Australia - epic in the outback
By Joyce Glasser - 23/12/2008
Director Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo & Juliet, Moulin Rouge) is an Australian auteur whose films have always divided audiences and critics. His picture book romances low on subtly and high on sentimentality and his lavish or vulgar, depending on your point of view, costume and set designs, executed by his partner and mother to their two children, Catherine Martin, have done well at the box office and garnered numerous awards.
The gothic romantic kitsch Chanel No. 5 commercial rumoured to be the most expensive ever made and starring Nicole Kidman, won the Top National Spot award in the USA. There’s no denying Luhrmann’s vision and ambition.
Australia, his latest film, is a 3-hour epic romance that begins in 1939, and maps the transformation of a 40-year-old British aristocrat, Sarah Ashley (Kidman) from a frigid society matron trapped in a loveless, childless marriage to the owner of a huge cattle ranch in the Australian outback living with a cattle drover. Exasperated by her husband’s long absences Lady Ashley reluctantly travels to her husband’s ranch in a remote outpost near Darwin, suspecting he is only there to cultivate women and not cattle. Her first glimpse of the Drover (Hugh Jackman), the ‘reliable guide’, her husband arranged to take her to the isolated ranch confirms her worst fears about this godless country.
This Crocodile Dundee is in the middle of a barroom brawl, covered in mud and blood. Worse is to come when Ashley learns her husband has been murdered, the suspects being an Aboriginal magic man called King George (David Gulpilil from Walkabout and Crocodile Dundee) and his grandson, Nullah (Brandon Walters).
Ashley decides that she will sell the remaining cattle to the army taking bids on a ready supply of beef for the troops forming on the eve of Pearl Harbour, and with the proceeds, fix up the ranch for sale. When she fires ranch manager Fletcher (David Wenham) for beating an aboriginal woman and Nullah, Ashley is forced to swallow her pride and beg the Drover’s help. She doesn’t bargain on local rival King Carney (Bryan Brown) and his Fletcher, his double crossing henchman, who are out to win the army contract at all costs.
After the breathtaking cinematography by Mandy Walker, one of the few female cinematographers working at this level, the first thing you notice about Australia is how familiar it is. It’s not only Crocodile Dundee that comes to mind when Ashley first spots the Drover in the barroom brawl. Nicole Kidman’s phoney rendition of Rose Sayer, the strait-laced, officious missionary in the African Queen, to Hugh Jackman’s uncouth, free-spirited Charlie/Humphrey Bogart, is the portal to Luhrmann’s favourite oldies.
If the ranch reminds you of Giant, the motley crew assembled to drive the cattle reminds you of Stagecoach, Jackman’s horse breaking scene reminds you of Breaker Morant, the break-away cattle drive to the seaport reminds you of Howard Hawk’s Red River, the crossing the desert scene winks for a second at Lawrence of Arabia, and the lost lovers reunited against the burning of Darwin reminds you of Gone with the Wind, it is no coincidence. This is Luhrmann’s Cinema Paradiso, Giuiseppe Tornatore’s cult film in which a filmmaker recalls his childhood spent in the projection room of a small town cinema.
Australia might be Luhrmann’s hymn to his native country but it is also his hymn to the classics and genres of the late 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s that he watched as a child in father’s short-lived cinema or in the near by lumber town in New South Wales. Here are the epic romances, the westerns, and the WWI and II movies, like From Here to Eternity, featuring great romances and friendships -- such as the Drover’s friendship with the Aboriginal Magarri (David Ngoombujarra). And these are the movies that formed Luhrmann’s youth and his vision of life, even if none of them were filmed in Australia.
Many will criticise Australia for its romanticised view of the Aboriginal people’s treatment in Australia, in particular, the removal of ‘half breed’ children from their, usually, single Aboriginal mothers, a practice that continued until 1973! However, this criticism is unfair not only because the film is a fantasy romance but because Luhrmann has taken pains to integrate the Aboriginal story within the main story and with as much sensitivity and accuracy as he can without making a documentary or political treatise.
The Aboriginals in it are beaten, raped, forcibly removed, accused of crimes that did not commit, left to die under enemy bombs (the Mission Island scene was fictitious although Darwin was bombed) and released by an understanding woman to resume their nomadic life. Moreover, the Drover is ostracized by society for having lived with and loved an Aboriginal woman rather than having produced a child with her.
The Wizard of Oz
Unfortunately, it’s the story in that is its weakness, plus that Wizard of Oz heartstring pulling that is used even when it is not called for. In one scene, Nullah is shot at and falls, with the violins raging, even though he’s fine, and wasn’t even hit. If is also marred by clichéd situations and a story that feels too familiar to hold surprises, it’s become Luhrmann has become victim to his many nods to cinema greats, just as the brilliant Quentin Tarantino (who is just a year older than Luhrmann) became so obsessed with cinema references that he forget how to tell a story. Despite these significant reservations, is, for my money, Luhrmann’s best film yet.