The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

Truly startling and mortifying and a real challenge because it shows everything as plain as it needs to be shown. It takes its time to show Jimmie as a man who is put down upon at every step by those he works for, under so many who see him at every turn as less than. Compounding that is that he elopes with a white woman, and she seems to have his child (until, well, you should watch to see the reveal on that which makes for a further wrinkle for Jimmie), and that others tell the woman to get away because... he's Black, after all, what, he cant be a farher.

So when Jimmie finally snaps, it is not shown as some inevitable act, it is more as many common acts of violence are in the world: brutal, stupid and sudden escalation, which gets reframed by everyone, Jimmie and the White citizens, as "right" and "wrong." The thing aboht "Chant" is it's a story that means to reckon with the very real horrors of racism (it could be America or Australia or South America or anywhere), while at the same time the filmmakers are not making Jimmie Blacksmith into a sympathetic figure (which would be... not sure what that movie looks like!)

Or, let me amend that, it is not that there isn't some sympathy that Shlepsi and company have for Jimmie, rather that he and the writers show that he is a man, originally shaped by a very low-wrung working class life with little education and the double problem of being mixed race (which is commented on later on in the film by the white folks who did care for him, in their way, once), so he is of his time just like everyone else is of their time. And everyone is already so scared of their own shadows that the murders make it into bedlam.

You know Jimmie has gone way over the edge once he commits those murders, but going into the movie I had the (very) mistaken impression it was a series of revenge killings. But there isn't any sense in what is going on as being righteous or worth having some vicarious "yeah, you go, Jimmie!" Like say, oh, Django Unchained to give a basic example. While it's extreme to compare it to, oh, 12 Years a Slave, it is a film that looks on in despair at what humanity is capable of.

The violence here is quick and ugly and senseless, and by the end there is little catharsis. But throughout the film there are nuances to the depictions of the Whites, and not everyone is out to immediately snuff out one of the Aborigines like Jimmie - the focal point to me about three quarters in with the more bookish man that Jimmie and his brother take along and they actually sit and talk, and while he brings up to Jimmie the bigger picture of what White's have given to Aborigines (alcohol, diseases, school), what so powerful is how muted it is. This isnt some giant dramatic scene, it is low key and sad and grubby.

Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is not always an easy watch except that Shlepsi is a terrific director of actors (Tom E Lewis's debut! But also Thompson, Barrett and Punch in a difficult role) and keeps the pacing here moving along well while finding time for meditative images (extreme close ups of ants and bugs in perpetual violence and conquering of their own), and even though it's set in the late 19th century, turn of the 20th, it packs a message without being preachy.

Deals with the antihero that goes over the edge...beyond obvious comprehension. Many miss the point...."he's half white." This film explore what structural racism produces, especially in that individual that seems to have the chance of crossing lines. Instead these are the individuals that are repeatedly humiliated and demeaned by those they are seeking acceptance from. This is the point of the film. It is the potential from the "half breed" that contextualizes the journey to where is own people/ family see him as a devil. He is a man gone rabid...tormented by the world he does not fit. This film is moving on many levels and provides a glimpse into a history foreign to many. A tragedy in the deepest sense.

Well intentioned and well meant, I am sure, but director Fred Schepisi is perhaps a little too reverent in his interpretation of the original book to the detriment of a smooth and effectively flowing cinematic narrative. There is an awful predictability here and for a lengthy film not really enough for the viewer to get their teeth into. It is true that the violent incident that transforms the action does come as a surprise in so far as the extent of the violence is concerned but it is something that has been signalled for a while. Beautifully shot, this is an attractive looking outback and countryside that is presented but the film is preceded by Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) which is far more beautiful overall and Walkabout (1971) which is far more dramatic. Jimmie Blacksmith has some fine sequences portraying the indigenous peoples but less maybe is more and these do not seem as dynamic as those in Nick Roeg's film. it is tempting to wonder just how much Schepisi was influenced by the rock formations and aboriginal depiction in the earlier films but it seems a little unfair and if the political and racial issues are a little heavy handed is to be applauded that he tackled them at all.

