A film review by Craig J. Koban |
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AUSTRALIA
Lady Sarah: Nicole Kidman / Drover: Hugh Jackman / Nullah: Brandon
Walters / Neil Fletcher: David Wenham / King Carney: Bryan
Brown |
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Beyond its frequently
gorgeous artifice (Luhrmann is utterly incapable of making a film that
isn’t a spectacular feast for the eyes), AUSTRALIA is also a love story
of opposites that become forever attracted to one another, a western-esque
tale of cattle wrangling and herding, a bombastic war film involving the
1942 Japanese bombing of Darwin, and last, but not least, a rallying cry
to the Aborigines of the nation that have were victimized by its
intolerably racist assimilation polices (which were shockingly still in
effect as of 1973). In short,
AUSTRALIA is epic, but it falls short of ever being a New Age GONE WITH
THE WIND or THE AFRICAN QUEEN (which it appears to be emulating). Instead, it’s more like PEARL HARBOR, but with a more
powerful artistic vision and a hell of a lot less gag inducing schmaltz
and cheese. Luhrmann is certainly a
filmmaking artist with an impeccable eye and a ferociously jubilant
spirit. He’s only made
three films previous to this one, the last one being MOULIN ROUGE, coming
out way, way back in 2001. That work effectively concluded his self-anointed
Red Curtain Trilogy (comprised of 1992’s STRICTLY BALLROOM and 1996’s
ROMEO + JULIET). ROUGE
was the best and most memorably energetic musicals that I’ve seen in the
current decade, and that film’s intensely spirited and
Technicolor-inspired explosion of Bohemian culture, modern day pop tunes,
and marvelous art direction was stupendous. Not too many films will ever rival ROUGE's infectious tone
and nearly schizophrenic stylistic impulses: the film was simply alive.
AUSTRALIA is in no way as inventive or as daringly original as a
vision as ROUGE was, but this is also a work that is a wonder for the
eyes: It gives us a sweeping and alluring panoramic canvas that shows the
ruggedness and splendor of the outback. There is no denying that Luhrmann’s heart – not to
mention his indefinable passion – is in every pore of this film. But…crikey…the film is a narrative and thematic mess. A grand and extraordinarily beautiful looking mess, but a mess nonetheless. There is simply too much thrown into AUSTRALIA: too many half conceived ideas, too many predictable and routine story threads, too many historical and cinematic references, and too much inconsistent shifting between all of these tangents. Leaving the theatre I was left puzzled by the divergent scope of the piece and, more or less, asked myself what this film was really trying to be about. Is it attempting to be a Scarlet O’Hara and Rhett Butler romance set against the backdrop of real-life historical conflict? Is a western-themed picture about a woman’s attempt to stand up on her own convictions in an effort to defend her ranch against the interests of a domineering, moustache stroking villain? Is it an emotionally powerful war film about the Japanese invasion on Aussie soil? My guess would be that its real heart is firstly with the
smoldering romance between the two stars (Luhrmann is an unapologetic
romantic) and secondly with the terrible issues of racial intolerance and
bigotry that the country’s white society had against its aborigines.
It is here where the central dilemma with AUSTRALIA exists:
Luhrmann wants to film to be thoughtful and meaningful with its
condemnation of his country’s past re-education polices, but they are
marginalized somewhat by the film’s predilection of being a fairly
conservative, Golden Aged, Hollywood romantic melodrama.
Because of this, the film is never able to emerge as thoroughly intriguing
or compelling…at least not as much as it thinks it is. Alas, the film succeeds as
eye candy, and aside from the gorgeous production values, we also have
gorgeous lead actors. We are introduced to Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman, as
radiant as ever, but lacking a bit of conviction in the part), an uptight
and snobby aristocrat that has arrived Down Under from her native England
to catch her husband in the act of adultery, but instead finds him brutal
murdered. As a result, she
ends up managing a cattle ranch that has fallen on bad times since her
husband’s untimely death. Her
attempts at managing the ranch’s affairs are not easy, mostly because
she is definitely wet behind the ears, but more because she faces some
serious opposition in the form of King Carney (Bryan Brown, in very good
form here) a local business man that is trying to rule the meat market,
and Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), whom she fired after he showed his true
colors as a degenerate racist. Sarah’s life is made more
challenging and complicated by the immergence of a local aborigine boy
named Nullah (the wide eyed and terrifically amiable Brandon Walters), who
has become an orphan after his mother drowned.
Sarah takes it upon herself to adopt the young boy in
order for him not to be scooped up by the law and assimilated into their
morally questionable re-education strategies.
Adding even more complication is her love/hate relationship with a
local cowboy that lives on the plains, Drover (in a career-making leading
man performance by Hugh Jackman, who will certainly never be more
appealing to lady audience members as he is here).
Sarah hopes that she will be able to take her herd of cattle across
the country to Darwin where they can be sold to the army…and before King
Carney can do the same with his. Realizing
that she can’t do it alone, she pleads for assistance to Drover, whom is
a fairly introverted loner. Both
have nothing in common, and their initial partnership is categorically
rocky, but when Sarah sees the unreservedly ripped abs and biceps of
Drover as he bathes himself with a bucket, she easily begins to fall for
the rugged lug. It does not
take a fortuneteller to see that this unlikely pair will overcome their
differences and get seriously...acquainted...later on. These story elements occupy
the first two thirds or so of AUSTRALIA.
