Charlie's Country is very much a character driven film, which follows the everyday misadventures of a member of the Aboriginee community, the titular Charlie (David Gullpill) who also collaborates with the police in helping them turn in criminals from his social class. But the narrative is far from being deductive, and rather moves in quite a naturalistic manner in which we gradually understand that even as the "blackfella" collaborates with the powerful white man, he is always destined to be crushed down and be overpowered by the totalitarian power of the white man.
This character driven storyline is rendered all the more hard hitting by the emphasis on atmosphere and tone, with plenty of silent sequences and long scenes that glorify the beauty of the Australian natural environment. Yet Charlie is a man who, despite his collaboration with the police, is forbidden to live the life that - as it is implied in the film - he and his ancestors were meant to live. He is looked upon suspiciously and even forbidden to hunt. On top of that, even the westernised influence of alcoholism becomes a segregational plague that even ends up getting him in trouble with the law.
Simply put, the film in itself is a sequence of human injustices. But inevitably, whilst remaining an ambitious vision, Charlie's Country all too heavily relies on a magnetic and yet soft spoken performance by its lead interpreter David Gulpill, whose very presence and his heavily wrinkled face would almost be enough to carry the whole film's emotional weight on its shoulders. A particulat scene in which he is finally brought to jail, he has his hair and beard shaven and become a Joan of Arc figure in the eyes of the audience and in the eyes of the singular viewer - a clear depiction of global injustice. But the focus of the film cannot rely on a performance alone, and thus falls flat with its methodical editing that does not allow breathing room for each individual shot that should have been appreciated in creating a meditative aura to the film that even make the prolonged close ups of Gulpill's face feel underwhelming and lacking in substantial effect.
