Every once in a while I run across a film that I really enjoy and want to share with everybody. It just seems to have all the ingredients and they all come together perfectly.
"The Sapphires" is such a film. It is a small film and I would suggest getting out to catch it before it disappears.
This film is entertaining, informative and just plain fun, with some great performances and lots of terrific music.
The film takes place in the time period around 1968. The aborigines in Australia had been a much discriminated against group of people and in the '60s and '70s things were just beginning to get a bit better for them.
Four aboriginal sisters and cousins get together to form a singing group.
At first they sing country and western music and are made fun of by their white neighbours.
David Lovelace, played by Chris O'Dowd, a down-on-his-luck musician hears them and immediately recognizes their potential. He arranges an audition for them and the group winds up being hired to sing for American troops in Vietnam. But before any of this can happen, the girls need some advice about what kind of music the troops will appreciate and lessons in how to perform on stage. Lovelace appoints himself their manager and teaches them what they need to know. Then the group sets off to Vietnam.
The girls are great. There is love in the air. The troops love the girls and the girls love the adulation and the soldiers they meet. Lovelace falls in love with the oldest and most cantankerous of the girls.
The girls wind up in some of the hottest spots in Vietnam and even come under direct fire. But the fires of war turn them into a terrific singing group. When Loveless is wounded during a Viet Cong attack, the girls manage to get back to Saigon and are there the night Martin Luther King is assassinated. At this point the girls are asked to cool the tempers of the Black soldiers stationed in Saigon while riots erupt in a number of cities in the United States and one American ghetto after another is put to the torch.
In the end the girls return to Australia where Loveless recuperates from his wounds and the girls become symbols of what aborigines can accomplish when they are given the opportunity.
It's a wonderful story of love and success. The acting is outstanding and the film tells a compassionate story well and succinctly. The script was written by the son on one of the real girls and is based on true events.
Go see "The Sapphires". You'll enjoy it!
Larry Anklewicz. B.A., LL.B., is a lawyer, writer and film and video reviewer. Mr. Anklewicz is author of “A Guide To Jewish Films On Videos” and has been a columnist for Canada Free Press, the Canadian Jewish News, and other local newspapers. Mr. Anklewicz worked with the Toronto Jewish Film Festival for thirteen years, the last eight years of which he served as Program Coordinator and Program Director.
