My Brilliant Career

Another of my recent movie viewings was the Australian movie My Brilliant Career.

Judy Davis plays Sybylla Melvyn, a young woman living on a struggling ranch with her parents and younger siblings in Australia just before the turn of the 20th century. Sybylla is a dreamer, writing the great Australian novel in her journal and playing the piano when she's got chores to do around the house. Indeed, the family needs her to be doing those chores because of the monetary problems her parents are having. Not only that, but Sybylla is getting to the age where she really should be working a real job of her own to pay her own way, such as a maid's job which was the sort of thing for young women of her position at the time.

Unsurprisingly, Sybylla rebels at this notion, and a lifeline is thrown her way in the form of her grandmother (Aileen Britton) and aunt Helen (Wendy Hughes) living with Grandma, as well as another sibling, Uncle Julius (Peter Whitford). This seems like a respite, although it's really a way for Grandma and Helen to teach Sybylla how to be a women who can fit into her place in society. Sybylla continues to rebel, when it's suggested she marry nice Englishman Hawdon (Robert Grubb) and move to England with him.

Then a neighboring property owner, Harry (Sam Neill), comes for a visit to conduct some business. He first Sybylla in one of her rebellious phases sitting in a tree writing poetry, and neither of them knows who the other is. Eventually they meet each other more formally, and the light goes on over their heads, as it were. Each of them has strong emotional feelings for the other, but there are any number of problems.

Harry invites Sybylla to spend some time at his estate together with his aunt, and we beging to learn more about the two characters' problems that might prevent a relationship with each other. Sybylla is such a rebel that she's not certain she wants to marry anybody. And both of them have their own financial problems. Harry may lose his estate, while Sybylla's dad has gotten into really bad debt, and the only way he and Mom can think of to pay it off is to have Sybylla be a governess to some low-rent farmers.

Through all of this, Sybylla keeps writing, and the end of the movie suggests that it's all an autobiographical but fictionalized story of the author, Miles Franklin's, own life. Will our characters be able to find true happiness?

My Brilliant Career is a very well-made movie, with lovely cinematography of the Australian hinterlands, production design, and performances from the various actors. But I couldn't help but have some problems with the movies, largely because Sybylla comes across as a very unappealing character at times. Not that Davis does a bad job; it's more that the character as written is tough to sympathize with. Apparently Davis herself shared some of that assessment.

Still, My Brilliant Career is a movie that's definitely worth seeking out and watching. It only seems to be on DVD (at least here in the US) in a pricey release from the Criterion Collection, which is a bit of a shame.