Purely Joyful Movie!

One of my all time favorites.

Absolutely brilliant

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I've been wanting to watch this for a few years and finally got around to it last night (on Stan). I didn't know much about the story apart from the setting and that there was some cannibalism involved.Contrary to what IMDb says about "Australia's most notorious convict", I have lived in Australia for 20 years and had never heard of the main protagonist. That was just as well since I didn't know how the story was going unfold. That I had never seen any of the actors before also contributed to the realism.While there are plenty of films about the dark ages of Europe and the pioneering days of North America, there are not enough films about the Australia's murky past. It's generally well-known that Irish lads might be sent here for petty crimes, but it's not well understood nowadays - when Australia is one of the most desirable places to live in the world - how inhospitable it was when white men first arrived. That the film depicts this was, in itself, sufficient reason for me to watch it in its entirety. (There are plenty more thoughtful stories that could be told about this era.)I enjoyed the slow burning pace of the plot, and the fact that it was based on a real story, but what impressed me the most was the cinematography. Scene after scene is beautifully framed and colo(u)red, and often depicts the insignificance of man in the vast wilderness. I'd watch it again just for the scenery.The acting and story itself were enthralling. I don't envy the cast for filming in such conditions! I only wish that I had had the opportunity to display subtitles for the English as well as the Gaelic as some of the phraseology and accents were hard to catch.There was a scene in the second half where the picture quality deteriorated for a minute or two but that may have been down to a bottleneck in the bandwidth.I was in two minds as the credits rolled about the beginning and end of the film. It would have been more "Hollywood" to set up the characters a bit early on so that we could understand their motivations. Similarly, it would have been very "Hollywood" to show how the main protagonist ultimately came out of the wilderness and made his tale public. Having slept on it - short of creating a film twice as long - I'm glad at the choices made by the director. The focus is purely on the survival story. We can only wonder grimly how we too might act in similar straits.It's a film that shows a rare side of humanity, an unexplored piece of history and features some excellent music, cinematography, acting and an intelligent, believable script. I suspect it didn't make much money at the box office, which is a shame. This is a movie for grown ups. More please.

"Wasn't the devil in you when you brought me here?"'Van Diemen's Land' opens up a window into the darker chapters of Australia's convict settlement past, when the British penal colony was a harsh, unforgiving wilderness populated by struggling pioneers and convicts sent to the other side of the earth for stealing so much as a loaf of bread. Once there, repeat offenders might be confined to Sarah Island, a hellish prison camp in Macquarie Harbour in western Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania. Conditions there were so extreme that in 1822, Irish-born malcontent Alexander Pearce and seven others, tasked with felling the surrounding forests to provide shipbuilders with high-quality wood, attempted to escape their exile. When plans to steal a moored whaling vessel fell through, the escapees, without much aforethought, plunged into the harsh Tasmanian wilderness intending to travel east to Hobart, some 225km away. Although Robert Greenhill, one of the convicts, could draw upon his many years as a sailor to provide navigational expertise, none present knew how to survive in bushland so inhospitable even the indigenous Australians largely avoided it, and when food supplies ran out, they turned to cannibalism. Few of the ill-fated expedition would survive to tell the tale. In 'Van Diemen's Land', we join the convicts on the day of their escape attempt and follow the grizzly events that ensue.The story of Alexander Pearce is perhaps not unsurprisingly missing from the school curriculum in Australia, and it was only through this film that I myself became familiar with this dark chapter of White Australia. 'Van Diemen's Land' inspired me to fire up my browser and learn more, with the realisation that in movie terms, I was watching the middle part of a trilogy. Part 1 would have dealt with Pearce's repeated offences condemning him to slave labour on Sarah Island. There, he would continue to prove unruly for the authorities, practicing his talent for theft and disruption, ultimately finding himself on work detail felling trees in Macquarie Harbour and seeing an opportunity for escape. Part 3 would have dealt with the consequences of his actions, including one final adventure, which the last sequence of 'Van Diemen's Land' briefly covers. Director and co-writer Jonathan auf der Heide, however, appears to be fixated upon the middle part of the story, and while the moment when Pearce acquired a taste for human flesh strikes an undeniable discord with all but perhaps the Korowai tribe of Papua New Guinea, I can't help feeling that it's a little like telling the tale of Ned Kelly focusing only on the killings at Stringybark Creek. Only a few captions either side of the film quickly fill in the blanks, hinting that there is more to the story. Nonetheless, 'Part 2' is well-crafted for what it is and sheds a memorable, yet gloomy light on this hitherto forgotten saga.auf der Heide wisely chooses a cast of unknowns to inhabit the fateful eight, which ensures the audience will accept their alter egos at face value. Oscar Redding, perhaps the best-known, creates an Alexander Pearce just possibly capable of redemption, up until the moment he agrees to sacrifice a member of the party for food, while Arthur Angel portrays a Robert Greenhill you wouldn't want to be within twenty miles of when it came time to sleep. The rest of the cast fill out the remainder of the ill-fated group with similarly creditable performances, with the Scottish characters delivering their lines in Gallic alongside the 18th Century English dialect to underscore Australia's role as a dumping ground for convicts all across the British Isles. The string-powered score, often more sound than symphony, meshes well with the bleak, washed-out picture to strongly evoke the dark mood of the piece. There are no archetypal heroes, only desperate human animals hastening the decay of civilisation's thin veneer. Filmed on location in south-central Tasmania, the authentic natural backdrop does much on its own to sell the concept that the escapees are not only at the end of the earth as they themselves suggest, but that the land is cold and unforgiving - just as much today as it was in 1822. If I have issues with the film, therefore, it's the storyline.By focusing purely upon the escape attempt and the descent into cannibalism, the tale feels reduced somewhat into a B-grade exploitation horror. It doesn't provide suitable build-up to properly explore the choices certain characters make throughout, though the documentation for this does exist. In consequence, I felt the leap to 'the other meat' was a little rushed, reminding me of an early South Park episode where cannibalism is the first rather than last resort. In addition, the full story would be more satisfying than some of the edited highlights 'cannibalised' for the purposes of a thriller. There is far more to the Alexander Drake story than we are witness to in 'Van Diemen's Land'. Undeniably, the issue of runtime comes into play here, however as I suggested earlier, there is enough scope for more than one feature. However, auf der Heide is the first to explore it cinematically, and perhaps this will spark interest in genuine Australian Gothic from here on. It certainly captures the tone and feel of that bleak world, taking strides towards tapping into a rarely explored period of Australian history that perhaps may now be brought to light free of the nationalist veil. Certainly any proud Australian and film fan should see 'Van Diemen's Land' for this purpose, and genre fans everywhere will appreciate what it does achieve. Let's hope it's a taster of things to come.

