Directed by Gillian Armstrong • 1979 • Australia
Starring Judy Davis, Sam Neill
For her award-winning breakthrough film, director Gillian Armstrong drew on teenage author Miles Franklin’s novel, a celebrated turn-of-the-twentieth-century Australian coming-of-age story, to brashly upend the conventions of period romance. Headstrong young Sybylla Melvyn (Judy Davis, in a star-making performance), bemoans her stifling life in the backcountry, where her writerly ambitions receive little encouragement, and craves independence above all else. When a handsome landowner (Sam Neill), disarmed by her unruly charms, begins to court her, Sybylla must decide whether she can reconcile the prospect of marriage with the illustrious life’s work she has imagined for herself. Suffused with generous humor and a youthful appetite for experience, MY BRILLIANT CAREER is a luminous portrait of an ardently free spirit.
Up Next in By the Book
-
Wise Blood
Directed by John Huston • 1979 • United States
Starring Brad Dourif, Ned Beatty, Harry Dean StantonIn this acclaimed adaptation of the first novel by legendary Southern writer Flannery O’Connor, John Huston vividly brings to life her poetic world of American eccentricity. Brad Dourif, in an imp...
-
You Are Not I
Directed by Sara Driver • 1981 • United States
Starring Suzanne Fletcher, Melody Schneider, Bea BoyleA legendary, once-lost landmark of American underground cinema, Sara Driver’s first film was rediscovered in 2008 and has since taken its place as one of the key works of the No Wave filmmaking ...
-
Under the Volcano
Directed by John Huston • 1984 • Mexico, United States
Starring Albert Finney, Jacqueline BissetUNDER THE VOLCANO follows the final day in the life of self-destructive British consul Geoffrey Firmin (Albert Finney, in an Oscar-nominated tour de force) on the eve of World War II. Withering from ...
