Film review: ‘THE SURVIVAL OF KINDNESS’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

The eerie, dystopian parable, The Survival Of Kindness is the latest film for one of Australia’s most intriguing filmmakers, Rolf de Heer.  Like an Avant Garde play expanded to the big screen, this film relies more on visual metaphor than plot which will prove perplexing and possibly irritating for some viewers.  Those looking to surrender their normal cinema-going needs for something challenging, experimental and often downright weird, will probably be rewarded.

Set in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic world where a strange ruling class walks around with gas masks, the film sees a woman simply referred to in the credits as BlackWoman (Mwajemi Hussein) left in a cage in the desert.  Eventually escaping what would be a death trap in the desert sun, she begins a strange odyssey through the outback and the creepily empty surrounding towns.  Encountering random people, it seems the world is afflicted by some sort of plague as those not wearing gas marks are dying and covered in soars. This appears to be a reference to the COVID pandemic although exactly what de Heer is trying to say is a little unclear.  Just to make thing weirder, nobody speaks or at least not in an intelligible language, they just grunt or make strange noises like Mr Bean.

This film appears primarily to be a parable of race relations and the oppression non-white people in Australia while also evoking Black Lives Matter globally.  Nearly everyone seems hostile to the woman and at one point she’s re-captured, imprisoned and forced to work in a hellish factory.  The others at the factory and the only ones with whom the woman communicates are two young Indian people. It seems, rather than make decisive points about race politics, though, de Heer wished to evoke a bizarre, threatening and disorientating world of the kind a non-white person might experience.

Even if audiences find this film’s plot a little too odd, they couldn’t help but impressed by the film’ aesthetics with de Heer’s typically mesmerising direction and Maxx Corkindale’s vivid cinematography capturing the stifling heat and rugged texture of the desert. The film’s mysterious mood is also underscored by an evocative score from Anna Liebzeit.  Foremost, though, is the near wordless but powerfully expressive performance from Mwajemi Hussein.

Some will find this film insufferably pretentious but for many it’s strange Alice: Through The Looking Glass view of Australia will prove fascinating, disturbing and very hard to forget.

Nick’s rating: ***1/2

Genre: Drama/ Science Fiction.

Classification: M.

Director(s): Rolf de Heer.

Release date: 4th May 2023.

Running time: 96 mins.

Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.

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