Latest Updates - Jane Campion

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

The unfortunate child.

This is a brilliant bio of Writer and poet Janet Frame, which depicts an odyssey of a young, talented girl who's gifts and general disposition render her odd, in the eyes of the conventional world around her, in Austere pre-war New Zealand, and basically crushed by those conventions, which constantly seem to persecute her for being born different.

And while she has a loving family around her, tragedy is always present.

No greater tragedy threatens her life than the fact she, being crushingly shy, and awkward, begins to believe that there is something wrong with her, as the world she lives in convinces her that this is so... to the extent that she is committed, on the strength of an autobiography she wrote, to a psychiatric institution under the mis-diagnosis of schizophrenia... her great suffering in this period of her life sets this fragile and unprepared (now) young woman out into the world where she learns a few things about herself.

It's a long movie, divided into three parts, as the subtitle: "A trilogy" denotes, based, as it is, on a trilogy of autobiographies Janet Frame herself wrote...

...But it is thoroughly engrossing, if, at times, a hard watch... but this journey of self discovery and affirmation will resonate with many, I'm sure, who feel they have been made to believe such things about themselves because they may happen to look, think, or feel different than the rest.

And on the strength of what I heard in this movie, I think I want to seek out some of the real Janet Frame's work now, it seems truly brilliant.