A long, languid, and ultimately funny Ozploitation epic, Baz Luhrmann’s Australia attempts to do justice to a nation storied in every way as it makes an embarrassingly crude apology.
The movie ends midway through a fun, spooky Western that’s devastatingly close in tone and structure to Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor. Then, out of nowhere, a war movie laced with preachy anti-racist polemics hits us. This is a movie with even more false stereotypes – and not just for the indigenous Australians it so desperately wants to address. Tender, loving, and even a white Australian with a sweaty, thick accent and a hate-spewing variation of Paul Hogan.
Luhrmann, an Australian native, wanted to make Gone with the Wind here, and it succeeded on several levels. The scope is certainly large enough and the paintings feel like they are from 1939, with an Aboriginal servant standing in for Butterfly McQueen. .
But stories, well, stories were never Luhrmann’s strong suit, and his previous pictures were mostly musically driven with a manic energy. There’s little music here other than a few nice didgeridoo moments and a rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which appears alongside numerous references to The Wizard of Oz, and excuses for the story (a brief provocation and some fragments) are just sitting there. There with a little momentum. For nearly 3 hours.
Nicole Kidman plays Lady Sarah Ashley, a British aristocrat who travels to Australia with her husband to live on the farm Faraway Downs.
Unfortunately, her husband had been murdered by the time she arrived. Lady Ashley soon fires her husband, perhaps because of her previous employment, the handlebar-mustachioed villain Neil Fletcher (David Wenham).
But now she needs someone to drive her cattle to Darwin, where a major military contract awaits her, if she can arrive before the deal with local landowner King Carney (Brian Brown) is signed. A brash, ruggedly handsome cowherd named “Drover” (Hugh Jackman) appears and agrees to take on the job and treat the upper-class English girl to local Australian hospitality.
All this is brutally narrated by Nula (Brandon Walters), a half-white native whose local authorities are trying to remove them for vague reasons.
“Let me drive the cow,” Nura says. He seems to have learned English from typical depictions of Native Americans in 1930s Western soap operas and Warner Bros. cartoons (none of the other Native American characters speak a dialect that bears little resemblance to the cows). (Must be careful not to show off) his. )
Yes, he’s herding cows in one of Australia’s great scenes. The crowd on the mountainside sends a large number of creatures over the cliff, ending with a nullah standing between the cow and the cliff.
However, Nula, Lady Ashley, and Drover manage to get the cows out, save the ranch, and make friends with King Kearney.
Before I checked my watch, I thought to myself, “That was a manageable 165 minutes,” and maybe even had fun. No, the movie was only half way through.
So what happens next? The Japanese bomb Darwin, of course, while Fletcher further embarrasses the pseudo-family of Lady Ashley, Drover and Nula, and the film reaches its climax with a despicable whipping stand-in who attempts to shoot the boy. –Did I mention him? Was he the boy’s father? – Cold-blooded and completely unmotivated.
The performances are as broad as possible and the characters are one-note. David Gulpilil is inexplicably wasted as Nura’s grandfather, the mysterious King George.
Although the film often looks gorgeous, the breathtaking backwoods scenery is often hampered by unnecessary CGI.
It’s a really tough job to sit through, but Australia has the magic and manic energy that permeated Luhrmann’s previous three films, Moulin Rouge!, Romeo + Juliet and Strictly Ballroom. It lacks every last drop of energy. Biggest disappointment of 2008.
