Movie Review: Australia

Baz Luhrmann, director and co-writer of Australia, has made a career out of taking traditional content and genres and juxtaposing them with a quirky and cartoonish style. 

Romeo + Juliet (1996) made Shakespeare hip for high schoolers everywhere and Moulin Rouge! (2001) reinvented the movie musical.  Not as well known but a must-see is Luhrmann's 1992 film Strictly Ballroom, a farcical look at the lives of has-been and would-be ballroom dancers. 

Australia begins with Luhrmann's characteristic eccentricity but the director quickly dispenses with the comic strip format in favor of, appropriately, a more sweeping romantic epic reminiscent of Gone with the Wind and Out of Africa, though without any Oscar-worthy performances or dialogue.  We get no "tomorrow is another day" monologues a la Scarlett O'Hara.  We get no sensuous riverside hair-washing from Robert Redford (though, fortunately, we do get Jackman shirtlessly bathing himself). 

But what we do get is both ambitious and inventive in its very simplicity.  Luhrmann tells his story his way and his home continent of Australia is the main character.  He shows great affection for its harsh landscape and reverence for its "Dreamtime" aboriginal culture with its magic, mysticism and dual reality.

The film stars Nicole Kidman as Lady Sarah Ashley, a British aristocrat whose husband owns a cattle ranch in Australia.  Sarah sets out for the Land Down Under in the hopes of selling the debt-ridden Faraway Downs only to find that her husband has been mysteriously murdered.

Enter Hugh Jackman as the dashing Drover, a cattle drover (ironic, yes?) on her husband's farm.  Sarah must convince Drover to help her move the cattle to Darwin and foil the plans of evil station manager Neil Fletcher (David Wenham) and cattle businessman King Carney (Bryan Brown), who owns all the cattle in the Northern Territory--all except Sarah's.

Kidman and Jackman do an admirable job of embracing the melodrama of it all, and the baddies are your classic Spaghetti Western lot, complete with spurs and moustaches. 

Set in the historical context of 1939's threat of war, the film also handles an issue unique to Australia--that of the "Stolen Generation."   Aboriginal "half-breed" children, born to a combination of white and aboriginal parents, were systematically taken from their homes by the government and raised in church missions in the hopes of assimilating them into white culture. 

The film's narrator, Nullah (newcomer Brandon Walters), is one of these half-breeds, and the emotional focal point for the film.  After his aboriginal mother dies, Nullah looks to Sarah as a surrogate, calling her "Mrs. Boss."  And though Sarah earlier told Drover, "I'm not good with children," her sole mission becomes to protect this child.   

It's a film that could have been made decades ago and that is, perhaps, why it works overall--it reminisces of a time when movie-making was more about the story than about crafty editing and fancy cinematography. 

"In the end, the only thing you really own is your story," Drover says. "I'm just trying to live a good one."  Luhrmann does the same.

Rated: PG-13
Running time: 2 hours, 57 minutes
Starring:  Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Bryan Brown, David Wenham, Jack Thompson

Director:  Baz Luhrmann
Screenwriter:  Baz Luhrmann, Stuart Beattie
Story by:  Baz Luhrmann
Producers:  Baz Luhrmann, G. Mac Brown, Catherine Knapman