A surreal stillness permeates the air of Rolf de Heer’s new film, based in a dystopian world obviously intended as an allegorical statement about our own. Oppression and colonisation emerge as key themes in an almost dialogue-free experience that follows a protagonist, billed in the credits only as BlackWoman (Mwajemi Hussein), who guides the audience through hauntingly beautiful landscapes dotted with treacherous scenarios and beleaguered people. But beware any interpretation that prescribes precise meaning, because The Survival of Kindness is a tantalisingly elusive picture – the most enigmatic work yet from the veteran genre-flipping auteur.
One can never predict what a new de Heer film will feel like. Here, the mood is sparse and meditative, as cinematographer Maxx Corkindale (who recently shot the great documentary My Name Is Gulpilil) feasts on long shots of sun-scorched desert. They’re occasionally augmented with finer details: shadows projected on the parched ground; entangled bull ants moving around on it. This sort of visual restraint is worlds removed from other de Heer productions: his wall-rattling sci-fi flick Incident at Raven’s Gate; the grimy Bad Boy Bubby; the suburban aesthetic of Dance Me to My Song and The King is Dead!; the high-spirited energy of Ten Canoes.
BlackWoman begins The Survival of Kindness in a padlocked cage, dumped deep in the desert. The appearance of people wearing gas masks suggests this world has gone to the dogs, but we don’t know how or why. It seems the oppressors are the ones wearing masks, which have interesting symbolic implications: not just hiding human attributes but implying an unbreathable toxicity in the atmosphere. Before long BlackWoman escapes and starts wandering, soon happening upon an almost entirely destroyed building, sans ceiling and several walls.
Among the peculiarities of the film is a sense that the settings are steering or at least heavily influencing the story, rather than providing locations for drama to take place. As it plods forward, viewers will likely wonder whether the entire runtime will consist of BlackWoman wandering. The answer is more or less yes, but not in the ways you might expect, and not without many surprises en route, including the excellent, underused character actor Gary Waddell (who was brilliant in The King is Dead! and starred in the notorious 1975 film Pure Shit).
The final hour in particular explores very different places to the desert, not to be elaborated upon here. Suffice to say de Heer moves towards the cryptic, from visions of industrialisation to dramatic moments depicting the treatment of people of colour.
With this kind of approach, the artist must relinquish some control of the work when it comes to divulging meaning – because no two people will arrive at exactly the same reading (the same can be said of all art, but it’s especially true here). The solidifying element binding the film’s properties is Mwajemi Hussein’s softly entrancing performance. Her weary but kind face provides a warm focus point and a very compelling human anchor. Hussein – who had never been in a cinema prior to working on this film, let alone acted in a film – oozes restraint, turning herself into a sponge and a canvas, soaking up the environments and providing a space upon which meanings can be projected.
I used the word “dystopian” at the beginning of this review – that word, of course, signifying many grim things. We read it and envision dehumanisation, of ravaged societies full of suffering, of incomprehensible atrocities that have come to pass. This I think is the broad, shocking truth de Heer is getting at: that for Indigenous people, and people of colour around the world, “dystopia” is not a concept relegated to sci-fi films or Orwellian novels, but a lived reality. There may be a stillness in the air, but the film itself is always moving: not necessary on screen but certainly in our minds, including and especially after the credits roll. It’s richly meditative and burrows in deep.
The Survival of Kindness is in cinemas in Australia from Thursday
