Wolfram
Director: Warwick Thornton
Starring: Deborah Mailman, Pedrea Jackson, Thomas M. Wright
Genre: Under mined
Wolfram and its prequel Sweet Country (2017) are fascinating films. While they are based on true Indigenous Australian rural stories in the early 20th century, there’s an American Western feel to them. The Australian cowboys are the same violent mixed bag of characters you get in classic American Westerns. They even look similar! Combined with the complex Aboriginal family and personal dramas caused by the cowboys, the historical portrayals and the Northern Territory scenery, these films are well worth seeing.
Perhaps the only irony is that Wolfram is better than Sweet Country despite Sweet Country’s famous actors, Sam Neill and Bryan Brown. Wolfram’s little-known actors of all ages and heritages are great, the storyline is more interesting and the historical scenery is more realistic. Maybe that resulted from a better-invested budget.
The other great area of interest in the film, admittedly more for me than most people given my background as a geologist, was the historical mining of wolfram in the Northern Territory. Great risks were imposed on the Aboriginal kids who were simply lowered underground to blow up and bash the hard rocks. Many suffered as a result.
By the way, wolfram is now known more as tungsten in Australia, a super-strong metal and critical mineral still mined here. Hence the very clever film title: Wolfram is itself a ‘critical’movie.
Rating: Four-and-a-half critiques