The first sections essentially involve a considerable amount of
playful and flirtatious exchanges between Drover and Sarah, not to mention
much in the way of local ranch cattle politics regarding whether the
inexperienced Sarah will be able to beat King Carney at his own game
(clearly, this latter element is AUSTRALIA’s least interesting
component). The last section
of the film is its finest, which leads to a shocking attack of the
Japanese on Darwin shortly after the sneak attack on the Americans at Pearl
Harbor. Told within this
story thread is a would-be tear-jerking episode where Nullah is stripped
away from Drover and Sarah and taken to a religious commune for
re-education. When the
Japanese start laying havoc on Darwin, the lives of all the characters are
thrown into complete disarray. There is much to simply
savor in
AUSTRALIA, much of which is the film’s frequently breathtaking
cinematography and art direction. The
film has images of grandiose power (Luhrmann will never be criticized for
not having a painterly eye for detail) and some individual sequences have
an
awesome scope. One scene in particular that involves Sarah, Drover and
company desperately trying to save a herd of thousands from driving
themselves off a steep cliff is mesmerizing.
Yes, there is considerable CGI augmentation here, but I think that
harsh critics of the effects here miss the point:
Luhrmann is a showman and tries to give all his films a sort of
ethereal hyper-realism to the proceedings.
Besides, I am not altogether sure how any other conventional
effects techniques could have pulled this scene off.
It does not matter, because the sequence is sensational, as is the
late breaking attack of the Japanese on Darwin.
Some of the performances are
also very good, especially by Brandon Walters, who gives such a
pleasurable spunk, limitless determination, and natural charisma
to Nullah (he also partially narrates the film in voice over).
David Wenham is also letter-perfect playing a lecherous fiend.
Then there is the two romantic leads, and Hugh Jackman does such a
thanklessly bravura job playing a role of the beguiled, world-weary, and
rough n’ tough anti-hero with a heart of gold.
Jackman embodies the soul of his dashing and charming leading man
(AUSTRALIA shows him as a natural movie star, but with talent, as was on
display in his unreservedly great performance he gave in Christopher
Nolan’s THE PRESTIGE).
Nicole Kidman, on the other hand, oversells and outstretches
herself a bit too far in the film, mostly during the opening passages,
where she plays individual moments up to near farcical levels.
Yet, as the film progresses as does her character’s reawakening. It’s funny, but both Kidman’s performance and character
develop a maturity and strong, moving conviction as the film cascades to a
conclusion. AUSTRALIA, on the negative
side, is fairly over stuffed and padded.
The film also suffers from some odd tonal inconsistencies (the
final barbarism of the war sequences and the saddening ordeal of
Nullah’s capture by the Australian authorities is kind of incongruent
with the film’s opening care-free and light-hearted flare).
The film is also nearly three hours long, and although the final act is
its best laid out and paced, it takes an awfully long time for the story
to take off. The film’s
somewhat lingering resemblance to PEARL HARBOR also devalues it’s
meaningfulness. Both films
involve fairly predictable and prosaic love stories set amidst real life
historical war and attack. If
anything, the characters oftentimes struggle to develop as being
three-dimensional and significant, especially when placed in the same
space as a real event that has so much more implication.
Thankfully, Australia’s romantic melodrama is feels less force
fed that that in Michael Bay’s film, which reduced its characters down
to almost ridiculing soap opera stooges. What’s also somewhat
sticky is Luhrmann’s attention to the deeply distressing story of
Nullah’s attempts at eluding capture by the government.
On a positive, Luhrmann does shed light something to say about how
dreadful his country’s national polices of forced integration and
education led to a cultural genocide.
AUSTRALIA makes the right steps by painting these practices and
principles in the correct intolerant light.
Yet, the somber tone of this theme sort of battles for supremacy
with the friskiness of the romance within the film: the two never
harmoniously co-exist. Not only that,
but Luhrmann ironically paints the Japanese perhaps a bit too broadly as
blood-thirsty savages and brutes in a few of the latter scenes involving
the attack on Darwin in the film, which comes across as a little
disdainful. Further
grinding any level of discernable realism is the appearance of Nullah’s
grandfather, King George (David Gulpili), who is one of those obligatory
shaman-like mystics that can appear and disappear at will and be at just
the right place whenever the script deems it necessary.
My review thus far may
indicate that I won't be recommending AUSTRALIA, and Luhrmann’s film is certainly
one that’s self-indulgently overlong, is plagued by narrative and tonal
incoherence, and is overflowing with too many deviating ideas.
The film is also aggressively sappy and annoyingly saccharine at
times (many of the dialogue exchanges are silly, and the film’s
recurrent usage of musical allusions to THE WIZARD OF OZ and its most
famous song kind of feels strained and artificial).
AUSTRALIA is a film that seems destined for a shameless grab at
Oscar gold (reports have indicated that 20th Century Fox rushed
the film to a November release date to be competitive for the prime
nomination season), but the resulting film isn’t Best Picture
calibre. However, there is no
denying Luhrmann’s vision here, and no matter how mammothly overblown,
preposterously bloated, and sugar-coated this
wartime romantic drama may be, I found the film to be a mystifyingly
entertaining throwback picture. Luhrmann
is too gifted as a cinematic showman to make AUSTRALIA a dull and
regrettable experience. I
sense what a labor of love it was for him to make the film and his zeal
always shows on screen. Luhrmann’s
deep infatuation with the material may have overridden his logical
impulses, and the film is, as described, a mess...but not a dull or
disdainful one. |
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