The gruelling Australian landscape in My Brilliant Career (1979)

My Brilliant Career is a 1979 Australian film directed by Gillian Armstrong. This drama focuses on a headstrong, creative girl called Sybylla who is determined to make a better life for herself by escaping the monotony of daily life in the outback.

At the time of production, the film came under the ‘AFC genre’, in other words, it was considered a ‘safe’ film by the Australian Film Commission, as it best represented Australia as a nation. Like many ‘AFC’ films at the time, they were often deemed as classical, period films adapted from novels (My Brilliant Career was adapted from the 1901 novel of the same name by Miles Franklin). Playing on the film cliche of the ‘free-spirited’ Australian woman, My Brilliant Career ultimately explores nationalism, feminism, and socialist ideology in a rural setting. 
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The film has a unique relationship with the Australian landscape, and perhaps the film's admiration is derived from the vast distinction between people and the land they encompass. In Australian Cultural Studies: a reader, Ross Gibson explores the uniqueness of the Australian landscape within Australian cinema. He states that ‘Australian costume drama set in colonial outposts derives from the fact that the time-setting allows the filmmakers to focus with obfuscation of the times of individuals, or isolated groups of “primitives”, in confrontation with nature.’ The director, Gillian Armstrong was able to play on this notion by showcasing how Sybylla was just like the landscape; untameable, wild, and unpredictable. She is a foreign character, not just in her ancestral background, but in her ways of thinking, a feminist. It is evident that her ultimate goal is to break free from her establishment as she desires to belong to the world of art and literature, not a country life in the outback. Sybylla is ultimately unable to harness the Australian landscape, seeing it as an adversary, a place where she can go nowhere. Gibson further states how ‘the landscape is clearly the result of an alienated society’s experience around the ridges of a vast, unpopulated and speciously indomitable country.’ Society at the time, perhaps even still apparent today, is unable to make a mark on the land, so people set about carving niches for themselves.

Moreover, the film plays on the idea that the further, the more alienated you live from society the harsher the life, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. Sybylla gets a taste of the more luxurious lifestyle when she stays with her grandmother, where reading for leisure is frequent amongst a far more comforting setting. However, this glimpse into higher life is quickly taken away from her as she is forced to work as a poorly trained governess where her life is once again rigorous. It is as though no matter how hard Sybylla tries she can never escape the harsh realities of life within the gruelling Australian landscape. Her home at her grandmother’s was just a facade, a slice of paradise dotted in the middle of nowhere. A band-aid fix. Gibson claims that ‘ultimately, the barely populated continent is untameable, conceding social substance but never allowing human dominance’, hence Sybylla will never be able to create the brilliant career she intended for herself.