Between its evocative ensemble, fluid editing, and interest in Aboriginal culture, High Ground is worth a watch, even if it ultimately feels overshadowed by the message it’s trying to send rather than being defined by the story it actually tells.
What to stream this weekend: Netflix s The Woman in the Window, Those Who Wish Me Dead Brian Truitt, USA TODAY
Replay Video UP NEXT
Movie theaters are slowly reopening for the summer season, but new streaming films are still coming home to entertain you and your family during socially distanced times.
This weekend is headlined by two A-list actresses: Amy Adams stars as an agoraphobic New Yorker who witnesses a murder (or does she?) in a Netflix mystery thriller while Angelina Jolie is a Montana smokejumper protecting a boy from assassins and an out-of-control wildfire in an HBO Max survival flick.
âHigh Groundâ Review: Two Worlds Collide in the Outback
Directed by Stephen Johnson, this western set in Australia doesnât follow the expected narrative.
Jacob Junior Nayinggul in âHigh Ground.âCredit.Samuel Goldwyn Film
High Ground
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This outback western, set in Australiaâs Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, begins in 1919, depicting a brutal massacre of a group of Indigenous people known as Yolngu. Above the killing fray is a rifleman named Travis (Simon Baker), a member of the party of white people encroaching on the land. The group below has gone against the mission â Travis was supposed to be the only member of the party authorized to shoot â so he descends from his defensive position and tries to save the Yolngu. One surviving Indigenous witness is a young boy named Gutjuk (Jacob Junior Nayinggul).
THERE’S more to director Stephen Johnson’s NT film than merely good guys v bad guys.
The screenplay by Chris Anastassiades is more than merely an actioner, a tale of vengeance or a thriller.
It delivers a message that, in the midst of ongoing tensions between indigenous Australians and the rest of us, both sides need to recognise and do something to make things much better.
In the 1930s, the Commonwealth governed the territories directly. Beyond the European settlements in the NT, day-to-day governing involved police presence most of all and indigenous lives had little value. Most of the non-indigenous characters in “High Ground” are police. They’re doing their best but Aboriginal welfare is not high on their priorities list.
High Ground review – Simon Baker narrowly escapes white saviour tropes in colonial Australia Luke Buckmaster
“When you’ve got the high ground you control everything,” Travis (Simon Baker) tells Gutjuk (Jacob Junior Nayinggul) during a key moment in director Stephen Johnson’s meat pie western, shot on location in Kakadu national park and Arnhem Land and set in the early 20th century. This is what we call a “title drop”, an oddly satisfying moment given it simply consists of a person inside the narrative universe pronouncing the title of the film.
It isn’t one of those eye-rolling title drops, like when grizzly old Liam Neeson grumbled “she’s been taken” in Taken, or when a man unhelpfully told Casey Affleck “I pray for her, because she’s gone baby gone” in . yes . Gone Baby Gone. Johnson’s film – written by Chris Anastassiades and produced by Witiyana Marika, who was one of the founding members of Yothu Yindi and appears in a support