When the end credits start rolling on High Ground, a curious thing happens.
You won’t scramble for the bathroom, you won’t reach for your phone, you won’t even look at the person next to you to trade thoughts on what you’ve just seen.
You’ll still be processing those thoughts, but you’ll also be glued to the list of names scrolling up the screen, awed by the number of Indigenous artists and community members involved in or acknowledged by the production of this sensational and visceral Australian film.
Directed by Stephen Maxwell Johnson from a script by Chris Anastassiades and a story by Johnson, Anastassiades and Yothu Yindi co-founder Witiyana Marika, High Ground is a film many years in the making and one certainly worth the wait.
Australian storytelling that packs a punch and pushes you to think deeply about the history of this country, High Ground captures the raw beauty of Arnhem Land as it does the brutality of colonialism. It’s not always an easy film to experience, but it’s not meant to be.
While it stylistically nods to American westerns, the landscapes, shot by cinematographer Andrew Commis, are distinctly Australian, as is the story it tells of dispossession, dehumanisation and violence.
Though it has a cast that includes Simon Baker, Jack Thompson, Aaron Pedersen, Ryan Corr and Caren Pistorius, it’s newcomer Jacob Junior Nayinggul’s enrapturing presence which elevates every frame.
Nayinggul isn’t a star in the making, he clearly already is. He possesses an indelible quality, both sensitive and forceful, a rare, magnetic mix that locks into the audience and never lets go.
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In 1919, army veteran sniper Travis (Baker) was in charge of a police operation that turned into a massacre when two of his colleagues open fire on an Indigenous tribe, indiscriminately shooting every man, woman and child.
Travis takes the one survivor, a small child named Gutjuk, to the Christian mission outpost, and leaves the police force after it was decided the massacre would be covered up.
Unknown to the authorities at the time, there was another survivor, Baywarra (Sean Mununggurr), a warrior and Gutjuk’s uncle. Twelve years later, Baywarra and his “Wild Mob” are raiding white settlements in revenge and after a woman is killed, the territory police are on the hunt.
A reluctant Travis is blackmailed into joining the search by the police chief Moran (Thompson). Gutjuk (Nayinggul), now 18 and having been raised by the mission, is recruited as a tracker to help Travis find Baywarra.
There is a deficit of trust among all those involved – Travis doesn’t trust Moran, Gutjuk doesn’t trust Travis – and a reckoning is coming.
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While not based on a specific real-life incident, High Ground is inspired by the stories Marika (who also plays tribal elder Grandfather Dharrpa) heard from his family over the years.
It’s an exploration of the vicious history that Australians have yet to reconcile and High Ground shows us that there can be no healing without confronting what came before. The massacre scenes are particularly rough but there is no sugar-coating it or making it palatable.
High Ground isn’t a classic narrative in that there are bad guys that must be overcome, and the worthy emerges victorious to face a new, better day. It’s not that simple.
If anything, High Ground is a potent reminder that Australia’s history is a living history, not yet finished, not yet in the past.
Rating: 4/5
High Ground is in cinemas from Thursday, January 28 with some sneak previews on January 26
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