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Half-Caste Agit-Prop [THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH]

From The Soho News (September 3, 1980). –- J.R.

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

Written and directed by Fred Schepisi

Based on the novel by Thomas Keneally

For a good 80 percent or so of its running time, the experience of seeing The

Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith affords a salutary, beautiful shock. Films that are

even halfway honest about racism — Mandingo and Richard Pryor Live in Concert

are the most recent examples that spring to mind — are so unexpected that

they’re often accused of being racist themselves, perhaps because of the deeply

rooted taboos that they expose and violate.

There’s no question that Fred Schepisi’s powerhouse Australian movie — adapted

from a novel by Thomas Keneally (who plays a small but significant role as a

lecherous cook), and “based on real events that took place in Australia at the

turn of the century” (just before the federation of Australian colonies) – is agit

-prop, ideologically slanted. But then again, it’s hard to think of any other

current release — including, say, The Empire Strikes Back and Dressed

to Kill -– that isn’t.

The aforementioned hits perform in part the not-so-innocent task of turning

contemporary objects of confusion and disgust (recent architecture and sex,

respectively) into occasions for exhilarated lyricism. The Chant of Jimmie

Blacksmith, no less a feast for the eyes, intermittently succeeds in doing some of

The reverse. What all three films do in relation to the way we live is equally

political, whatever their apparent intentions.

Despite a soupy soundtrack score, which seems at times to have been

composed for a sluggish spectacle directed by J. Lee Thompson, and a relish for

beginning sequences with startling close-ups that far exceeds any practical dramatic

utility that device can have, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is a stirring, often

ingenious piece of invective that deserves to be seen as widely as possible. It was

made two years ago, and, like a surprising number of other interesting foreign films

these days, has apparently circled the globe at least eight times before arriving in

up-to-date New York.

Meanwhile, it has been re-edited by writer-director Schepisi for the more fidgety

American market. (Perhaps significantly, he is currently at work on a film in

Hollywood.) From all the accounts that I’ve been privy to, however, the original

version — which also had a somewhat elliptical narrative — dragged in spots. The

present one doesn’t, although there is an expositional bump or two, and it appears

that the deleted 14 minutes are relatively negligible.

***

The title hero is a half-caste aborigine (forcefully played by Tommy Lewis), reared

and educated in a mission by Rev. Neville (Jack Thompson) and his wife Martha

(Julie Dawson) – charitable racists who decide to help him out simply because he’s

half-white. (As Martha points out to Jimmie, his grandchildren will be only one-

eighth black if he can marry a white woman. )

The film’s percussive pre-credits sequence – concentrating on the dynamic clash

between Jimmie’a aborigine culture and Christianity – economically establishes the

schizophrenia that dominates the film and its hero. When a friend whispered (apropos of Pauline Kael’s early gloss), “It’s not The Birth of a Nation, it’s The Wild Child,” I knew exactly what she meant.

Shot by Ian Baker in ravishing Panavision compositions that sometimes evoke

color photographs by Joel Meyerowitz (particularly those using door frames), the

early parts of the film chronicle Jimmie’s jobs in picaresque fashion. These

consist mainly of putting up fences for farmers, sheep-shearing, working in a

stable and tracking for the odious Constable Farrell (Ray Barrett), the scummiest

villain I’ve encountered in any film all year. The latter job ultimately entails

informing on a black man who is then sexually abused and murdered by Farrell,

while Jimmie tries not to listen. The hero is then ordered to bury his betrayed

friend and assist in the cover-up.

It’s around this point that Jimmie Blacksmith’s status and function in the film

become complex and interesting. Too complicitous by now in the evils of the

white world to qualify any longer as a simple, liberal victim in Schepisi’s crafty

dramaturgy, he nevertheless continues for some time to be the only plausible

identification figure. When, after suffering a great deal more intolerance and

provocation much later in the film (I’ve skipped a lot of the plot), he proceeds

to commit mass murder with the help of his Uncle Tabidgi (Steve Dodds), he

becomes a figure of extraordinarily ambiguous epic proportions — a Nat Turner

seen in Brechtian terms.

The only problem is, having performed this remarkable act of moral violence on the

spectator, Schepisi seems to have been at a loss about what to do next. As soon as

Jimmie becomes a fugitive outlaw (“I’ve declared war, that’s what I’ve done”), his half-

brother Mort (a purer aborigine appalled by Jimmie’s continuing violence, played by

the very expressive Freddy Reynolds) becomes the central identification figure –

a sort of pagan, pre-intellectual Pierrot le fou.

Then McCready (Peter Carroll), an asthmatic white schoolteacher taken along as

hostage by Jimmie and Mort, emerges briefly as the film’s moral spokesman,

especially when he addresses Jimmie about Mort: “He’s not really your brother, he’s

an aborigine. There’s still too much Christian in you. It’ll bugger him up, the way it’s

buggered you.”

But by this time, the narrative focus has become too diffuse. When the film finally

resumes its concentration on the title hero, he has turned into an allegorical and

mythical Christ figure, wounded and unconvincing – rather like James Mason at the

end of Odd Man Out.

The lapse is unfortunate, but far from lethal. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith still

contains enough energy and insight and talent to warrant a look from anyone,

whatever its flaws. If Schepisi’s next film achieves even a fraction of what this one

sets out to do, it’ll clearly be something to watch.