Concrete Playground

Axes do not fall silently and men die neither quickly nor quietly; their life splutters out of them in a mixture of breath and blood. It may well be that butchering a man is ‘easier than cutting sheep’ but it is, whatever your sensibility, far more gruesome.

The story of notorious convict Alexander Pearce has been told many times before. Marcus Clarke’s 1874 novel For the Term of His Natural Life was made into a silent movie (1927) and a mini-series (1983). Paul Collins’ Hell’s Gates (2002) is a comprehensive history of Pearce’s journey. Never mind also the folk-stories whispering through Tasmania since Pearce’s capture in 1824. But Van Dieman’s Land, the first feature film of director Jonathan auf der Heide, tells it like no other. Apart from being an incredible exercise in filmmaking, from the precise scriptwriting and cinematography to the pared-back performances, Van Dieman’s Land is breathtakingly brutal.

Eight men escape from Van Dieman’s Land, a penal settlement for re-offending convicts, where ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here’, is plastered over the gates. One man, Pearce (Oscar Redding), survives the journey through an unforgiving Tasmanian landscape.

Auf der Heide contends that this is a story too often exaggerated, that it is rather one about survival – kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. But whatever humanity these men had, even the process whereby it was beaten out of them, lies beyond the boundaries of this film. So why tell this particular part of this particular story? There is nothing to empathise with; little to illuminate what causes a person to do what it is these men do.

Yet this, I think, is the poetry of the film. Auf der Heide believes that a man, no matter how low he has fallen, is still human – perhaps violence is in fact the very essence of humanity? Van Dieman’s Land takes no liberties with emotion or spectacle, it appears more honest than confronting and if you are made of sterner stuff than I, it might just be one of the best films you’ll see this year.

By Bree Pickering