"The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith" was part of the Australian "New Wave" of the seventies and eighties, and like a number of other New Wave films ("Manganinnie", "Picnic at Hanging Rock", "Breaker Morant", "Gallipoli", "The Man from Snowy River") it deals with the country's history. It is based upon Thomas Keneally's novel of the same name, which based on actual events which occurred in 1900. Two young Aboriginal brothers, Jimmy and Joe Governor, and their accomplice Jack Underwood, carried out a number of robberies and murders, killing a total of nine white people. After a manhunt Underwood and Joe were killed by the police and Jimmy was captured and later hanged.

Jimmy Governor is here renamed Jimmie Blacksmith. He is of mixed race, clearly intelligent, and reasonably well educated, having been brought up by a clergyman and his wife. He even marries a white girl. (Unlike South Africa and the American South, Australia had no taboo against racial intermarriage- in some circumstances it was even encouraged). Because of the racism which was endemic in Australian society at this period, however, Jimmie discovers that white people are unwilling to treat him as an equal. He is cheated and exploited by his employers and treated as barely human. Furious at his mistreatment, Jimmie snaps. He, along with his brother Mort and their uncle Tabidgi, declares war on white society and goes on a rampage that leaves several people dead.

On its release in 1978, the film was acclaimed by the critics, but was a box office flop in Australia. Possibly audiences were dissuaded from seeing it by its reputation of graphic violence, or possibly Australians did not want to be reminded of their country's racist past. The film's financial failure led to its director, Fred Schepisi, leaving Australia to work in Hollywood.

In Britain the film's reputation was a strange one. Although the British Board of Film Censors had passed it for screening, uncut, in 1978, before 1984 the BBFC only had jurisdiction over films shown in cinemas, not over video releases. When the early eighties saw a widespread moral panic about violent videos, "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith" was branded a "video nasty", by the Director of Public Prosecutions and placed on a banned list meaning that video copies could be seized by the police, even though it could quite legally be shown in cinemas. The film found itself in some strange company. Most of the other films on that blacklist were just exploitative schlock, the cinematic equivalent of junk food, but Schepisi's film was a serious piece of film-making, an attempt to examine the social and psychological causes of violent crime. Schepisi (who wrote the script and acted as producer as well as director) was not trying to excuse Blacksmith's crimes, still less to revel in them as the makers of many video nasties did, but he was trying to understand the social forces which could drive an intelligent and seemingly promising young man to murder and robbery. He is assisted by an excellent, and very powerful, performance from Tommy Lewis in the central role. Forty years on from the video nasty panic, we can perhaps appreciate Schepisi's intentions more clearly. 7/10.

Fred Schepisi's 1978 film may well be just that but it's not included in my Australian Cinema 12 disc boxed set and I've never known it to be on TV, here. I became aware of it through my old film 'bible' Halliwells and they rated it very highly, awarding a rare maximum score, citing it as 'one of the greatest achievements in Australian cinema'.

It's taken me a good number of years to finally find a copy that was on region of DVD I could play and wasn't a silly price.

The first thing you notice is the sheer authenticity. Language is as brutal as any and is more akin to a Victorian Scorsese than starched collars and stiff upper lips. The language used to describe the aboriginal natives is as coarse and racist as you'll find in any gritty 70's set LA cop show and for that it is both upsetting and rather embarrassing, but at least goes to show the leaps and bounds humankind has largely made on this issue, since.

Jimmie Blacksmith is a half-cast, a subject that has been visited in a few memorable films, particularly 'Rabbit Proof Fence' and as 'these' were often the result of rape against white women, were seen as worse than the lowest. Jimmie (superbly played by Tommy Lewis) does have an advantage, he's overseen by the local white vicar and is known as a hard and honest worker.

He soon goes on to work for white farmers, along with his fully aboriginal brother, erecting fences. Miles of them. He does too good a job and they don't want to pay, so he moves on. His relationship with a white girl, then marriage results in a child, that by colour alone, cannot be his. Then, around half-way in, all this pent-up anger boiling up inside the civilised and decent Jimmie erupts. This is when the violence (extreme in its day, now, maybe sadly, average) erupts as he goes on a vengeful killing spree.

I need not go further than this, except that obviously, he is then a wanted criminal and a fugitive on the run.

There's a real sense of the epic, with cinematic hints and nods to Nicolas Roeg's 'Walkabout', with the natural geography, fauna and the culture all vividly brought to life, superbly filmed by Ian Baker .

Thankfully - hopefully, this can now be seen as a historical drama, the like of which can never happen again. It is as hard-hitting and making as powerful a statement on in-bred racism there is and is without doubt a five star classic.