Van Diemen's Land (2009) Reviews

• The dark side of men

  Siamois2010-01-24

  Despite moving at a slow pace and sometimes lacking in exposition, Van Diemen's Land is an impressive film. The story of Alexander Pearce's escape, along with 7 other convicts is gut-wrenching, especially when we take into account it is inspired by a true story (to which extent, we may never know). As soon as the movie begins, you are hit by jaw-dropping cinematography that definitely takes you in this very different place and time. Silences and sounds are used to good effect and the minimalist score is wonderful yet bleak. The movie does not rely on much dialogue and at times, suffers a little from this The characters are very life-like, even if they aren't sketched very clearly to start. You learn who these men are and what each is capable of over the course of the movie, which becomes increasingly bleak and permeated with a strange sense of evil. Not a cartoonish Hollywood-like evil but rather, the terrible things men can do and the group dynamics displayed when acts of cruelty are done. The narration by the character Pearce did not work all that well for me, and the movie felt a tad long to me due to its slow pace but this was an uneasy viewing. The genre listed on IMDb is "thriller" but this felt much more like a very, very gruesome drama. This is a film bordering on horror themes. Do not expect flashy scenes of action and clear cut good guys against bad guys. Worthwhile, even if somewhat depressing

• i don't know why people need everything shiny and optimistic?

  fang_proxy2014-03-26

  It's based on a true story. The music, cinematography and the acting was superb. I love this movie, the bleakness, the nature..it's really interesting to see something darker about human nature.if you want something fun then this movie isn't for you. The music when the credits roll...outstanding! I never written a review before nor will it probably help you in anyway but it justifies that how much i love this movie. sorry for my bad English

• A horrifying tale of murder and cannibalism in Van Diemen's Land

  AussieJim2009-03-01

  Jonathan auf der Heide may not be the easiest name to remember, but make a mental note of it. File it away for future reference, because this young Tasmanian director has chosen for his first feature film a story so dark and grim, a tale so horrific, that you will want to keep a 'watching brief' on his career to see what he follows Van Diemen's Land up with. The film first saw light in an early short as Jonathan's Victorian College of the Arts graduation film called, Hell's Gates, which went on to be named Best Student Film at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2008. Van Diemen's Land, as every adult Australian would know, is the first name given to Tasmania by British authorities during the early years of white settlement. A dreaded penal colony, with a fearsome reputation, Van Diemen's Land saw more than its share of horror and barbarism meted out to the convicts unlucky enough to end up there. This film, set in 1882, tells the 'true' story of eight convicts who escape from a working party and head out across the Tasmanian wilderness in search of Macquarie Harbour (the Hell's Gates in the title of the original short), where they believe a ship will be waiting to carry them away from the island. One of the escapees is Alexander Pearce, a Gaelic speaking Irishman. Pearce, was in fact, the only convict to survive the harrowing trek across Tasmania's wild mountainous peaks and valleys, and following his recapture, told a horrifying tale of murder and cannibalism that still echoes and shocks more than a hundred years after the original events took place. Filmed entirely on location in Tasmania and Victoria's Otway Ranges, the film has a dark foreboding quality about it that doesn't let up across its entire 100 minute length. Almost all of the colour has been leached out of the film leaving almost nothing else but drab olive greens and grays. We never get a glimpse of clear blue, open sky. The air is constantly heavy with rain and damp, and one can only imagine what these convicts from England, Scotland and Ireland must have thought as they set out on foot to cross one of the harshest and most forbidding environments on earth. The film is hauntingly narrated by Pearce, who peppers his comments with poetical insights into the human psyche that are often as shocking as they are profound. "I've looked up at God looking down", intones Pearce in his native Gaelic, "He dances with an axe in his hand." Or this: "Let God have his Heaven. I am blood." Van Diemen's Land is a stunning debut feature from one of Australia's newest and youngest directors. If this film is any indication of the quality of writing and directing coming out of our film schools today, it augers very well for the future of the Australian film industry as a whole.

• It's grim down south

  Miakmynov2009-07-13

  Although it felt like a rewarding experience, Van Diemen's Land is not what you would call an easy watch. The viewer is transported back a couple of centuries, and plunged into the harsh and untamed Tasmanian landscape, for a fairly straightforward tale of man v man v the environment. Despite its' simplicity, it's an affecting tale, helped by the sparse, evocative and apologetic "I'm a quiet man" voice-over that threads its way through the narrative, holding together the otherwise un-holdable. It's very much 'in-your-face' as there's little historical explanation, and only the vaguest sense of any future ahead, which compels you to focus on the here-and-now. The score is haunting, and the film is beautifully shot, with bleached-out greens emphasizing the unforgiving nature of their surroundings and predicament. The trailer gives a good indication of what to expect, including two of the more iconic sequences that stayed with me long afterwards – one scene where the group are running time-lapsed and ghost-like through the forest trying to escape their pursuers, the other the shockingly swift brutality with which the second inmate on the menu meets his maker. Elsewhere, we experience the messy and protracted depiction of how hard it is to kill a man, and as the numbers dwindle whilst the tension and paranoia mounts, individual camp fires become the order of the night, as the lengths men would go to survive become increasingly desperate. On the downside, I struggled to hear some of the heavily-accented dialogue (especially when the speaker was off screen), and it was hard to believe that there were no other nutritious animals in a rainforest, bar a solitary snake. Given their limited resources, quite how they would have caught them is another matter, but they'd have sure as hell tried, to save from eating each other. I came out feeling like I'd been badly mauled after 12 rounds in a ring with an enormous and unbeatable foe. It's a real powerhouse of a film that I would most certainly recommend, even though one viewing is quite sufficient for me in this lifetime. 7/10.

• Assault on the senses...but worthwhile.

  angryangus2010-02-02

  Grim. Relentless. Unsettling. Frightening even. This film leaves nobody sitting comfortably whilst they watch it. This is 'us' when the thin veneer of being 'civilized' is stripped away. When all that Life has left you is no future, a few rags and a brutalized nature then the consequences can reach unfathomable depths. I've read some of the negative reviews for this film and can understand it when viewers who watch 'sanitized' Technicolor visions of what are classed as the 'norm'…that is their benchmark and they don't like concepts that stray beyond that. But when one has watched unglamourous brutality and emotions in such good, raw films like Saving Private Ryan, Last of the Mohicans, Apocolypta, Fateless and the superb Kokoda, then one can appreciate what this true-life film was trying to achieve. There are no heroes in this film…and no villains, just survivalists. From the uniformed officers and men posted to what seemed a god-forsaken land, to the convicts they had control of, they all had one thing in common…the desire not to be there! I'll not watch this film again for a couple of months as I'd like my senses to be on an even keel next time, but already I'm looking forward to it.