The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

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.

Thomas Keneally's THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH novel works on so many levels - a period piece, as a biting satire and as a wonderfully composed drama. This film of the same name attempts to capture the poignancy and strength of the original classic novel. It achieves this wonderfully. The film is excellently acted and the violence is both well shot and vibrantly enacted. The score is great too. Also the Australian landscape - not to mention its social underbelly, was never shot with as much insight.

An excellent starting point to understand such great Aussie films like the tracker and rabbit proof fence.

10/10

Like the great film "Walkabout", "The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith" is a first-rate, world-class Australian movie! Director Fred Schepisi & writer Thomas Keneally have collaborated to artfully fashion a masterpiece!

Based on true events, this film vividly elucidates the repulsive ways in which White Australians mistreated Aboriginals in the early 1900s. For example, White men were unrelentingly domineering in their treatment of Aboriginal men whom they hired to perform work on their property. For example, when a White homesteader hires Jimmie to construct a split-rail fence, he demands results about 40 seconds after he hires Jimmie, instead of, say, one-half day. In addition, the homesteader intentionally cheats Jimmie out of the pay-rate they had agreed upon, because he claims that one of the posts Jimmie has sunk is one-half inch off. When Jimmie is done with the job, he is deliberately underpaid, & the White homesteader commands, "Now get off my property!"

Now Jimmy Blacksmith is a "half-breed" - one of his parents was White & one of his parents was Aborigine. He is also what the White Australians refer to as a "Missionary Black", which means that, as a very young child, he was taken away from his parents & his tribe, & was raised, churched, & educated by a White, Protestant minister, Reverend Neville. These "missionary" efforts were, in fact, an integral part of an overall strategy to destroy Aboriginal culture, lifestyle, native language, ethnic identity, & native religious beliefs. The Whites, simultaneously behaved as if they were performing some sort of kindly service for the Aborigines!

Now, throughout his youth & early manhood, Jimmie had to endure all manner of racial slurs & verbal jibes with a forced smile on his face, & he was constantly reminded of his "inherent inferiority." Perhaps most serious, were the frequent, thinly-veiled threats of physical violence.

In terms of systemically ingrained prejudice, if Jimmie were to happen upon an illiterate, White ditch-digger, he would be required to wear a forced smile upon his face & refer to the man as "Boss", even though Jimmie was bilingual, adept at reading & writing poetry & prose, & highly intelligent!

The breaking point comes at an Aboriginal tent-party, where a White man of no account has crashed the party. This White man & an Aboriginal man get into an alcohol-fueled altercation, & the White man draws a large knife & charges the Aborigine; in turn, the Aboriginal man draws a pistol & shoots the White man in the throat, & the White man dies soon thereafter!

There was no such thing as a fair trial for an Aborigine in White Australian courts, even if the Aborigine was acting in self-defense. First off, Aborigines had no legal standing in White courts; second, they were denied access to lawyers; third, since Aborigines had no legal standing, a trial by a jury of one's peers was impossible!

When Investigator Farrell - an Evil man & a drunkard - begins to frame the Aboriginal gunman for murder, he actually expects Jimmie Blacksmith to help him! For a very brief time, Jimmie goes through these motions, doling out to Farrell what he desires, but then Jimmie snaps, & he becomes an entirely different person.

The rest of the movie propels forward from this pivotal moment, & this reviewer will not reveal any more of the plot from this point on (no spoilers). Please watch the film for yourself!

9 out of 10 stars!

One of the handful of truly great, Australian films!

"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.

This is a fine example of the breed of excellent Australian films released in the 1970s during the Australian film renaissance (it's interesting to note that virtually all of the directors of these films, including director Fred Schepisi, later moved to the U.S. to make big budget Hollywood films). This tale of a young aboriginal man who eventually turns to violence following one humiliation after another by white settlers in 19th century Australia asks some very uncomfortable questions of the audience such as: Is it morally justified to use violence against a corrupt, racist, violent system in which there are no lawful means to receive justice? Additionally, it is up to interpretation whether the violent reactions of the title character are justified: we are clearly sympathetic to him in the beginning, but once he perpetuates incredible brutality on the settlers, can we remain sympathetic? He is definitely not a monster, but a well-mannered and educated Aboriginal brought up by missionaries. After all, his actions are not simply heat-of-the-moment reactions; he has formally "declared war" on the perpetuators of injustice. Does that legitimize what he is doing? The U.S. has been asking itself these exact same questions for the past 50 years: Jimmy is very much a close Australian cousin to Bigger Thomas, the main character in Richard Wright's classic American novel "Native Son" - a black man pushed to violence by virtually every aspect of white society.

However, like Wright, I admired director Schepisi's decision to carefully straddle the line between whether Jimmy can be viewed as a simple societal construct or whether he is a man in control of his own actions. One could easily make a case for either of these scenarios or probably both of them. That makes the movie even more uncomfortable when one thinks about it afterward.

In many ways, this is a very depressing movie; in the end there is no closure, no justice, and nobody has learned a damned thing, except possibly the audience, if they truly think about what they have just seen. I really respect filmmakers who tackle incredibly difficult subject matter such as this, with moral quagmires and complex characters. My only complaint is that it is very difficult to understand much of the Aussie English, so an American viewer must listen very closely. This is a film definitely deserving of a U.S. audience. Too bad that its controversial (i.e. thought-provoking) nature has probably prevented it from being released on VHS or DVD in the U.S. I understand copies of this are quite rare abroad, as well, so I suggest viewing it if given the opportunity.