That was an excellent one.

A different way of telling a story

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

This film is honestly so wonderful and magical. A tale about a plucky young heroine, Sybylla, (Judy Davis, in her first film role), who has grand romantic dreams about the life she wants to live, wanting to be first a concert pianist, and then a writer, despite the fact that she lives in poor rural Australia. Despite the fact that her mother knows she should discourage her, she ends up arranging it so that she can go and stay with her much wealthier family so that Sybylla is taught how to be a refined lady by her grandmother and spinster aunt, though they never manage to truly tame Sybylla. It's a wonderful movie about romance, but also about ambition. Sybylla isn't shown to be particularly talented, but she has the passion to try and that's more important. The movie is absolutely beautifully shot and directed by Gillian Armstrong, taking on her first feature film. It's absolutely wonderful and it's a real shame more people aren't aware of this gem of a film.

The movie is based upon the 1901 self-published novel by Australian writer Miles Franklin. It tells the story of a freedom-loving woman who eschews the traditions of the past by forgoing marriage for a career. Sybylla Melvyn (Judy Davis) lives a dreary existence with her impoverished farming family in rural Possum Gully in New South Wales, Australia in 1897. As Sybylla's mother (Julia Blake) can no longer support her, she finds for her daughter a position as a general servant. "Servant?" exclaims the spirited Sybylla, rejecting the idea. Later that evening the mother complains to the father (Alan Hopgood), "Useless, plain, and Godless." Sybylla tells her attractive sister Gertie (Marion Shad) about her hopes and dreams of being an accomplished writer. So it comes as a relief for Sybylla when her well-to-do Grandmother Bossier (Aileen Broton) agrees to take her in at more comfortable Caddagat. Aunt Helen (Wendy Hughes) becomes Sybylla's temporary confidante. Helped by the servant Ethel, beauty treatments give plain-looking Sybylla some confidence. But like her parents, Sybylla's grandma and aunt expect her to follow matrimonial tradition. While recovering from a cold, Sybylla tells them that she wants a career in literature or art or music, and has no intention of marriage. One day while blossom-picking, she meets charming bachelor Harry Beecham (Sam Neill). Over time Sybylla rejects several proposals, including those of Harry. Her grandmother advises her that marriage for love is less important than marriage for money. Furthermore, says the grandma, a woman receives "respectability" upon matrimony. At a lively shindig at Five Bob Downs Sybylla does take exception to the attraction that other young ladies have for Harry. After the ball, Aunt Gussie tells Sybylla that "Loneliness is a terrible price to pay for independence." Of course, Sybylla remembers that her own mother had married for love and ended up in a tedious existence. And Sybylla has no liking for arranged marriages. Meanwhile Sybylla's dad has gotten further into financial difficulty with a chap named McSwatt. Grandma tells Sybylla that she would be accepted as governess to McSwatt's children to pay the interest on the 500 pounds that dad owes. The McSwatt kids are dirty-faced and boisterous, but Sybylla shows patience, and is not afraid to use the rod. Her job eventually ended – actually cut short – she returns home to Possum Gully. After regaining some of his family's monetary losses, Harry Beecham shows up and again proposes marriage. The intractable Sybylla again delays matters even though Harry seems to be a good match, a man who will not squelch her strong-willed nature. In the last scene, Sybylla mails a large manuscript to Blackwoods Publishers of Edinburgh, Scotland. The closing caption reads "'My Brilliant Career' was published in 1901." Directed by a woman, Gillian Armstrong, the movie is well-filmed among the natural countryside of meadows, lakes, and hillsides of New South Wales. It presents appropriate period costumes and hair styles that evoke well the dawn of the twentieth century.

Although I never heard of Sybylla Melvyn, the writer on whose life this film is based, I was led after many years to "My Brilliant Career" by three names: Judy Davis, who plays Melvyn; Sam Neill, the male lead, and Gillian Armstrong, the director. There are additional attractions to the movie, including the glimpse of life in Australia in the early 20th Century. But the quality of the film lies in the direction and the cast, of which Davis and Neill are the star attractions. This is the movie that launched Davis's career and it came reasonably early in Neill's. Both perform strongly that is not intrinsically very interesting if you've never heard of Melvyn -- and I never have. But Gillian Armstrong (and Judy Davis) manage the extraordinary feat of making the viewer care about the person. Her history seems quite plausible and her attraction to and ultimate rejection of Neill's are deftly handled.

There is not a crease or seam in Judy Davis's performance in My Brilliant Career. She being one of the greatest of all actresses, or even actors, at the innate endowment of physically, mentally and emotionally residing in a character builds a rivetingly ambitious and combustible character that takes charge of herself and simply does not make a good follower at all and is whirled from early in her life by her independent attributes to have a career in the arts despite society doing all they can to tame her. Her character is so enrooted and actualized that the love story that serves as the flesh of the film between her and the dark and magnetic character of Sam Neill is like a diverging extension of her nature. She only idles away with what she feels could so easily be hers and is driven to single- minded desire of it when it comes to be a challenge. The romantic element of the film, especially in its outcome, fits as a large-scale model of who she is and why she is born to be anything but what her cavalier and domineering family of early twentieth century Australia strives to mold her into.The support of the story, which is Davis's struggle to be independent of society's taming and manipulation is what is ultimately compelling and infuriating, very effectively putting us in her mad, aggressive shoes. The framework involving the attraction between her and Neill is what is ultimately moving and hearty. That is what this film supplies a solvency of, a fiery emotional experience.