‘My Brilliant Career,’ A Forty-Year-Old+ Classic Nod to Womanly Independence Hits Home

 

My Brilliant Career DVD cover.

My Brilliant Career, a Criterion Collection gem, started out as a surprising HBO Max recommendation. It only sat in the watchlist for a few hours before the play button was hit. 

Set in rural Australia, Sybylla Melvyn is passionate, intelligent, multitalented young girl heavily reminiscent of Emily of New Moon’s Emily Byrd Starr—a character that too has ambitions to become a writer and not ever marry. While Emily is an orphan living with her dead mother’s eccentric relatives in Prince Edward Island, Canada, Sybylla’s rather large family are too poor to keep her on. She is sent to live with her rich, aristocratic grandmother and Aunt Helen. Both Sybylla and Emily disregard the rules, have strong temperaments, and have tendencies to disrespect their elders. Yet Emily will eventually marry (at the end of the L. M. Montgomery’s book series) and Sybylla does not ever conform. 

The unique Sybylla (Judy Davis) loves to run around nature whether it be on the clearest day or in the pouring rain. Some believe it scandalous and improper, but Sybylla does what she wants— most of the time. 

For Sybylla, life among superior company is carefree and charming— a place to act out in ways restricted on the family farm. Although Sybylla has suitors desiring the affections of a plain, wild, red haired girl, she desires more than the notion of an inconvenient marriage. Sybylla has witnessed her impoverished mother struggle with bearing many children and a drunken husband to boot, listened to her beautiful Aunt Helen recount an affair that ended in humiliation (the man left her for another woman), and performing indentured servitude (thanks to that father of hers) to a woman with six children. She is aware that relationships change, that people evolve more so that the consequences are often for worst than for the better. In fact, Sybylla’s true romance is figuring out exactly where her heart lies— not being subjected to the lives of hardship and disdain similar to the older women she interacts with. Sybylla is moderately skilled at piano, admits to loving the arts, and teaches children well enough as a short-lived governess. Yet it is writing that she loves— many scenes contain her writing stories, letters, reading her prose aloud. 

Sybylla must write even in the oddest places. 

However, various people including her grandmother call out Sybylla for her ill manners and selfishness— the selfishness in not choosing to marry. For example, she is almost considered a tease for tempting the handsome Harry Beecham—who often is hell bent on receiving a reward (a kiss) for doing the bare minimum, but restrains the urge in time. The jealous older Frank Hawdon overly exaggerates Sybylla’s flamboyant behavior to Harry in order to manipulate Sybylla into choosing him. Sybylla is stern and resolute in her resolutions, not allowing herself to become compromised despite the blossoming tenderness shown to Harry. Although she adores him very much, having a career ambition as great as writing requires seclusion, a certain devout purity that Sybylla will not give up for the tainted world. 

When her drunken father owes an unaffordable debt, Sybylla is forced out of her comfortable situation with her grandmother and Aunt Helen to govern six unruly children in a poor household. 

Filmmaker Gillian Armstrong’s debut feature film adaptation of Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career novel is a fairly beautiful depiction of an early independent woman— a significant part of having a huge women’s production. Under Armstrong’s direction her team of Eleanor Witcombe’s screenplay, Margaret Fink and Jane Scott as producers, Luciana Arrighi’s production design, and Anna Senior’s costume design tie it all together with an incredibly riveting Judy Davis (who at times can be mistaken for Nicole Kidman) leading the reins in her believable portrayal of the vivacious Sybylla. 

In this day and age, an anti-marriage character is a rare treat. Many terribly shallow romances in both contemporary film/TV lead people into believing that happiness can only be found in another— that our career ambitions will not provide enough sustenance, that sometimes we even have to settle for less than deserved. To be alone, especially for women, is still on occasion considered a crime, a penance. Spinsterhood was a former joke, a ridicule. Sybylla— proclaiming herself egotistical— knew what she wanted— to become a writer. She let that love guide her in ways that a man could not. Bravo!