Key to the Aboriginal Australian cosmology is the concept of the Dreamtime, a sort of animistic trance state which functions as both a pre-historical antecedent to creation and a parallel reality running alongside it. An important part of this institution is the idea of songlines, landscape features that sync up to the rhythm of traditional melodies. Their progression traces the path of ancient dreaming beings, asserting the land as a tangible result of creation and an active feature of its ongoing existence. All this seems like exceedingly ripe material for a mystically-minded director like Werner Herzog, whose films grant equivalent status to the raw power of the earth and that of humans, who battle mightily to usurp its hegemony. The story of a land feud between English-Australian oil drillers and the natives who silently struggle against them, Where the Green Ants Dream holds firm to the power of illusions. Their quiet influence serve as a reminder that progress and civilization aren’t as all-encompassing as they might seem.
The green ants are an invented conceit based partially in actual mythology. Seemingly insignificant creatures, their presence beneath the earth sustains life on its surface. For the miners, the bugs, consecrated or otherwise, in a land carefully chosen by geological assays, are laughable obstacles. For the aboriginals, they mark an occasion important enough to sit in front of encroaching bulldozers, convinced that the destruction of the ants will spell the end of the world as we know it. Befitting his quixotic approach to filmmaking, Herzog seems to firmly side with the latter party. The miners are mostly presented as functionaries and figureheads, while the aboriginals are possessed with a shamanic sense of divine purpose. They congregate around holy places, keeping vigils that they view as essential to the continuation of fertility among their people. One such vigil occurs in a sacred spot now covered by a supermarket. The manager lets them stay; content to imagine that more children born will one day mean more customers.
There are moments of humor but Where the Green Ants Dream maintains the Teutonic director’s usual, steely disposition. The film’s comic potential is twisted into object lessons on the horrific absurdity of existence. The resulting film, despite a profusion of farcical elements, is as dry and arid as the Outback landscape it so marvelously captures. Perhaps the first Herzog movie that’s less about learning than declaring, it signals a significant shift in the director’s career, transitioning from a feverish contemplation of universal mysteries to didactic admonishment about preservation and protection. The lesson presented here is about arrogance, the dangers of refusing to acknowledge other ways of life and other philosophies, and most of all, to accord proper respect to the earth. This kernel of reproach has always been present in Herzog’s work, but his best films are about dreamers who refuse to obey sanctified codes and are either monumentally punished or perversely rewarded for their epic transgressions. Here there are no such outsized characters, leaving a familiar story of a cruel institution facing off against marginalized outsiders, neither party granted much depth or shading.
Mixing fact and fiction, the plot draws from the 1971 Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd case, the nation’s first litigation on the issue of Aboriginal land rights. Yet rather than explore the native perspective in any real way, the film reduces the protestors to mere features of the natural landscape, holding them up as mute defenders of an ancient tradition. Portrayed by non-actors and musicians drawn from the local Rirratjingu community, these characters end up providing little more than pictorial interest, their sun-baked skin casting them as extreme opposites to the white men attempting to dig into their land. The mining company is granted a similarly simplistic depiction, its various representatives appearing as stock villains fixated solely on the bottom line. The best moments come via the clash of landscapes and textures, the concrete-spackled coldness of Sydney contrasted against the dry earth tones of the outback, but even this interesting visual disparity feels borrowed from Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, offering little insight beyond a basic comparison of values.
The sole bit of expressive characterization comes through the embattled protagonist Lance Hackett (The Road Warrior’s Bruce Spence), a geologist who seems uncomfortable with his status as de facto representative for the mining company. In fact, his feelings are more complex. He’s another Herzogian seeker pushed by an vehement sense of ineffable purpose. But for all his passion, and his eventual change of allegiances, Lance is still more pencil-pusher than hero. The character possesses none of the dramatic heft or inspired madness necessary to carry along this story, and the relative absence of other dynamic figures here leaves Where the Green Ants Dream a film that’s beautiful but undercooked. At one point, as part of a deal struck with the oil company, two Aboriginal men are allowed behind the controls of a cargo plan, which they commandeer and fly off into the distance, never to return. Handled correctly, this could have been a beautiful moment: two supposed ‘primitives’, formerly rooted to the earth, now vanishing majestically into the heavens. But in this context, it’s just another puzzling incident, conveying a coherent story without pushing beyond any straightforward telling of the tale.