BREATHING UNDER WATER
Australia, 1993, 78 minutes, Colour.
Anne Louise Lambert, Kristofer Greaves, Maeve Dermody.
Directed by Susan Murphy Dermody.
Breathing Under Water is the first feature of academic Susan Murphy Dermody, author with Elizabeth Jacka of The Screening of Australia. The film is experiential in style, both illusive for the ordinary viewer as well as allusive for the initiated audience. Anne Louise Lambert is Beatrice. With reference to the Divine Comedy, this is a story of a journey into an underground, under the city of Sydney, a journey into the subconscious and unconscious of modern urban living in Australia and in the western world. The film is full of symbols and the stages of the journey are a revelation of hell, purgatory and a possible heaven.
1.The impact of the film? Running time? Visual and verbal density? The journey, the quest?
2.The writing background of the writer-director? Her skill with words, images? In Australian film tradition. Breaking new ground? The background of Dante and the Divine Comedy? Psychology and symbols? The impact of urban Australia? Its ordinariness? The threats, family, children, relationships, violence? The background of nuclear threat?
3.The locations, the city of Sydney, the underworld of Sydney? The variety of levels? Reality and fantasy?
4.The insertion of animation? The visual style, fluidity? The audience reaction to the symbols and then moving into animation? The portrait of Beatrice as a girl, insight into her character?
5.The archival material, newsreels, the range of films quoted: Alphaville, Journey to Italy...? The effect of this kind of documentation?
6.The conscious world, the world of Sydney, the family, the taxi, the guide? The conscious world of Sydney - and yet its symbolism and the tantalising effect on the audience?
7.The symbols and the world of the subconscious, the unconscious - and the range of visual and verbal allusions?
8.Beatrice as a character, as a symbol? Her daughter, the bond between them, the journey, the experience - and the future? The importance of the guide (Herman as the Hermes of mythology)? The taxi, his personality, sharing their experience? The masculine and the feminine interaction? The guide ant protection?
9.Beatrice, wisdom, the journey? Her needs? In the city with its ordinary and recognisable detail - the harbour, the bridge, the opera house, the buses? Her return to this world - and its seeming ordinary but the transformation of the journey? The finale on the beach, peace?
10.The visual impact of the descent, the landscapes, the going down, the lift? The desolate factory sites? Evocations of purgatory and hell? The effect of progress on civilisation?
11.The stages of the journey, the nuclear threat, dangers? The encounters with the various people? Adults? Children - the boy singing, the see-saw and the playing?
12.The effect on Beatrice and her daughter, on Herman? The impact of the past and its visuals, the interpretation of the present - moving towards the future? Feats, coping, moving to wholeness?
13.The title and its symbolism? The visual impact of water, breathing and life? Existence at the end of the 20th century and its difficulties like breathing under water?
