REVIEW: Utopia (2013, Dir. John Pilger and Alan Lowery)

A while back, and I'm talking a long while back, I read John Pilger's 'A Secret Country'. It is one of those books that said the right things to me at the right time. I've carried a lot of Pilger's dissection of my homeland around with me ever since. Pilger's not one to mince words. He's not one to tip-toe around a situation. In fact, if anything, he ploughs right in, oblivious to those around him. That hasn't won him many friends, at least not in Australia.

Early in 'A Secret Country' (or it may be in one of his later books, perhaps 'Hidden Agendas') Pilger talks about his experience writing about the poverty he witnessed in an Aboriginal camp just outside the city. He recounts his editor lambasting him for presenting such "known facts" as news. The facts may be known but Australian society has always preferred them to stay swept under our national carpet. Pilger, to this day, has made a career out of making sure that doesn't happen.

It is no surprise then that there is nothing new to be seen in Utopia, Pilger's latest documentary about the ongoing plight of Aboriginal people in Australia. That is not a criticism. In fact, Pilger uses that idea as his most damning point. How can the situation of our nation's first peoples be in almost exactly the same state as it was when the journalist made his 1985 documentary The Secret Country: The First Australians Fight Back? Thirty years on and we are still needing to be told the same truths.

Utopia is a sprawling piece of film making and not necessarily in a good way. Pilger opens with the somewhat questionable premise of travelling from Australia's richest suburb in Canberra to its poorest region, the rather sardonically named Utopia, then opens the floor up to almost any nation quaking facts he can get his hands on. He touches on the stolen generation, Aboriginal deaths in custody, the intervention and the frontier wars, as well as white Australia's apathy/disdain towards all of this. Utopia is not a disciplined documentary but it doesn't matter, Pilger is doing what needs to be done: throwing it back in our faces.

He's a partisan narrator, an antagonistic interviewer and a bloody minded researcher but in the end what Pilger presents is truthful to the point of being self evident. My only disappointment is that his unceremonious approach and still-under-developed film making skills open his facts up to dismissal on artistic grounds. His work, hard hitting as it is, sticks out like a sore thumb when set against the more polished feature documentary fare in cinemas nowadays. But let's face it, even if Utopia were exceptionally slick, its content is so damning that it would never escape unthinking dismissal. We'd always find an excuse not to listen.

Australian ears are blocked to Pilger's song. Then, one can't help but feel it is not meant primarily for our ears.

With that in mind, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my Sunday morning screening almost two weeks into the film's run, was remarkably full. I was even more surprised to hear the film pull applause as the credits rolled. It was heartening after having been reminded so forcefully of our harrowing and continuing history.

I'd recommend Pilger's film to all Australians, though I fear not too many will take up the opportunity. Utopia is a blunt instrument but at this point, it is probably exactly what this country needs.

★★★☆

Trailer: