**/**** Image A Sound A (DD)/A+ (DTS) Extras B
starring Judy Davis, Sam Neill, Wendy Hughes, Robert Grubb
screenplay by Eleanor Witcombe, based on the novel by Miles Franklin
directed by Gillian Armstrong
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Miles Franklin is ready. Australia is ready. Judy Davis is very ready. But My Brilliant Career never seems to leave the starting gate. There's no denying the care, craft, and skill that have gone into realizing this crucial international moment for the Australian New Wave, but it's all been funnelled into the externals: the trappings are beautiful, but their omnipresence makes for quite the claustrophobic experience. Stuffy Leslie Halliwell managed to find My Brilliant Career a "pleasing but very slow picture of a time gone by," ignoring the fact that the "time gone by" was brutally stifling its indomitable lead character, and while part of this can be chalked up to Halliwell's general thickness, it's hard to deny that you notice the décor long before the struggle that it frames.
From scene one, it's a showdown between the lead actress and the apparatus of the art department. Davis is simply majestic as Franklin's heroine Sybella Melvyn: whether noodling about her eponymous artistic career at the beginning, blowing off a ridiculous suitor with a ridiculous moustache, or getting shuttled from a bush farm to a disapproving grandmother for her impetuous ways, she's never less than a brilliant flashpoint. But though we're cued early on that late-nineteenth-century society will deal harshly with Sybella, you wouldn't know that from the oppressive classicism of the design. The subdued palette, the meticulous furnishings, the careful placement each simultaneously call attention to and apologize for themselves–a paradox curt Sybella would never tolerate.
The problem is more than just aesthetic, however. Because the look is so obsessively classy, it constantly references the authority of the society it reproduces: unsure of how to take its own stand, My Brilliant Career falls back on the pillars of accepted history to bolster its claim. But accepted history stands in the way of Sybella Melvyn. Her days are spent swimming against the current of her time's mores: she wants to have an artistic career, she doesn't want a husband, and if she does (big "if"), it will be for love, not convenience. And yet even as everyone in the film senselessly tries to dissuade her from her calling, one doesn't notice the victim of his or her words. Rather, we notice the important furniture and costumes, giving the enemy physical omnipresence.
The film, then, winds up pouring water on the Sybella/Davis fire. Try as she ferociously might, she can't wrench the camera into noticing glorious her, and thus her trials as she rebuffs sympathetic friend Sam Neill, hears and watches female family members resign themselves to their fates, and is ultimately fobbed off as a governess in the back of beyond fail to register as a call to arms. Though our heroine is gummed up by the system, instead of lifting her out of the muck My Brilliant Career cuts her line and lets her struggle. In another context, this script would have made for a powerhouse, but director Gillian Armstrong's loss of visual nerve is fatal, making for a film that's sluggish, deadly dull, and dispiriting in spite of itself.
Still, Blue Underground's faith in My Brilliant Career never wavers, meaning they've lavished their professional all on the DVD presentation. The 1.78:1, 16×9-enhanced transfer is sometimes frighteningly sharp, with obscenely fine detail revealing every twist and tangle in Davis' red hair. Blacks can go a little deep and sticky, but not too much to detract. The sound, meanwhile, is astonishing–the film has been treated to two of the best 5.1 remixes I've ever heard. The first comes in Dolby 5.1 EX, and it's full of dimension that no quiet period picture has any business having, brilliantly dishing out the aural components of the scenes to every corner of the soundstage but with subtle enough separation that you barely notice. The second option is, impossibly, even better: DTS-ES 6.1 renders the effects smooth and seamless, as a unified field rather than as a collection of competing bits. Though my system does not support a rear centre channel, the film sounds great in matrixed 5.1, and I suspect that those with that sixth speaker are likely to hear the whispered voice of God.
A Dolby 2.0 Surround option and the film's original mono mix are also on board, while on a fifth track, Armstrong proves more than up to the task of a feature-length commentary. A quarter-century later, she has total recall about the set-up of various scenes: how the budget for a planned dust-storm was blown by the art department; how an untested rain machine blew Davis off her feet; how she stood her ground when told that Davis was unavailable; and how Davis hated the role to the extent that she has not watched the picture to this day. Neophyte low-budget filmmakers will delight in Anderson's troubleshooting methods, the motives behind some of which will surprise students of the film. The very subdued and contemplative Australian trailer as well as an American one stuffed to the gills with quotes and hype finish off the first platter of this 2-Disc Special Edition.
DISC TWO
The Miles Franklin Story (4 mins.)
A brief history of early feminist Stella Maria Sarah Miles Lampe Franklin, whose life took her from Australia to America and other points in aid of the cause. This is a tantalizing but too-brief intro to the remarkable life that inspired My Brilliant Career; ironically, a living as a writer eluded Franklin until she adopted the titular male pseudonym. Her memory lives on in the Australian literary prize she founded, since won by the likes of Patrick White, Thomas Keneally, and Armstrong film source Peter Carey.
Interview with producer Margaret Fink (9 mins.)
Fink relates her involvement with the project, which began upon reading the source novel in 1965 (which in turn coincided with her own involvement with the feminist movement). Providing a quick rundown of the arduous road of financing, she comes off as smart, no-nonsense, and very precise. Unstinting in her praise for her collaborators, Fink reserves special mention for DP Donald McAlpine and his "energy."
Interview with Gillian Armstrong (9 mins.)
A slightly bashful interview with the director, less impressive here than in her commentary. Armstrong recounts the fight over the then-controversial go-it-alone ending, praises production designer Luciana Arrighi, and remembers fleeing the Cannes screening after becoming convinced that the audience hated her film–only to learn of its rapturous reception once the lights went up.
Cannes Premiere (2 mins.)
An Australian news spot about the film's premiere in which the producer, director, and star seem completely sideswiped by the attention.
Rounding out the package: a small poster-and-stills gallery, plus a ROM-accessible .pdf study guide. The two DVDs are housed in a swingtray keepcase, itself tucked inside an embossed cardboard slipcover.
100 minutes; G; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1 EX, English DTS-ES 6.1, English Dolby Surround, English DD 1.0; CC; 2 DVD-9s; Region One; Blue Underground
