The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

Berlin Film Festival 2020

High Ground

Berlin Film Festival 2020: High Ground | Review
23 February 2020
Oliver Johnston
Avatar
Oliver Johnston
23 February 2020

Movie and show review

Oliver Johnston

High Ground

★★★★★

Links

TwitterFacebookWebsite

Special event

It’s not as though every film needs to be viewed through a lens of contemporary wokeness, but surely at some point, given all the Australian government film initiatives that funded High Ground, someone would have said, “So we’re kind of doing another white saviour thing. Are we sure about this?”

Travis (Simon Baker) is a policeman working in Australia’s Northern Territory in 1919. A manhunt escalates into the bloody massacre of a number of local Aborigines, leading Travis to seek the quiet life, which by local standards involves hunting crocodiles. Years later, Travis is coerced into leading another manhunt when Baywara (Sean Mununggur), a survivor of the massacre, begins attacking local farms. Travis sets out, accompanied by young Gutjuk (Jacob Junior Nayinggul), who survived the massacre as a child, and who has his own agenda.

Early 20th-century rural Australia was akin to the wild west, and the film (primarily shot on location in the Northern Territory’s Arnhem Land) brilliantly evokes the dangerous beauty of the landscape, even though crossing these seemingly vast distances appears to involve a fairly short commute by horse, or even on foot. Visually striking, and with the bones of an excellent film, it’s ever so slightly disappointing that the narrative falls short, becoming weighed down by its own worthiness.

It’s purportedly inspired by true events, and yes, it’s historically accurate to have a character call an Aborigine a black bastard before attempting to execute him at point blank range, but accuracy doesn’t result in a well-rounded character, and it’s the antagonists of High Ground who suffer from being underwritten. Callan Mulvey’s Ambrose is dishearteningly one-dimensional, despite Mulvey’s best efforts. His character should have had a longer moustache so that he could twirl it while laughing villainously. As Tommy, the Aboriginal boy raised by Christian missionaries who reverts to his indigenous name Gutjuk, Nayinggul is highly impressive.

The action sequences of High Ground are thrillingly brutal, but while the film is sporadically intriguing, it doesn’t feel as epic as it wants to (or should) be.

★★★★★

Oliver Johnston

High Ground does not have a UK release date yet.

Read more reviews from our Berlin Film Festival 2020 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the Berlin Film Festival website here.

Watch the trailer for High Ground here:

Related Itemsreview

More in Berlinale

A Little Love Package

★★★★★
Oliver Johnston
Read More

Sonne

★★★★★
Selina Sondermann
Read More

Gangubai Kathiawadi

★★★★★
Selina Sondermann
Read More

“I was always trying to find this equilibrium between improvising and following the script”: Carla Simón on Golden Bear-winning Alcarràs

Sarah Bradbury
Read More

A E I O U – A Quick Alphabet of Love: An interview with Nicolette Krebitz

Selina Sondermann
Read More

Berlinale 2022: Awards predictions and highlights from the festival

Selina Sondermann
Read More

Concerned Citizen

★★★★★
Oliver Johnston
Read More

So-seol-ga-ui yeong-hwa (The Novelist’s Film)

★★★★★
Selina Sondermann
Read More

Rimini: An interview with director Ulrich Seidl

Selina Sondermann
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Movie and show review

Oliver Johnston

High Ground

★★★★★

Links

TwitterFacebookWebsite

Special event

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Ladies’ fashion: Seven wardrobe staples for summer
    Fashion & Lifestyle
  • Julius Caesar at Shakespeare’s Globe
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Operation Mincemeat at Riverside Studios
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Viagra Boys at the Forum
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • The Buddhist on Death Row by David Sheff
    ★★★★★
    Literature
  • Florence and the Machine – Dance Fever
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • The Road Dance
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Rhino
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • The Innocents
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Benediction
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Florence and the Machine – Dance Fever
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • Warpaint – Radiate Like This
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • Operation Mincemeat at Riverside Studios
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Viagra Boys at the Forum
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • “There’s something very tender if you reconnect with your parents when they’re falling into pieces”: Gaspar Noé on Vortex
    Cinema & Tv
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

Berlin Film Festival 2020: Undine | Review
Berlin Film Festival 2020: All the Dead Ones (Todos os Mortos) | Review