Everyone seeing a film for the first time makes a value judgment, even if it is only based on an emotional response but the humanist goes back to probe these initial responses more deeply.
The humanist approach seeks to learn what film can tell
about the human condition by searching for the answers to several
questions asked of other art forms: What kinds of ideas—political,
religious, historical, or philosophical—are hidden beneath the surface
of film? What sort of symbols are used to convey these ideas? Who is the
artist behind the creation of the film?
........
My Brilliant Career is one such story that imparts truth
through the moral conflicts, confrontations, and choices made by the
main character Sybylla—and provokes a powerful emotional response. A
timeless masterpiece authored by women for women, this tale addresses
sexism in a patriarchal society and oppression of women but contains
hope through our heroine’s drive and determination to break free of the
boundaries set for her by a male-dominated society.
Though Miles Franklin’s novel was published in Edinburgh, Scotland in
1901, it remained a pertinent story for Director Gillian Armstrong to
re-author, in the form of film, in 1979. And it is still relevant today
as it follows a young girl’s hungering for life, love, and freedom in
the outback plains of New South Wales. “…underneath its extravagances
and its melodrama, which have their own charm of period, Miles
Franklin’s spirit flashes indomitably; and in its picture of country
life and in its image of the rebelliousness of youth there remains an
abiding vitality” .
Judy Davis, “Australia’s best known leading lady,” received wide
acclaim for her portrayal of “the defiant heroine in Gillian Armstrong’s
My Brilliant Career” . Davis—perhaps just a
particle too pretty for a young woman described by her mother as
useless, plain, and Godless—indeed gives a stunning performance as
Sybylla. She is completely believable in her role of the recalcitrant
young woman who dares to challenge the prescriptions of patriarchal
society.
The theme of this film concerns the breaking of barriers of
oppression set forth for women by men who would have them stay focused
on marriage, children, and serving males needs. Armstrong reveals the
theme through Sybylla’s determination not to follow the dictates of a
male-dominated society and marry Harry but, instead, to acknowledge who
she is as a person—to seek her own dreams in the world of literature and
words. Sybylla’s refusal to succumb to society’s mold of a respectable
woman, is a show of strength for women in breaking down barriers
constructed by men to keep women in their service. “I want more than a
pretty dress,” she exclaims.
This is not to say that Sybylla’s choice is an easy one. She is
obviously ambivalent about leaving Harry behind as she sets out to form
her own future. Armstrong does not minimize the difficulties women must
face in making choices to reject the status quo. Sybylla is not
portrayed as an uncaring, unconcerned, non-sexual female but rather as a
sensuous woman with a passion for life, love, and family. Her
paradoxical nature causes her no small pain, but she is certain that if
she does marry Harry she will soon render him helpless and miserable.
She knows she will cause him pain either way but it is the lesser pain
he will have to suffer by her leaving him now before the damage is done.
When Harry tells her he wants to marry her and asks, “Don’t you trust
me?” she replies, “It’s me I don’t trust. The last thing I want is to be
a wife out in the bush. Maybe I’m ambitious, selfish, but I can’t lose
myself in someone else’s life when I haven’t lived my own yet. I want to
be a writer. I’ve got to do it now and I’ve got to do it alone” When
Harry asks, “Don’t you love me a little?” she replies, “Yes, but I’d
destroy you and I can’t do that.”
While Armstrong guides us through this story with apt attention to
Sybylla’s rebellious nature and unwillingness to conform—almost always
followed by warnings from her mother, suitors, grandmother, and aunt
that she must learn to “cultivate feminine values”—this film is not just
about one woman’s plight. It is also a politically motivated film about
the oppression of women—as a group—through boundaries and barriers
established and promoted by society. Throughout the film, Armstrong
employs unique and symbolic pictorial views of these boundaries and
barriers through the use of fences, cages, and class conscious societal
traditions such as table, parlor, and conversational manners required of
respectable people.
Armstrong’s frequent use of fences is extremely effective. Fences are
built as control measures, either to keep someone or something
contained or to keep someone out of a contained area. These symbols of
control and containment guide the film-goer through the entire story.
There is an irregular wooden fence in front of Sybylla’s family farm
which could be interpreted as a boundary which hems her in. When she
arrives at her grandmother’s house, she must pass through a white picket
fence and tall archway, indicating she is entering a place of
respectability and expected reserve. In another scene, Uncle Julius
suggests to Grandmother that Sybylla should be an actress but
Grandmother responds that she would rather see her hair shorn off and
have her put into a convent. There quickly follows a shot of Sybylla
walking along the fences that border the sheep pens—the message clearly
indicating that women have little more rights than the lowly sheep. In
yet another scene, Armstrong sets Harry and Sybylla on opposite sides of
a fence, showing their division of attitude and thought.
Surrounded as Sybylla is by the class conscious expectations of
societal traditions, she refuses to conform. When one of the male dinner
guests at Aunt Gussie’s ball remarks, “I’ve just bought a fine new
bull,” Sybylla decides to respond as a man might. “That ought to make a
few cows happy,” she jokes to the astonishment of her companions.
Sybylla is warned that her willfulness will get her into trouble…but she
is not afraid.
In the final scene, piano music of Sybylla’s childhood accentuates
the successful completion of her book. Her journey to fulfilling her
dream of becoming a writer finds its conclusion as she steps beyond the
garden gate, places her book in the mailbox, and leans against the fence
that might have kept her from her goal.
My Brilliant Career
contains hope for all women, putting us in tune with our own abilities
and confidence to fight the constructs of male domination—flee the cage,
tear down fences if necessary, and take up our places in the world as
individuals with important issues and choices.
My Brilliant Career nurtures the spirit of wild creativity
and determination in women. It urges us to keep faith in ourselves, to
realize that we can reach out to take control of our lives, to
understand that we may refuse to be molded into submission by a
patriarchal society. While
My Brilliant Career is a portrait of
a young girl growing into womanhood and defying the unreasonable
requirements of class respectability, it is also a vehicle for feminist
cause and necessary change for the future of women. The individual women
artists who have made this film possible are to be congratulated for
creating a work of art that will continue to cause women—and men—to
question the morality of a patriarchy that presses women into the
service of men.
