Land, self and the space between the ideal and pragmatic worlds: Part I

The most recent VCE English syllabus requires students to explore a certain context in their text analysis. One of the contexts available for consideration is that of Imaginative Landscape.

Drawing connections between land and self is certainly not new. In popular culture, we see this nexus in Hollywood films when Dad and the boys take off to the woods for a weekend to bond in - presumably - masculine ways. Christian pop-psychology books are also known for suggesting a link between the wild outdoors and manhood. While these are clearly gendered elucidations, they are illustrative of a wider reading of the influence of landscape and one's search for identity and meaning.

I remember reading Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay and being struck by the link between the wild, colourful and untamed jungle of Papua New Guinea and the paranoid, eccentric and neurotic mental state of the characters. Indeed, the white people who came to the land as foreigners almost seemed to be transformed by the land into these new identities.

For those of us in Australia, the harsh outback (or, inland!) and unforgiving bush has long provided a context for reflection on our cultural identity through books and film.

Once known as the 'lucky country', Australia attracted free-settlers and gold prospectors who imagined a better, more prosperous life. Yet, the nature of Australian land has, in many ways, led to a corporate mentality that pursues pragmatism over idealism.

Two current films - Lucky Country (due to be released in Australian cinemas on July 16) and Disgrace - explore in part the relationships between land, self, idealism and pragmatism in post-colonial South Africa and immediately post-Federation Australia.

Before a recent advanced screening of Lucky Country, which I was fortunate to attend, the screenwriter (Andy Cox) told the audience that the film was interested in 'pragmatism, idealism and the space in between'. It often seems that idealism for Australians is synonymous with naivety and 'false hope'. Yet, ever since European involvement with the land, Australians have maintained some kind of grasp of a deeply seated hope for the 'good life'. While images of sun-tanned bodies on the long, wide beaches of Australia may conjure up such sentiments, these are quickly eroded by the image of the distinctive Australian outback.

In Lucky Country, Nat (Aden Young), full of idealism, takes his teenage daughter, Sarah (Hanna Mangan-Lawrence), and son, Tom (Toby Wallace), to the remote bush with a view to 'farming' the land. Yet, Nat is a city school teacher for whom farming is not something known. As the three of them attempt to make a life in this foreign, isolated place, life unravels. The land knows not idealism; it responds only to the taming influence of a pragmatism that knows well its competitor. As such, Nat's daily battles with the land see him slowly succumb to its power, both mentally and physically.

Three former soldiers come along and help the family for some time, but the tension between each individual is palpable. The tough conditions, leaving each one aware that life is now about little more than survival, breeds both a certain predisposition to self-interest and distrust of others. As in Beat Not the Bones, the characters are changed to become like the landscape within which they reside. In this case, we watch people who become tenacious, hardened, desperate and ruthless.

Nat may have believed that he could tame the land, but he underestimated the power that land can have over people.

Part II to follow