Movie Review: Australia

I finally got around to watching Australia last night. I know I blogged months ago about how excited I was to see it, but then I went and spent all of December seeing Twilight 500 times (slight exaggeration) and plus it seemed I never had three free hours to devote to it, and then it was gone from theaters and I had to wait for it on DVD... all that to say, it took a while! I thought I'd share my review with you fine people.

So, you know when a band has a truly spectacular debut album, and you fall in love with it? And their sound, everything you know of them, is that one album. You can recite the lyrics and you know the opening chord of the second song as soon as the first one is over? And then it is time for their sophomore effort. And you understand that they are pushing into new musical territory and growing as artists, and you still like their new stuff, but part of you just kind of wishes that it sounded like the first album and you know that no matter what they do you might never like anything they do again as much as you did that first time around.

Watching this movie was kind of like that.

Even though Australia is actually Baz Luhrmann's fourth movie, it is the first one that truly departs from his "red-curtain" style, which wove such a strong cinematic narrative through his first three films. I tried to remember that he wasn't making another film to fit into that style, but it was still there in my mind, hovering.

If there is one characteristic of his film-making that translated well, it was the cinematicness. I think I made that word up just now. But what I mean is that it feels like you are watching a movie. A big, wonderful, spectacle of a movie. And sometimes, isn't that the point? I've always felt that with a Baz movie, you aren't exactly supposed to forget you are watching a movie. In fact that cinematicness (there I go again) is enhanced and the vehicle of film to tell the story is an important part of the whole experience. So I don't have to forget exactly that it's Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman up there on my screen, playing Lady Ashley and The Drover. I just have to enjoy the fact that they are playing these two characters, acting out this grandiose romance against the backdrop of a stunning and hostile Outback landscape. And thankfully, I did (although Nicole has got to lay of the Botox for realz).

The story certainly weaves its way around - I wouldn't call it aimless, just... scenic. It felt very much like the Australian cousin of Gone With the Wind - sweeping and grand, turning a nostalgic, but still loving lens on the people and the landscape of a troubled fragment of history. In this case, we see the way that racism and greed affected northern Australia while the reality of WWII advanced ever closer to its borders. Kidman is Lady Ashley, the uptight priss of an Englishwoman who comes to Australia to confront what she presumes to be a philandering husband wasting his time on a cattle ranch. She finds him dead and is forced to confront the situation on the ranch with the help of a handful of Aboriginal workers and the gruff and unwilling favor of The Drover. Played like he just walked off the cover of a paperback romance, Hugh Jackman's cattle-driving hunk is all things manly and rugged and dirty. Together they must also look after Nullah, an orphaned "half-caste" boy. During this period of time, such half black, half white children were often taken from their families and sent to missions where they can be "reformed" from their Aboriginal heritage.

Overall, there were still many parts of the film that felt true to Baz: the blend of humor, romance, and tragedy; the highest respect for the power of storytelling and an accompanying embrace of mythology; the lush visual world constructed with attention to the tinies of details. There's a particularly lovely way that The Wizard of Oz is woven into the story - I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it, but I found this to be quite endearing and the closest the movie came to Baz's "magic."

Still, at the end I wondered what kind of movie Australia might have been if the director had loosened the reins on that wonderful whimsical nature that has become his trademark. Watching and falling in love with Stricly Ballroom, Romeo+Juliet, and Moulin Rouge, I believed that each one was the kind of movie only Baz could create. If I could put my finger on one thing that was lacking in Australia, it was that same sense of extraordinary uniqueness. Had I not known, I probably wouldn't have guessed that Baz had directed it.


I have to end with a comment on Brandon Walters, the extraordinary child actor who played Nullah. His became the character, completely transformed, and I watched the story unfold across his hauntingly beautiful face and through his wide eyes. He was adorable, magical, heartbreaking. I was surprised to learn that he had never acted before and was discovered by Baz himself one day at a local swimming pool. It was certainly the finest child acting I've seen since another young Aussie made her acting debut - Keisha Castle-Hughes in a beautiful movie called Whale Rider.


Overall I enjoyed the journey through Australia, and, taking it back to my band metaphor, I might just have to realize that Baz is taking his talents and exploring new territories. I recommend for anyone needing a little action, a little romance, and a little adventure to the Outback. Crikey.