AUSTRALIA
What can one say about a film with Hugh "sexiest man alive" Jackman, Nicole Kidman and Baz Luhrmann. You are bound to come with certain expectations that Luhrmann will surely trounce as he has made a career out of violating convention, even his own. Australia is a sort of about face for Baz, an ambitious, romantic, epic that is much more earthy and serious than his previous operatic flights of fancy, at least on it's face. It is crammed with all of what we, non-Australians, fondly associate with the country while reminding us of the not so nice bits. It's always a roller coaster ride with Baz challenging you to hang on.
There are really two films here, fused together, not entirely seamlessly but that's fine. The first film is an epic western, a la Red River, except Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) is the fish out of water played by Montgomery Clift, and Drover (Jackman) takes the John Wayne part as the rambling man, whose home is the range. Lady Ashley leaves England to chase after her husband who owns cattle station called Faraway Downs. When she arrives in Darwin, a waterfront wild west looking town in the Northern Territory of Australia, she is met by Drover who has by now used her expensive and inappropriate for the outback luggage in a barroom brawl.. She's looking for her husband but winds up on cattle drive with a motley crew, including an alcoholic accountant (Jack Thompson) and a half aboriginal and motherless boy named Nullah (Brandon Walters). It must be done however to thwart the evil monopoly of King Carney (Bryan Brown) and his murderous number one son-in-law Neil Fletcher (David Wenham, late of Lord of the Rings).
In part two, it's 1942 and Lady Ashley, Drover and Nullah are happily ensconced at Faraway Downs until the War intervenes. Nullah is picked up by the authorities whose policy at that time was to reeducate the aboriginal out of mixed race children by taking them away from their mothers and placing them in institutions run by missionaries. Drover is gone and it is up to Lady Ashley to effect a rescue, but then Darwin is bombed as is the island where Nullah lives.
I have been an Australian film fan since "discovered" too pretty to be believed Mel Gibson in Gallipoli. On my one an only trip down under I tried my hardest to make a pilgrimmage to the site of Picnic at Hanging Rock: that spooky, "based on a true story" hoax about ethereal young schoolgirls who disappear in thin air and masterfully directed by Peter Weir. I have always been hooked by the combination of exotic weirdness and familiarity. The people look and sound sort of English but then in some ways they behave more like Americans with their casual attitude and more open manner. There is also the disgraceful treatment of the indigenous aboriginal people or "Traditional Owners" who Luhrmann thanks as such in the credits and it's nice to see that included.
Luhrmann, like so many of the Australians who came before, defies being bounded by his origins and so after Strictly Ballroom came Romeo and Juliet in Miami and Moulin Rouge/La Boheme. But he says he always wanted to make a grand and sweeping epic about his homeland and here he's done it with a western cum war pic.
I won't lie and say I didn't miss the theatrics and I did sometimes chafe at the earnestness of it all, but then there'd be some camp stuff like a "shower scene" with Jackman soaping up or some bit with Kidman all geared up in her English riding habit. Jackman was in full hunk mode here, a kind of Rod Taylor (The Birds) with a dash of Errol Flynn. He is physically graceful and therefore beautiful to watch in the way that the best dancers are. If you like horses and the men who ride them, this film's for you. Kidman is fine; her cold facade parsimoniously offering glimpses of her interior feelings as it always does.
In the end, we are left with the breathtakingly beautiful image of Nullah, probably, despite all the grand set pieces, one of the most exquisite moments in film, heartbreaking yet right, and all of it registering innocently in this newcomer's face. Brandon Walters' performance certainly deserves an Oscar. Australia isn't perfect but Luhrmann's films never are. They are often all over the place which makes them melodramatic, fun, funny, sad, relevant and certainly more than worth seeing.
Australia opens nationwide on November 26, 2008.
Directed by Baz Luhrmann; written by Baz Luhrmann, Stuart Beattie, Ronald Harwood, and Richard Flanagan; story by Baz Luhrmann; produced by Baz Luhrmann, G. Mac Brown, and Catherine Knapman; Director of Photography, Mandy Walker, A.C.S.; music by David Hirschfelder; production and costumes designed by Catherine Martin. Released by Twentieth Century Fox. Running time:
With: Nicole Kidman (Lady Sarah Ashley); Drover (Hugh Jackman); Nullah (Brandon Walters); Neil Fletcher (David Wenham); King George (David Gulpilil); Kipling Flynn (Jack Thompson) and King Carney (Bryan Brown).
