This beautiful film is like an ink-blot test where everyone sees something different. There is a scene where the girl is looking at old pictures in the abandoned farm house and its hard to tell whether shes laughing or crying at them. The closed-captions say that shes laughing but captioning has been known to be extremly inacurate. Does anyone have any commnts on this scene?
shareWell I just assumed that she was crying because the photos represented civilisation and that's what she wanted to get back to but who knows, possibly not the closed captionists.
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I wondered that too, but only briefly. Based on what we've seen of the character to that point, it's hard to imagine her crying. One of the key themes of the film is the emotional distancing created by modern culture. When her father tries to kill her and her brother, then kills himself, she has nothing to say about it. When the Aborigine boy kills himself, (in a later scene)she has nothing to say about that, either. Her entire emotional range seems pretty limited.
Also, there's the question of why those images would make her cry. Reminded of the tragedy that had just befallen her? Not really plausible. They were just old pictures of strangers. More likely she would get some amusement from them.
In the scene when she discovers the water hole has dried up, there was a tear rolling down one of her cheeks. After the death of her father it appeared to me that she wasnt surprised because she was almost expecting him to do something crazy. When her brother tells her that the Aborigine is dead beacause he wouldnt take his pen knife, she reacts in disbelief saying, "How? Where?" That dosnt mean that he's dead!" It seemed to me that she was shocked at first to see him dead, but then just thought of it as a curious occurance. In the novel, the girl breaks down crying as the Aborigine dies.
shareShe is most definitely LAUGHING in this scene. She is smiling as she looks at the photos, and the caption also says she is laughing. At first I thought she was crying, but I saw her smiling at the pictures and then you realize the sound is laughter.
The Boy is watching her all this time -- makes me wonder what he's thinking. In fact I'm left wondering what he's thinking throughout the film. I'd love to get inside his brain and see what he sees and thinks of these two kids.
Don't threaten ME with a dead fish!
Maybe it was meant to confuse the audience. This might be something the Aborigine boy must've been asking himself, "Is she laughing or is she crying?"
Do The Mussolini! Headkick!
How very true! This film is like a "virtual movie" where you, the viewer, are placed squarely in the film and see every little thing from the viewpoint of the characters. Even the camera angles are low most of the time as if you were seeing the world through the eyes of a child.
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I definitely thought it was clear she was laughing at the funny old photos.
shareVbru ia indeed correct, each of us reads these scenes differently.
I saw girl as having made that final separation or distancing from her world to the world boy lived - the primal, yet beautiful reliance upon all the planet provides. I thought her response to be so beautifully caught and natural as she expressed two emotions - that of crying for the world she had one experienced, to the absurdity of having lived such a banal life where there was no connectivity with either nature or the truest essence of life.
It was also captured at a moment that many of us long for later in life - when we think back, trying to pinpoint when we moved from the innocence in our youth, to that point of understanding our emotions, our bodies, and our aspirations. That's a moment far too many of us miss as we mature. And we later find ourselves mourning for the loss. And we find ourselves, for the briefest of seconds, when that swirling cauldron of living engulfs us, longing desperately for that moment again.
I also believe this is part of the epiphany Jenny Agutter experienced during the year of filming. She has openly spoken, almost in prose, as how profoundly she found herself touched by the experience and how it was a time of 'awakening' in her own life's journey.
The film is a work of magnificence not always appreciated or even understood by many. Some see it for nothing more than an exploitation of youth. Some see it for a journey of darkness, death, and abandonment. And some even see it purely as a film of sexuality.
I feel that it only reveals itself at its finest to those who either can or are willing to step beyond all the barriers we create in our life, to our primal emotions and senses. Once we do, we begin to not just watch the beauty of the film unfold, but the awakening we had in our own life, or the awakening we always longed for but never experienced.
Beautiful post :-)
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