desert to evict Pete and Jagamara. In the spirit of courage that only the truly innocent can possess, Pete devises a plan to save the drive-in and the life he has known with Jagamara. He’ll cross the desert – two days travel – and confront the company bosses at their headquarters. Pete will point out their error. They’ll understand. He’s got less than a week to complete his mission.
Pete and Kalmain head off into the desert on their bikes. The cocky Kalmain doesn’t cope too well. But Pete seems to have breathed in his granddad’s lessons. He leads the pair through every hardship and treacherous encounter with an air of confidence that speaks of respect. He understands that the desert can kill; but it can be a friend too. It’s a question more than attitude, and deeper than bush skills. For Pete, it comes down to who you want to be, how you want to live, and a place you can call your own.
Writer-director Catriona McKenzie spent years developing Satellite Boy and you can feel that passion in every shot; the film has a dreamy ambience that transcends its dedication to verisimilitude. Using the tropes of the kid’s family film, she’s made a movie with the power of a parable. Short, direct, and immediate, it’s simple storytelling that pushes us to anticipate and indeed hope for, a happy ending. But underneath its feel-good form there is disquiet. In this film’s tight little plot, she observes with no outrage or rancour, lives of dysfunction, neglect, and poverty – and frankly – a casual racism that’s truly disturbing.
Still, McKenzie is not quite a social realist; her approach is mythic. What’s important in this movie has nothing to do with formal politics, Aboriginal leadership or even land rights per se. She reduces 'issues’ to what is elemental for her Indigenous characters: the earth, the sky, and the bush. It determines all the key choices here and it’s bigger than family and lifestyle.
This tension is played out in the film’s major subplot. Pete’s adventure reunites him with his mum, Lynelle (Rohanna Angus). While she dotes on him – spoiling him with new outfits, sweets and TV – Lynelle remains deeply engrossed in her own dreams of the future. Pete imagines a life with his mum and granddad in the bush; Lynelle is determined to resettle in Perth with her boyfriend. If Pete wants to come along, that would be fine too. But Pete doesn’t like collared shirts. His mum’s sterile flat seems like a fluro white box. City life has no space and no light.
Or to put it another way, McKenzie and cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson use space as the drama here. The film doesn’t have much dialogue and it’s not freighted with too much conventional melodrama. But each perfectly framed shot delivers a payload of emotion; we learn quickly about the characters simply by the way they relate to the landscape they inhabit.
All the major performers are fine, though some of the supporting cast, many of them amateurs, come off as a little awkward, but that hardly matters since Wallaby and Pedley are just brilliantly convincing throughout – and often very funny. I liked the score – by David Bridie – too. It’s bubbly, delicate and superbly shaded throughout, allowing for the dark in the story, but never giving into it.
Stripped of its specifics, McKenzie’s story offers a series of well-rehearsed themes familiar from a brief history of Indigenous cinema: the city vs. the bush, the spiritual vs. the material, family vs. independence, traditional vs. (white) secular life. Yet, none of this feels stale, tired or worse, preachy.
In the way McKenzie and co. explore the bush, its vastness, the way it works, its creatures, its splendours and perils and various characters – the desert, the forest, the streams – it reminded me most of all of Nic Roeg’s Walkabout (1971). That film was caught up in the mystic, too; it was a romance about the gulf between black/white cultures. McKenzie’s vision – earthier in a way – is quite different. For all of its mythic resonance, it is not fairytale. It’s about a real place and real people. More importantly, it’s tough-minded and smart and it has the sweet smell of lived experience embedded in every frame.
Watch 'Satellite Boy'
Tuesday 21 June, 6:00pm on SBS World Movies / Now streaming at SBS On Demand
Wednesday 22 June, 6:00am on SBS World Movies
Thursday 23 June, 2:10pm on SBS World Movies
Wednesday 22 June, 6:00am on SBS World Movies
Thursday 23 June, 2:10pm on SBS World Movies
Now streaming at SBS On Demand
PG
Australia, 2011
Genre: Drama, Family, Adventure
Language: English
Director: Catriona McKenzie
Starring: David Gulpilil, Cameron Wallaby, Joseph Pedley
‘Satellite Boy’. Source: Distributor
