One Night the Moon Study Guide

Language Form and Style

Musical Drama

One Night the Moon rejects an over-reliance on dialogue and instead incorporates musical ballads and lyricism into the film. The use of the musical form both reflects the oral nature of storytelling in First Nations cultures and provides a structural device to reveal cultural tension. Musical features in One Night the Moon include:

• Discordant harmonies and non-diegetic scores, notably in 'This Land Is Mine/This Land is Me', that reflect a cultural tension between Albert and Jim.
• Symbolic instrument choices, such as the uillean pipes, to represent Jim's grief in the solo 'I Don't Know Anything Anymore'.
• Use of harmonising melodies when Jim and Rose reconcile in the search for Emily during the duet 'Unfinished Business'.

Rural Cinematography

Perkins' cinematography is distinguished by the prevalent use of extreme shots and establishing shots which focus the audience on the Australian rural landscape as a central character in the film's plot.

• Expansive establishing shots of the rural Australian setting overpower the Eurocentric attitudes and behaviours present in the film.
• The use of fences as props in the rural Australian setting denotes a Eurocentric attempt to contain the land despite its presentation as an untameable force.
• The interior mise-en-scènes presented are bare, which conveys both the economic hardship of the 1930s Great Depression and the film's central focus on the land as a contested site of property and culture.

The Australian Gothic

The film draws on conventions of the Gothic genre and adapts them to the Australian setting to demonstrate the consequences of ignoring Indigenous knowledges which reside in Country.

• The rural land is presented as a corrosive and emotionally corruptive force that fractures the domestic idealism of Rose and Jim's family life.
• The land becomes a site of loss that is intertwined with Emily's disappearance.
• The setting is presented as a dangerous and untameable body of power for those who do not know how to navigate it, which prompts the audience to recognise the enduring value of First Nations knowledges.

The Common Module Rubric

Published by the New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA)

Individual and collective human experiences

Perkins represents human experiences that include, but are not limited to:

• Discrimination: cultural and social
• Loss: the breakdown of relationships as a result of trauma, a sense of self, and power
• Reconciliation: with one's past views and with cultural groups

Emotions and qualities related to these experiences

Perkins represents human emotions and qualities including, but not limited to:

• Love: arising from the experience of family and culture
• Grief: arising from the experience of losing a loved one, failing to uphold social expectations, and loss of cultural value
• Empathy: the ability to see beyond one's inherited cultural values and recognise the importance of living in cooperative communities

Emotional, intellectual, physical, cultural and lived experiences

• Emotional Experiences: Rose and Jim's search for Emily
• Intellectual Experiences: thinking about how one's sense of self is shaped by many competing factors and not purely inherited cultural values
• Physical Experiences: experiences within the Australian rural setting
• Cultural Experiences: conflict between First Nations peoples and Eurocentrism
• Lived Experiences: discrimination and reconciliation

Identity, culture, acceptance and growth, invite the readers to see the world differently, and challenge assumptions

• Identity: constructed and fractured through rigid cultural expectations
• Culture: a force that can restrict one's worldviews and inhibit them from appreciating alternate ways of knowing, doing, and being
• Acceptance and Growth: accepting the value of difference, reforming misguided cultural perspectives on individuals and groups
• See the World Differently: understanding that the present cannot fully be understood until it reconciles with its past
• Challenge Assumptions: the nature of Australian culture and identity

Tension between agency and conformity

Perkins represents the tension between exercising personal choice and conforming to rigid cultural expectations that divide the collective. Throughout the film, individuals contend with the pressure to exercise moral judgements that go against Eurocentric values.

Paradoxes in human motivation and behaviour

The Paradox of Belonging:

• Belonging should ratify one's place in the world.
• Yet Perkins reveals that when belonging to a cultural group restricts an individual's capacity for empathy and understanding, it can become a catalyst for alienation and self-destruction.

Key Ideas and Themes

1. Cultural Tensions and Divisions

• One of the central narrative tensions of One Night the Moon is the cultural division between First Nations peoples and Anglo-Saxon landowners, specifically demonstrated between Albert and Jim.
• Jim applies his Eurocentric sense of superiority towards Albert and disregards his highly developed knowledge and connection to Country. Jim's refusal to allow Albert to participate in Emily's search demonstrates how socially entrenched cultural tension can diminish rationality and moral recognition.
• The broader cultural tension filters into the Ryan family home, where Rose's parental responsibility to recover her daughter conflicts with Jim's cultural narrow-mindedness and catalyses the breakdown of their family unit.

2. The Redemptive Power of Loss

• Emily's death is a historical tragedy that was accelerated by the system of cultural exclusion into which she was born.
• However, her passing also provides a profound opportunity for cross-cultural acceptance, which is evident when Rose reconciles with Albert to enlist his help in finding her daughter.
• Perkins uses Emily's death as a narrative device to highlight the universality of human loss and empathy, breaking down cultural divides through tragedy to demonstrate that genuine reconciliation can occur through a simple recognition of shared humanity.

3. The Relationship between the Past and Present

• Although One Night the Moon is set in 1930s Australia, Perkins addresses pertinent and contemporary issues about land ownership, cultural acceptance, and recognition of Australia's colonial past.
• The film argues against commercialising traditional lands in which significant cultural knowledge resides.
• One Night the Moon functions as a powerful reminder about our social inclination for tragedy if Eurocentric prejudice cannot be dismantled.

