Saturday 11 February 2012

Synopsis- Between Here and the Sky


When people think of science they think of middle-aged men with crazy hair and white coats pouring some coloured liquid from one beaker into another for no good reason other than it’s a catchy image of something that may indeed save the world. But then people would only be partly right. For while science is conducted by people wearing white coats and often sport wild hair and a glazed half-mad look in their eye, they tend not to be middle aged men but 25-35 year old people of both sexes with real life problems and, dare I say it, real life personalities. And rather than saving the world by splashing coloured liquids around the place, their words tends to be more of the kind that carefully and glacially progresses the limits of what we know so that hopefully what they are doing may someday help in the treatment of some disease or other. Between Here and the Sky follows such a life- a 20-something scientist (Marshall) struggling with his PhD and what it all means in the broad scheme of things, and his search for something more to his life than his day-to-day life in the laboratory. Basically, he’s human. Then one night at a brother of a friend’s party he meets Hazel, a 20-something aspiring writer with eponymous eyes that leads him into the diametrically opposite world of the artist.

Meanwhile, generations earlier, Henry is arriving in Australia as a child of migrant English workers. He narrates his family’s journey into the middle of the tall forest, and their fight with the landscape as they try to establish a farm in harsh and unfamiliar territory. We see his father’s own peculiar methods, his brother’s (Albert) special kindred touch with the land, and how they transform the impenetrable bush into fertile agricultural land. Their wealth accumulates, and the arrival of Henry’s nephew Phillip expands the dynasty even further.

The last act provides a merging of the two previous narratives. It deals with the internal conflict within the major protagonists regarding death, and more broadly the role we play in life and how we must inevitably confront and comes to terms with our own mortality. It is not macabre, but exists as an elegiac meditation on death and our right to die in the manner in which we want.

Within this narrative, Marshall and Hazel retreat to the countryside in an effort to escape the confines of the city. Marshall grew up in the country, and even after his family moved away he would still go and work for Phillip and his wife Beth during university holidays. Phillip asks Marshall for advice regarding his own death- specifically the most peaceful way to do it- rationalising that as Marshall is involved in animal research he would know the most ethical way of administering death. Thereafter, the four main protagonists wrestle with the reality of Phillip’s intentions and how it affects them.

So, as a whole, ‘Between Here and the Sky’ is a life story, a love story, and a death story. While it explores themes as diverse as death, love, family, reincarnation, individuality, science, art, and the perceived conflict between science and art, the uniting undercurrent is of our primordial connection with the environment around us and how when all is said and done we are powerless to stop the turning of the earth. It makes the case that we are merely a small part of the world in which we live, and that a connection with the natural world is essential for our wellbeing, and flows from the hypothesis of Biophilia developed by the scientist and philosopher Edmund O. Wilson, which argues that humans instinctively seek connections with the rest of nature, and need this connection in order to gain fulfilment.