And another directed by Reynolds – 2015’s excellent Another Country, an essay-like analysis of Gulpilil’s then home town of Ramingining in the Northern Territory, which uses the location as a case study to explore incompatible aspects of white and Indigenous Australian cultures.īut My Name Is Gulpilil is on another level: so sublimely made, so humane, so elegant in construction. There have been other nonfiction productions about or involving the actor, including Bill Leimbach’s 48-minute documentary Walkabout to Hollywood, from 1980, which contains interesting footage revealing Gulpilil’s intellect and personality as a (much younger) artist. He introduces the film as “my story of my story”, implying dual layers: his life and his life in film. Molly Reynolds’ film This Is Gulpilil plays out in the spirit of a living wake, celebrating its subject while contemplating the inevitable. But Gulpilil is under no illusions about his own situation, declaring he is going “back to country on a one-way ticket”. Throughout the course of the running time he philosophises on differences in attitudes towards medicine in white and Indigenous cultures, the former involving its determination to “win” – to “beat” or “conquer” illness. Living in Murray Bridge, South Australia with his carer Mary, who he says will be “with me until I’m gone”, we see Gulpilil take pills – including for pain management and anxiety – and puff on an inhaler. Back then Gulpilil was a teenager with a cheeky gleam in his eyes – now, in his 60s with lung cancer, his spirit and humour are still apparent but those eyes have dimmed.
SUBLIME DOCUMENTARY FULL
Gulpilil has been present on our screens for a full half century, his career beginning with a breakthrough performance in Nicolas Roeg’s great 1971 film Walkabout. They flow out of it, as if they are a natural part of the man himself.
One Buñuelian shot captures the actor from above, lying with his eyes closed in a coffin with red lining, his body covered in old film reels. The film plays out in the spirit of a living wake, celebrating its subject while contemplating the inevitable. Nehme) feature like personal footprints, snapshots of a life impressed on to celluloid.
Moments from his films (so smoothly integrated by editor Tania M. Plenty are sampled in My Name Is Gulpilil, which oscillates between present and past, drawing on portrayals plucked from the actor’s rich oeuvre to illustrate different parts of his life and character – his story, this time, not someone else’s.
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