Warwick Thornton delivers a striking confessional in The Beach

The timing is sublime. In The Beach, a gilded, natural light-filled essay-documentary from leading Australian filmmaker Warwick Thornton, the Indigenous director becomes the subject as he enters into a state of isolation, holing up in a beach shack on the north-west coast of Western Australia. Procuring supplies, cooking favourite dishes, working on his personal health – Thornton has captured the emblematic tasks of the coronavirus’ stay-at-home era and made them into a statement of renewal.

These six half-hour episodes, each impeccably crafted, pre-empt 2020’s pandemic procedures. As the press release accompanying the series says, Thornton “has chosen to try giving up life in the fast lane”. That suggests a retreat from excess, although in most regards The Beach is allusive about Thornton’s motivation. There is no voice-over narrative, no ruminative confessions. His occasional audience are the chickens he’s bought with him. “Behave yourself,” Thornton warns them.

Thornton may be fleeing something – still wearing a suit, he dunks himself into the ocean on arrival as an act of cleansing – but he’s also embracing his creativity. As you would expect from the creator of features such as Samson and Delilah, a prizewinner at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009, and Sweet Country, the series is intensely cinematic. The setting sun is perfectly framed through the corrugated metal hut’s openings, while drone shots lift off from Thornton to reveal the scope of his rugged, untouched surroundings, and his own insignificance.

A small crew is credited, including Thornton’s son Dylan River as director of photography, and there are no pretences of low-tech awkwardness. The Beach was deliberately made, possibly with an outline or artful improvisation. One way to view the hut is as a symbol of Thornton’s state of mind – during high tides it’s cut off by waist-deep waters from the land around it, and he has to wade back. Eventually there are anecdotes, delivered to the chooks and the camera, that illustrate how his life took shape. No verdicts are given.

As television this is rarefied territory: contemplative, quiet, and sometimes granular. You can find your own interpretations, possibly in the lines a frustrated Thornton cuts and shapes garlic into, or the calming rhythms of his cooking; he produces, through unexplained but instinctive steps, dishes with a vivid beauty. A Kaytetye man, born and raised in Alice Springs, Thornton works on foraging and preparation skills from his youth that have grown rusty, and there’s a reassuring simplicity to his quotidian chores.

The Beach can be watched as an immersive whole or sampled slowly over six half-hour episodes, either way communicates the connection Thornton is making with himself and the audience. And as striking as the image-making is, the filmmaker is a rough-hewn host with a dry sense of humour. “You better hope this works,” he mutters to the chickens while fashioning some fishing gear, “because I’m real hungry.”

Chances are you’ll watch either five minutes and change channels or appreciate the complete series. Whatever the outcome, credit lies with Thornton for approaching this reappraisal with an artist’s instincts, and SBS and NITV in giving the finished work such prominence. Television is now so ubiquitous, so streamlined, that we can easily forget just how wide the parameters it allows for are. With its gorgeous compositions and bittersweet moods – Thornton’s tasks can feel like tests of his self-discipline he’s intent on passing – The Beach has its own way of making you a convert. You won’t be overwhelmed by the series, but you can surrender to it.

The Beach is on SBS, Friday, 7.30pm and SBS on Demand.