I don’t feel the same magnanimity toward The Getting of Wisdom, which Bruce Beresford, who we know as the director of Driving Miss Daisy and Tender Mercies, directed in his native Australia in 1978. It’s an adaptation of an apparently well-loved novel there by Henry Handel Richardson, a pseudonym for Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson.
In it, Laura Tweedle Rambotham (Susannah Fowle), goes to a very snobbish boarding school in Melbourne, Australia from her home in Victoria, where her mother runs the post office all day and is a seamstress at night. Compared to the other girls at this boarding school, she’s poor and must be sneered at. She’s teased from the start, but she’s a different sort of girl. She won’t try to shrink from what these girls throw at her, she won’t try to become one of them because she prefers to be herself, even as the school tries to turn all these girls into the same good little machines. There’s a lot of repression afoot because of it, though it’s the time period as well that does that.
Fowle is the only performer who really matters in this movie, at least among the girls. They’re just a gaggle of malevolence, mean spirits, spitefulness, wickedness, and some of them do warm to Laura, but only just so, and then when the story she tells about being in love with Reverend Shepherd (John Waters) turns out not to be true, they turn on her again. That’s to be expected, I know, and Beresford skillfully conveys this suffocating atmosphere. But it’s also a hindrance. There is insight into the teachers by what they do in their off-hours, the dreams they have that they will likely never achieve (and perhaps why two of them are so contemptuous of Laura when she arrives on the train), but it’s not enough. There’s no underlying enjoyment to the proceedings, nothing to keep interest as there was with my tormentors. The only little joy I get out of this movie is when the dour Miss Chapman (Patricia Kennedy) smiles just a bit out of amusement toward the end. Why, there is a heart of sorts there! She’s human after all!
I wanted some sign that any of these girls were more human than they let on, which I suppose isn’t the point because of its time period, because of the way things were. But there have been other portrayals of repression, such as with Stevens the butler (Anthony Hopkins) in The Remains of the Day, in which there is so much to wonder about, why he insists on being the way he is, in giving up his own happiness for that of his employer, believing that he must be wholeheartedly, unceasingly loyal and that everything must be perfect. It’s what he is. Surely in 1900 Melbourne, there must have been some glint of humanity somewhere. Just a bit?
While Laura does get involved in some questionable acts that almost make her one of those manipulative girls, I liked Susannah Fowle’s performance because at least Laura’s unique personality remains. And there is the conflict again. I like how Beresford takes such pleasure in the details within a frame, panning over photos near a piano like he does in Driving Miss Daisy, and how he portrays repression in this school, and yet I don’t like the latter. Being human involves so many traits and so many emotions, I know, but in the constant bombardment of one set of traits, it gets tiring. The first time I looked up at the elapsed time on my DVD player out of exasperation, only 35 minutes had passed of this 97-minute movie. More humanity, as subtle as what Beresford presents in everything else, and I probably wouldn’t have looked at the time so much.
This is at least an admirable DVD, presented for those who like this movie, first with Telling Schoolgirl Tales, an 86-minute interview-laden documentary about the making of it, featuring Beresford, producer Phillip Adams, cinematographer Donald McAlpine, and Susannah Fowle and other cast members. It’s from 2006, so it’s like seeing the Wonka kids in the documentary on the Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory DVD. Not so jarring as it was with that one, but it’s interesting to see how the pronounced facial features of the teenaged Susannah Fowle have mellowed. Plus, Beresford is earnest about his passion for making this movie, and honest about its circumstances, so in some ways, it’s more interesting than the movie.
Then there’s the original press kit with all its pages onscreen, 41 stills in the Still Gallery, one original poster in a full shot first, and then the top, middle, and bottom of the poster are shown. And there’s the original trailer as well. So at least Kino Lorber does well with that. It’s heartening that they remain so hungry to explore world cinema, with respectful dignity.
At best, curiosity quenched: I got to see what Bruce Beresford was like before Hollywood. Not worth it, but he obviously could direct.
