Where The Green Ants Dream

This film about a confrontation between a fictional mining company (in fact based on bauxite miners, Nabalco) and an Aboriginal tribe whose sacred ground is under threat is not an unlikely project for Herzog who has made many films dealing with the clash of cultures and world view. Here, however he does not manage to give his subject-matter more than didactic form. Unlike Heart Of Glass (1976), set in his native Bavaria, with which this film shares much stylistically, Herzog probably simply lacked enough familiarity with his subject matter.

Although Bob Ellis gets a guernsey for “additional dialogue”, there is no credit for the script which, one assumes was written by Herzog who dedicates the film to the memory of his recently-deceased mother. Whilst credit must go to Herzog for tackling issues that Australian film-makers up to that time had not, the main problem is that the Aborigines have no more than a passive role in the film whilst the whites are in the main the usual racist types . Bruce Spence occupies the bridging ground but someone might have told Herzog that he was best known as a comic character actor, his central role here destabilizing any attempt at serious drama.

The result is a simple black/white opposition with no dramatic life that drags under the burden of its moral exposition, the commendability of its ambitions and sometimes striking visual imagery notwithstanding..

 

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