My Brilliant Career is a simple and straightforward narrative skillfully told. You will never be required to sit on the edge of your seat, and half a bottle of port would do you nicely. The setting is mostly quaint -- often opulent and petulant -- in outback, and somewhat eccentric, Australia still inside the first one hundred years of white settlement.<br /><br />The story is about a young woman who is the daughter of a struggling rancher and who has a profound passion for the arts. "I'd like to be a pianist", she says with a burst of defiant emotion in a heated confrontation with her contemplative mother. In the end, though, she ends up becoming a writer, and what will torment her is the choice she will have to make.<br /><br />What she has to forfeit is a bright no-nonsense handsome young man. Two years after they had solemnly admitted their feelings for one another, they meet again. At this awkward moment her hands are covered in mud which, like God, stands between her and her lover. "… I've got to do it alone", she whispers to him guiltily. At this critical juncture it becomes manifestly clear that God, after all, is indeed a damnable thing. He alone can grant whatever talents we shall hope to have, and only on His terms we are obliged to direct our will.<br /><br />My Brilliant Career is one rare Australian motion picture that does not place emphasis on the scenery which, Australia being the dazzler that it is, is invariably tempting. Instead the interest is focused unabatedly, and without distraction, on the soul and substance of each and every character. It is this quality and discipline that imbued Gillian Armstrong's piece with the magical touch of durability shamefully scarce in Australian cinematography.