Van Dieman's Land (2009)

Directed by: Jonathan auf der Heide

written by: Jonathan auf der Heide, Oscar Redding

“Hunger is a strange silence.”

SPOILER ALERT (If you’re not a history buff)

Van Dieman’s land is the true story of eight convicts that escape from Macquarie Harbour in 1822 Austrilia, a work camp for re-offending convicts. The sole survivor was Alexander Pearce, who’s confession of what happened in the Australian wilderness is the only window we get to the events that happened to the eight men. His testimony was actually rejected by the courts as a simple cover up, he was later hanged. And what was this shocking confession that made the crown thin that it was more fiction than fact? Cannibalism. Pearce’s tale is one of murder and eating the dead in order to survive, and watching as slowly eight become one, as Pearce is the last one standing. This plot sounds like a bad Rodrigues film but I assure you it is not. The plot is structurally simple (man vs. themselves, man vs. elements) but the themes and the visuals make this film something over and above your average survival flick.

Before I begin, here is something that I wish I knew before I started watching the film: it’s the second in a series by the same director. The first film is called Hell’s Gate, although I’m not sure what it follows exactly, I just know that the two follow each other. Not that you need to watch the first to understanding the second per se, it’s just that there is no historical background for the film, so unless you are familiar with the story of Alexander Pearce, you might be a tad confused. I suspect that the films are thematically and visually tied more than narratively so. This film is a testament to just how versatile the film artwork can be. The plot itself is simplistic, eight men trying to survive. There are no allusions, no plot twists or shockers, the ending is well-known to an entire country (Australia) and Heide knows this. What makes this film great is how this simple plot is transformed into a dark poem, a reflection on violence, hunger and God. The various long shots of the forest accompanied by Pearce’s dark reflections really make it seem more like a poetic epic rather than a simple film. The fact that these asides are in Gaelic just heighten that sense of poetry.

The overall tone of this film is brilliant. Usually, when a film takes place in a forest or a jungle, the camera is used to exemplify greens and bright colors, to show off some of the natural beauty of the surrounding area. Heide however, opts to reduce the lush green forest into a collage of neutrals, grey, browns and tans. This is used to give a sense of slow death and rot. The grayish atmosphere mirrors the moral ambiguity of the film, “8 men enter the forest away from the eyes of God” has Pearce says in one of his asides. As the men slowly become more and more hungry and more and more tired, the bleakness of the picture seems to reflect this.

The dialogue is actually quite interesting. The banter is realistically done, with the tension between the english prisoners and the Irish/Scottish prisoners manifesting itself in insults, and sometimes in simple sly remarks. There is almost no music, and the sound is predominantly the sound of the surrounding forests, birds, animals and of course the wind. The silence of the forest becomes a force, a sort of burden. What was the most striking part of the film is the frighteningly realistic portrays of death and murder. When people are struck or get their throats cut, they do no die instantly nor is there a large fountain of blood. Rather, the victim will squirm and twitch, squeal and twist in the mud, gasp for air as death takes them.

I could write page and pages of the strange beauty of this film. But you should probably just watch it. I guarantee that you that the images, the words and the sounds of this film will haunt you for some time.