This feels like a 'Tourism Tasmania' commercial with a touch of cannibalism, truly a great combination.The movie is based on the true account of Alexander Pearce, Australia's most notorious convict, and the events that took place in 1822, as Pearce and a group of convicts escape into the Tasmanian wilderness. The group is then left at the mercy of nature, themselves, and notably the human desire to eat.This is truly a beautiful movie, the cinematography of sweeping landscapes and rugged bushland is worth watching the rental/ticket price alone. It strikes me as the type of DVD they play in appliance stores to show off the new HD-TVs (although they would have to skip the numerous bludgeoning scenes). The story itself is a simple and tight narrative of the human condition pushed to its limits. While there is some grizzly violence and confronting concepts, the movie never descends into gratuitous visuals based purely on shock value. While the story is compelling and rolls along nicely, I found myself just wanting a little more depth to all of the supporting characters. This is also one of the main strengths of this film, it makes you want more; I was always wondering what was going to happen next, what's that guy going to do, where are they going, what's around that corner, what does that taste like etc… Ultimately this factor leaves the viewer a tad unsatisfied yet appreciative of the movie as a whole.On the Fruit-Meter, Van Demons Lands gets the "KIWI-FRUIT" - A bit grizzled and rough on the outside, but once you peel off the skin it's fresh and tasty, but it was a small fruit and I want some more. MART-FLIX PUN-FUN – It's compelling to watch convicts battle their inner "demons"…..that sucked

Making a film set 200 years ago, about a group of escaped convicts in a remote part of the world, and who end up turning to cannibalism is not an easy task, quite obviously. That this film succeeds to the degree it does is a testament to the people behind it.There must have been a lot of time spent by the writers and director trying to work out the right approach for Alexander Pearce. Depicting him as a psychopathic cannibal from the outset (as per 'For the Term of His Natural Life') would have been wrong, he was surely more nuanced than that. This was a man transported to the colonies for the theft of six pairs of shoes, not any type of violent act.The need to eat your fellow escapees would have been a slow dawn of horror, and that is captured quite nicely here as these uneducated men stumble off into a world they knew nothing about. It's instructive to remember that most of us would be scared if dropped into this remote wilderness to find our own way out, even if equipped with provisions, warm clothing and a working knowledge of the geography and local flora/fauna. To imagine traversing what was completely unknown to any of them, and literally a world away from their birthplaces, dressed only in old prison rags and with food limited to some flour, is very frightening indeed.The cinematography is great, with the washed-out colours emphasising the alien nature of this wilderness. The acting is good as well, and the use of Gaelic for the occasional introspection of Pearce helps to prompt the viewer to think of just how someone can end up so far from home, and in such a horrific situation.Unfortunately there are a few stumbles as well, forgivable as this is the director's first feature. Some of the imagery is overdone - I'm thinking of the guard chewing at the beginning (yes, we know what's coming ...) - and the characters could probably be better distinguished through a little more talking than they actually do. As there is no back story or wider explanation of their predicament, the film does feel slightly repetitious in the middle section. There was also no attempt to show the men hunting for food, even though there would have been native wildlife all around them. To be fair, though, the depiction of cannibalism as the inevitable outcome of tackling this terrain with limited supplies is the main story, and given the limited budget of the film they were probably wise to focus on that aspect exclusively.All up, congratulations to the filmmakers for tackling such a tough subject and making it watchable. This is a very grim part of our history, but it needs to be known and discussed more than it is. The film is not easy to stomach (pun intended!) but you cannot watch it and not be affected, and is that not the aim of any movie? Pearce was not a wronged hero, he was a person who twice turned to cannibalism. But this film makes you think about your own response to landing in such an awful situation as these men. If the difference between civilisation and barbarism is three square meals, then these escaped convicts were in a place none of us would want to go.