Essay Questions

Module Specific: Texts and Human Experiences

1. How has the exploration of human experiences in your prescribed text enhanced your understanding of paradoxes in human motivation and behaviour? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
2. To what extent does the composer of your prescribed text explore the power of human emotions in shaping experiences? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
3. Evaluate how the study of your prescribed text has offered insights into the way collective human experiences promote acceptance and growth. In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
4. In what ways does the composer of your prescribed text reflect tensions between agency and conformity in our individual human experiences? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
5. Texts reflect how the interconnection between our qualities, emotions, motivations, and behaviours shape human experiences. To what extent is this statement true of your prescribed text? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.

Text Specific: Rachel Perkins, One Night the Moon

1. Evaluate how Perkins' representation of cultural experiences offers insights into the intersection between judgement and acceptance. In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
2. To what extent does One Night the Moon represent the individual and collective nature of loss? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
3. How does Perkins shape form and setting in One Night the Moon to challenge our assumptions about the paradox of belonging? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
4. Perkins explores the relationship between the past and the present, enriching the way we understand our connections to the world. To what extent does this statement reflect your understanding of the human experiences represented in One Night the Moon? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
5. How has your study of One Night the Moon invited you to reflect personally on the nature of history? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.

Essay Model and Scaffold

Introduction: Scaffold and Modelled Example

Thesis

Address the question through a clear and conceptual argument.

Rachel Perkins' musical film One Night the Moon challenges audience assumptions about the nature of cultural experiences in rural Australia by revealing how inter-cultural tension fractures human relationships and allows tragedy to flourish.

Why it works

• Specifically references the prescribed text (author, form, title, and publication date)
• Uses key language from the question
• Conceptualises the key question language into an argument about culture, prejudice, and identity

Elaborate

Expand the line of argument by explicitly linking it to the concepts and features of your prescribed text.

Set within 1930s Great Depression Australia, Perkins rejects conventional filmic dialogue and substitutes it for an evocative lyricism to interrogate the personal and shared impact of neglecting First Nations knowledges and privileging Eurocentrism.

Why it works

• Specifically references the form of the text to address the 'how' aspect of the question
• Links the macro function of form to audience purpose
• Elaborates on the conceptual response to outline the order of argument in the response

Link

Demonstrate awareness of the module's focus by connecting your argument to both the question and key module directives.

Specifically using elements of Australian Gothicism, Perkins explores experiences of discrimination, conflict, and loss that invite the audience to reconsider culture not as a force which fosters collective unity, but one that is capable of entrenching social division.

Why it works

• Incorporates key module terminology that is relevant to the question
• Concludes the introduction by making a specific and arguable claim about the question

Body Paragraph: Scaffold and Modelled Example

Sub-Argument

Present a clear and single idea that progresses the argument of your thesis. This may be universal or text specific.

When an individual's identity is primarily constructed through rigid cultural values, it can diminish their capacity for empathy, contradicting the way that culture should foster cohesion in our human experience.

Why it works

• Argues key thesis concepts: place, adversity, identity
• Establishes a link back to the question

Explanation

Connect a macro-feature to the sub-argument. Outline how the form of the text actively supports the sub-argument.

Perkins innovates with filmic structure to explore the individual hardship experienced by Jim Ryan, a representation of the settler-colonial male, who fails to reconcile Eurocentric values of pride with the unforgiving nature of the Australian landscape.

Why it works

• Demonstrates a specific awareness of form: setting and atmosphere
• Connects aspects of form to the meaning created within the text
• Explains its relevance to the question

Example

Identify a technique specific to form. Provide the evidence of that technique. Explain the purpose.

The bookended soundtrack, 'I Don't Know Anything Anymore', is accompanied by an over-the-shoulder shot of Jim as he lays asleep on the kitchen table in the lowly-lit and silent domestic mise-en-scène, denoting his profound grief for Emily and his masculinity. Note: more than one example is required in an essay.

Why it works

• Provides a micro-analysis of the broader structural features addressed
• Uses a specific technique
• Uses a specific and accurate example

Link

Demonstrate the relationship between your evidence, the sub-argument, and the question.

The circular structure contextualises Jim's failure to find Emily, which contradicts the Eurocentric expectation of unchecked male authority over commercialised land and catalyses the experience of self-regression in a desolate Australian setting where tragedy is consequent to one's inability to negotiate culture and identity.

Why it works

• Expands on the evidence provided to create a clear relationship between the text, its meaning, and the question

Conclude

Reinforce the topic and its relevance to the question.

Thus, Perkins evocatively dramatises Jim's identity crisis to challenge the assumption that culture is a beneficial constituent of one's identity, exposing its potential to dismantle facets of understanding and self-forgiveness.

Why it works

• Reinforces the main argument in reference to the question

Conclusion: Scaffold and Modelled Example

Restate Thesis

Readdress the key elements of your argument as outlined in the response.

Perkins powerfully destabilises the assumption that culture is a socially cohesive force and invites the viewer to self-reflect on their capacity for reconciliation and cross-cultural understanding.

Why it works

• Restates thesis concepts without repeating the introduction word-for-word

Reoutline Key Elements

Readdress how those key concepts answer the question asked.

Through the cinematic representation of cultural judgement, loss, and self-destruction, One Night the Moon communicates the importance of addressing national injustice to foster collective unity in a contemporary context.

Why it works

• Reconnects the argument's key elements directly to the question

Reinforce Judgement

Reinforce your position in relation to the question.

Ultimately, the director challenges the audience's understanding of identity as a reflection of competing social and cultural constructs, exposing its ability to bring people together and drive them apart.

Why it works

• Leaves the marker with a final, confident statement of judgement

Works cited

All works cited in this document are based on Australian Fair Dealing copyright laws as of 2023–2024.

Perkins, R. (Director). (2001). One Night the Moon [Film]. MusicArtsDance Films.