Sam and his wife Lizzie (Natassia Gorey Furber) head deep into country, where they are forced to contend with hostile Indigenous tribesmen as well as the constabulary on their tail. The latter is bamboozled easily enough, with a dehydrated Sergeant Fletcher eventually led onto the salt flats. Serving as his own cinematographer, Thornton positions Bryan Brown at the edge of both sides of the frame in a series of wide shots, vividly framing his utter disorientation.

Ewen Leslie as Harry March in Sweet Country

Portentousness hangs over the whole thing, with the director and his editor, Nick Meyers, splicing split-second flashbacks and flash-forwards into the action throughout. A young policeman’s imminent death is cut to, briefly, seconds after we meet him. A shot of Sam and his wife running hand-in-hand to the hills is flung up, almost cruelly, right after the possibility of freedom becomes a moot point. The starkness of the editing is underlined by occasional flashes of gore, as well as the director’s decision to forgo a musical score. The only tune comes from Fred Smith, warbling a hymn over the campfire in one of the film’s rare stabs at humour.

Steven McGregor and David Tranter’s screenplay is less delicate than Thornton’s direction, but this might not be their fault. A thuddingly heavy-handed line – ‘What chance has this country got?’ – from Neill’s character towards the end is delivered with the actor’s back turned and in a wide shot; it might well have been added in post-production. The line’s literal-mindedness stands out all the more, because it comes during a sequence of formal idiosyncrasy: a Malick-like montage that movingly jumps between the aforementioned flashbacks and impressionistic images of a church-raising – as well as of the bloody vigilante justice doled out by the same community.

On a certain level the film is defiantly anti-Australian and makes no bones about it. But Sweet Country nevertheless presents its sole figure of governmental authority, a justice of the peace played by Matt Day, as unexpectedly enlightened and ultimately just, even if the trial he presides over changes nothing for the man in the dock. Given the condemnatory tone of everything else, the resolution of the trial is nicely unpredictable, if perhaps – in absolving the state – thematically inconsistent.

Trevon Doolan as Philomac in Sweet Country

Hamilton Morris is riveting as Sam, with an internalised performance that is compelling but recessive, partly because the film doesn’t actually adopt his point of view, preferring that of Philomac, the Indigenous son of Kennedy. It is from Philomac’s line of sight, behind a door, that we witness the shooting that kicks everything off, and it is the boy’s final rejection of his inheritance that provides the film with its coda. A memorable scene earlier on has him talking to another farmhand, an older man stolen from his country. The difference between them, Philomac says, is that ‘this is my country.’ The man just laughs. ‘You’re a blackfella, just like me,’ he says. ‘Poor thing.’

Sweet Country (Transmission Films), 113 minutes, directed by Warwick Thornton. In cinemas 25 January 2018.

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