It's very easy for me to equate beauty with goodness. But those are clearly two different things. Sometimes it seems as if movies are designed to convince us that beauty is good. Even when the hot evil person comes along, we can usually tell their morality with a glance at their face.
You know, their eyebrows are crooked and their face isn't as symmetrical as the hero's.
Or like Jeannie and Samantha, they've put on a black wig and a look of naughty glee.
This just really isn't the case, in reality. You really can't tell the villain by looking.
"What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness!" says Tolstoy.
This is a beautiful movie. Beautiful Kate is a beauty. The director said that the story, taken from an American context and moved to an Australian one, reflects the isolation of farm life. I am so surprised to disagree with her on this important point because I found the movie to be so good. It's really good and you should see it; but only if you're an adult.
I think the movie is about the individual and it doesn't matter where it takes place or even into what family a person is born. Inside each of us there are good and bad things which may or may not be beautiful. Sometimes sad is beautiful. Sometimes good is boring. Sometimes the picture is more beautiful because it's not on kilter.
I didn't find anything boring about this film. But I like this kind of pace. I like to be drawn in to characters and I was.
In most stories, the hero is good and good-looking. But in reality those two qualities collide sometimes and disagree sometimes and lead into all kinds of directions.
I think Ned's propensity for younger women, or even the desire for woman after woman might be considered morally neutral by many people today. But there's some other stuff in this film that we all agree on could not be right. But where exactly should one draw the line?
I'm glad to see Maeve Dermody has many roles coming up from IMDB.com. I thought she was great from the minute she put her feet up from awakening in the backseat, which we could only see in the rearview mirror, until she disappeared down that long dusty road.
I believe it would be easy to dismiss her character. But she's perfect. She's smart and she's really dumb. She's forthright. She's great. When do we ever see a character be forthright?
Once a boss told me I was the most forthright person they had ever met.
So I guess I like that quality and I know that I value it.
Rachel Griffiths is always good. But I can't see her as Australian because her American accent was so good on Brothers and Sisters when I first saw her. So whenever I see her sounding Australian I think for a minute how good she is at the Australian accent, before I remember she is Australian.
Have you ever heard an American sound Australian convincingly? Me either. But the Australians can surely speak like us.
The photography and the editing are masterful in this film, along with the music. A contributor on IMDB.com said the film was excruciatingly good. I agree. Having no idea where the story was going, I was totally drawn in by the transitions between the present and flashbacks and found it to be a great story. I kept the film on purpose in order to watch it again about two weeks later, and this time, knowing exactly what was going to happen, I noticed more of the masterful craft involved in a fine piece of film. The one particular scene that for me and for most watchers that was most significant could not have been edited more perfectly.
Beautiful. And terrible and awful and somehow, normal.
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