JOURNEY AMONG WOMEN
Australia, 1977, 93 minutes, Colour.
Jeune Prichard, Nell Campbell, Diana Fuller, Jude Kuring, Lisa Peers, Ralph Cotteril.
Directed by Tom Cowan.
Journey Among Women: an unappealing film which raises many questions about Australian history, our heritage, women's status and man-woman relationships. Taking us back to an isolated and squalid convict group of women, showing a basic equalizing of well-to-do and oppressed, portraying their capacity to survive, excelling in expected masculine skills and symbolically aided by an aboriginal woman to cope with the Australian bush, the film makes us admit that history is not always nice, nor are human beings and their use and abuse of each other. Often striking and beautiful to watch as well as depressing, the film is not always technically tidy. But this is a male response to the journey.
1. How enjoyable a film, interesting? Its particular qualities?
2. Interest in and impact for an Australian audience, non-Australian? How much knowledge of history was presupposed? How much feeling for Australian themes treatment?
3. Impact for a masculine audience. feminine? The response of women who were very much pro-Women's Liberation? A fair treatment of men and women?
4. The significance of the title? The significance of the journey as real and symbol, the journey amongst the women themselves made by the audience? By Elizabeth? By the audience identifying with Elizabeth? 'With the pursuing soldiers?
5. The importance of the colour, the bush location photography, the contrast with the convict squalor and the natural beauty? The 19th century costumes and period locations? The blending of beauty and ugliness, isolation and groups, pioneering and surviving, prison and freedom, attitudes towards prison and freedom? A visual presentation of an aspect of the Australian heritage?
6. The portrayal of men and women and the relationship between them? A 19th century presentation as viewed by a 20th century screenwriter and director, by a 20th century audience? How particularly Australian the presentation of men and women and their relationship? The British heritage. British rejects in a foreign and isolated distant prison? How universal was the presentation of men and women? This group and their journey as a symbol for universal application? What did the audience learn by this symbolic presentation? About the equality of men and women, the inferiority of women? Man's treatment of woman? Audience expectations of the behaviour of men and women and their relationships? As contrasting with the expectations of the characters in the film?
7. The impact of the initial setting: the bush, the soldiers, Elizabeth preparing to be dressed? The contrast with the novel in which the women were prisoners, the filth, their grovelling for food, the sexuality and brutality, the background of crime and condemnation, social outcasts? The impact of so many women in the group and the audience understanding them and knowing them as individuals? Their characters and impact as individuals, the effect of the women on each other? Their lack of expectations of good treatment, survival. brutality from the soldiers? Was their bitterness comprehensible, their hopelessness, their determination to escape? How real did this portrayal seem? Historically accurate?
8. The contrast with the soldiers, the men chosen for this kind of work, the types who would volunteer and survive in it? Survival, power, abuse of power, domination of the women, lack of supervision, brutal sexuality? Bribing the women? The shook that even the hopeful leader was as bad as his men? He was exalted as a possible pioneer of the country but was degraded by his behaviour? The soldiers' use and abuse of the women?
9. Audience identification with Elizabeth? Her place in Australia, her place in an isolated society, with manners and behaviour? The elaborate preparations for her dressing, washing, her maid? Elizabeth as a lady, her manner, relationship with her father? The visit of the doctor and his piano playing, proposals? Her compassion, her visit to the convicts? Her experience of the colony and her hopes for the future? The prospects of freedom and marriage? Her visit to the convicts, the importance of her compassion for the maid and her sister, the shook of seeing her suitor abusing the convicts? The horror of the leading officer trying to rape? was it comprehensible that she should shoot him? The symbolic shooting of her suitor? The inevitability of her joining the women?
10. The film's symbolizing of the men as pursuers, men with power, soldiers, firearms, domination and lack of freedom? Their search? The portrayal of the men whose boat was taken by the women and their courteous treatment? The two tinkers and their abusive attitude? Their raping and murder of the girl later in the film? The bloodthirsty violence of their death? An execution? The men coming on the women and trying to dominate and capture them? The leader and his strategy, the ordinary soldiers and their violence, their being ambushed and killed? Women dominating men, violently?
11. How important was the journey of the women? The fact that it was a group of women convicts going on the journey, surviving? The dramatic impact of their escape, their taking of the boat, their encounter with the tinkers, their moving through beautiful landscapes and wanting to be free, to hope for some kind of settlement? Their hopes and dreams of a place to settle? Their experience of the heat, eating and drinking, survival capacity? The temptation to despair? The building of the hut, their learning how to hunt, the rituals for the funeral of the murdered girl, painting themselves? The bonds between them, their social and educational backgrounds? Intellectual approach to their survival, instinctive and emotional? Their relationships amongst themselves, emotional sexual? The various pairings and liaising? The effect on each of them of freedom, survival and relationship? The importance of Elizabeth within this context and the equalizing of the women? The emphasis on nudity and their equality? dirt, washing, the equal work? Elizabeth compassionate and understanding? Their fear that she would betray them?
12. The importance of the aboriginal girl and her presence? Realism, symbolic? The equality of women, no matter what race or class? Sharing, communicating, the happiness? The importance that the black woman taught the educated white women how to survive, to build a house? Racial equality themes and their treatment? The newcomers learning from the original Australians?
13. The build-up of Elizabeth's presence in the group? The contrast by editing of scenes at home, with her suitor, with the doctor? Elizabeth and her remaining with the group and the sudden presence of the soldiers? Being confronted naked. the confrontation of the two and the bitterness behind Elizabeth's attitude? Her decision to return, the effect on her when she returned? How would her life be the same, different?
14. The build-up to the siege? The motivation of the soldiers? The motivation of the women to repel them? The primitive warrior style that they took on? The resistance techniques and ambushing and sniping? Their defying the men and outwitting them? The violence of the killings?
15. The effect of all this on Elizabeth? The further history of Australia through Elizabeth and her descendants in the light of this background? Women's heritage in Australia?
16. The value of the themes explored? The value of the visual presentation?
