On SBS, NITV and streaming at SBS On-demand - Rod Bishop enthuses over THE BEACH (Warwick Thornton, Australia, 2020)

Warwick Thornton

Eighteen months ago, SBS broadcast the 14-hour The Kimberley Cruise, a slow TV event aboard the Coral Discoverer, a 72-passenger ship making its way from Broome to Darwin. 

It was excruciating viewing. The ship was too big to get anywhere close to the Kimberley coastline and for much of the 14-hours the land was a thin ribbon on the horizon.

The Beach, however, another slow TV event from SBS and NITV, takes place on one of those strips of land and is a wholly different experience. If the ship from The Kimberley Cruisewere passing by, it would be nothing but a speck on the horizon.

Indigenous filmmaker Warwick Thornton needed an extended alcohol-free break. He had a beach shack built at remote Jilirr (Chile Creek) on the Dampier Peninsula in The Kimberley, 30 minutes south of Lombardina. It’s a stunning location with kilometres of sand to drive and walk and huge tides capable of leaving his shack completely surrounded by water. In one of many stunning shots, the drone photography makes the shack look much like the house in the final shot of Tarkovsky’s Solaris.

Warwick brings three chooks with him, ostensibly for eggs, but also for something alive to talk to. He also talks to crabs, fish, his food, himself and inanimate objects like the traditional spear he adapts for hunting.

Warwick Thornton and vehicle

His vehicle is a work of art. Something like a cross between a rusted tank base and an open-topped desert-jeep, it looks like a wreck waiting to be resurrected by the lads from Bush Mechanics. (An English friend emailed me after watching an episode of Bush Mechanics remarking “I didn’t realise windscreens were optional”).

Most surprising however, is a lot of footage that should be called Cooking with Warwick, dish after dish methodically crafted and presented to himself like a night out at Tetsuya’s. There should really be a The Beach recipe book.

Given the fresh ingredients, the deal seemed to be for the crew to bring something fresh back from Lombardina where they bunk down for the nights, but Warwick is responsible for all the fresh protein. Which means mastering the spear or a net for fish and lobster; collecting crabs; clams; mussels and oysters. One of the chooks comes in handy, as well.

If all this sounds a bit thin for a 3-hours running time, Warwick’s son, cinematographer Dylan River produces some of the best images of remote Australia I have ever seen. Certainly, the best from the Kimberley. Ravishing landscape shots after ravishing seascape shots are interspersed with startling detail in and around the hut - the play of light on the tin and wood; the jars of spice and condiments; and, of course, Warwick’s ravaged visage. The cinematography is nothing short of magnificent.

Music from Melbournians The Dirty Three and Rowland S Howard isn’t too shabby, either.

Talking of her time with Warwick at CAAMA in Alice Springs, Rachel Perkins observed: “He just used to grunt and not speak much”.  And he grunts and swears a lot here too, but when he has a story to tell, it pours out eloquently, even though the chooks seem wholly unconcerned: “Are you listening to me, ladies?”

Somewhere in the final hour and without explanation, a dog appears, settling into the hut, sleeping on his bed and trotting around with Warwick as he goes in search of protein. He talks to it sometimes, but not very often. He seems afraid of it.

When it’s time to leave, a slimmer, energized Warwick packs up the jeep-tank and drives off down the vast beach. And the dog? 

No spoilers, but it is black.