Thursday, September 25, 2008

My Brilliant Career

Gillian Armstrong, 1979, Australia (8.9*)

Judy Davis (who has won a trainload of Australian awards and one U.S. Emmy) has a star-making part, and deservedly won a BAA for Best Actress, as 19th century author Sybylla Melvin, a non-conventional woman who would rather pursue "my brilliant career" than simply seek out a husband, even though society keeps telling her that's the proper place for a woman.

She eventually falls in love with another free spirit, a landowner played by Sam Neill, also in a star-making role for him. This is both a terrific romance with lots of passion, and an incisive look at the creative mind; it also avoids sentimentality and compromise. Nice music score featuring Schumann's piano music. One of the best Australian films.

Update: for the perfect complement to this film, see We of the Never Never (1982), the true story of Jennifer Gunn, the first white woman to venture into Australia's Northern Territory, when she married a cattle station manager; based on her memoirs.

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These are the individual film reviews of what I'm considering the best 1000 dvds available, whether they are films, miniseries, or live concerts. Rather than rush out all 1000 at once, I'm doing them over time to allow inclusion of new releases - in fact, 2008 has the most of any year so far, 30 titles in all; that was a very good year for films, one of the best ever.



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