(Madman)

Cannibals, but no musical

If you’ve read The Fatal Shore you know that the history of convict Australia contains a notable surplus of floggings, scurvy and cannibalism. The cannibalism comes most prominently in the story of eight convicts who escaped from the Macquarie Harbour Penal Settlement in 1822 and made their way across one of the most inhospitable parts of Tasmania, turning on each other one by one as they did. Van Diemen’s Land tells that story. Though it’s a brutal tale filled with horror and revolt, Van Diemen’s Land is actually a beautiful-looking movie. Partly that’s because of the stark, rain-swept glory of the Tasmanian forests (and some Victorian ones that stand in for them), where the vegetation is so thick it’s like walls and animals simply aren’t seen. Largely though, it’s because of the cinematography, with every shot – whether it’s a group of haggard men gathered around a campfire or an axe descending on its victim – composed as meticulously as a Renaissance masterpiece. The same attention to detail is not paid to the characters unfortunately, and it’s very hard to get inside their heads enough to sympathise with their situation beyond a superficial level of unpleasantness. The backgrounds of the characters are left blank and they blur together in the story’s first half, meaning that when they start dropping like flies it’s more difficult to care about them beyond a general squeamishness at the fact of what’s happening. It’s a story more could have been done with, that shows a part of our horrible history but does so in such disconnected isolation that its impact is diminished.

**½    

JODY MACGREGOR

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