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Derek Malcolm's rating
Australia is lost in the Outback
By
Derek Malcolm
18 Dec 2008
As one of the Enigma Variations blares out (somewhat inappropriately considering Elgar was not from Down Under) during the final sequences of this long paean to Australia, you have to ask yourself: was Baz Luhrmann’s epic movie really made in the 21st century? Or has it actually been rustled up from film archives of the wartime and post-war period?
It looks like one of those old Aussie spectaculars, starring someone like Chips Rafferty, that you watch on the telly while Auntie Flo brings in the reviving Christmas cake and tea.
Everything about it — apart from the high, wide and undeniably handsome cinematography — looks as if it has delved deep into the clichés of another age. We have a horsey young madam from England (Nicole Kidman) who gets humanised by a strapping and well-muscled drover (Hugh Jackman), and a charming little half-aborigine boy (Brandon Walters) who calls her Miss Boss and whom she wants to mother.
That’s not all it is about, of course. There are all sorts of themes beyond the central romance, including Australia’s treatment of the aborigines. But you somehow know as soon as it begins that someone or other will say of Miss Boss, “Not a bad-looking Sheila!”
Is Baz having us on? No, I don’t think so. But he’s certainly having the Australian Tourist Board on: this promotes the scenery rather more than the rough-and-ready types we watch grappling with the effete and snobbish Little Englanders for supremacy.
Australia is a film for which you have constantly to suspend your disbelief. I did for some of the way, but in the end began to think it was a cross between the plonking Pearl Harbor and an expensive but routine sort of Oz western.
Our not-bad-looking Sheila, played with perky persistence by Kidman, arrives Down Under to try to find her possibly cheating husband just as the Japanese threaten to strafe Darwin. But, since he is now dead, she is met by the drover, a rugged cattleman who at first can’t stand her airs and graces but, no doubt noting she looks exceedingly good in jodhpurs, begins to fancy her rotten.
Meanwhile, her husband’s property and land is about to be taken over by a scheming station manager (David Wenham) who is plotting with King Carney (Bryan Brown) — a cattle baron of the sort James Stewart used to lock horns with in all those much better westerns of yore.
She also finds people being nasty to the young aborigine orphan, adrift in what was then a segregated society intent on “taking the blackness out of him” by sending him to a religious mission.
There’s only one thing to do, so the drover (he is never named) and she, together with an old drunk, the orphan, a Chinese cook and a few others, drive 1,500 cows miles across the unforgiving terrain of the Northern Territory and away from the grasp of the cattle baron.
They are watched by King George (David Gulpilil), a mysterious tribal magic man, from a safe distance. He is accused of killing Miss Boss’s husband, but you know he didn’t do it. He’s a kind of Aussie Moses.
This is the best part of the film, splendidly shot, if hard to act in, since the cattle are a difficult lot to beat in the performance stakes. They almost stampede over a cliff but the orphan boy, assisted by some mumbo-jumbo from King George, rather illogically prevents them at the last moment.
We then get back to town, with the cattle baron furious at the sexy drover’s success, and there’s a governor’s ball where the guests appear to be watching The Wizard of Oz and the English and Anglicised toffs behave with sneering disbelief when the drover appears all smartened up and Miss Boss talks loudly about the treatment of the aborigines.
Finally, the Japanese strike in a slam-bang finale which ends, despite the carnage, with everything for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
“Bringing people together brings comfort to the heart and soul in this unpredictable world,” say Baz about his expensive and expansive film. And you have to say he succeeds.
But there will be two tightly knit camps after watching Australia. One lot will cluck with content that they saw the movie. And the others will cluck with relief that they survived it.
Gone With the Wind (Down Under version) it is not, but it might go with the wind at the box office.
Opens on Boxing Day.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Reader views (6)
embracing a richness of reality and passion
- barbara mary, italy but australian, 17/01/2009 13:02
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I must have watched a different movie. I whole heartedly enjoyed the ride this film took me on. It could have been comfortably longer. I wish people would stop intellectualizing this film. I also disagree with a general consensus among 'critics' that the acting was amateurish. It absolutely wasn't. Nicole Kidman plays her role the way it was supposed to be played. The scene where she sings to Nullah is captivatingly realistic in its awkwardness. A true moment of brilliance. If I hear another 'critic' sink to offensive levels and comment on Nicole Kidman's appearance or acting ability, I will implode. The acting was cartoon-like, as was the shamelessly digitally enhanced imagery depicting the scenery. You must realise the film was supposed to look like a postwar Australian postcard, dripping in a saturation of colour. Baz Luhrmann intentionally composed every scene in this particular way. Similarly, his inflated caricatures were supposed to capture a cliched representation of past Australian characters. To criticise the dialogue for its cliches is absurd. The film is set in an era and in a place where these cliches were born. You may have tired of such slang, but it forms an integral part of the fantasy. This film is an experiment in adapting old-style Hollywood movies with current technologies and ideas. It embraces kitsch and swims with it til the closing credits. If you see this film and are not touched, there's something positively wrong with you.
- Milo, Melbourne Australia, 08/01/2009 06:27
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We have just seen Australia. Kidman is not the best actor of a uptight English lady, stiff upper lip, overcoming etc.
The other characters were stock "of the shelf" The Australian ladies were cartoon caracatures.
The story told us nothing new.
It was too long - in fact it would divide neatly into a 3 part mini-series.
Worst, the special effects were far from special! The cgi cattle at the cliff-edge, the 2-dimentional squdrons of enemy aircraft, the unrealist bomb-site scenes, the impossible watercoloured naval fleet. Perhaps the lomg. long list of cgi technicians had never seen old Hollywood films, let alone real footage. The scenes seemed to be based on computer - game bckgrounds. Oh well, not every film can be great
- Katiek, Hampshire, 07/01/2009 23:27
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this film is fantastic!! it is very moving: full of people risking their lives for each other, love & family, against treachery & losses. it is an epic: a western, with a very gripping cattle scene; deals with racism; a look into the history & anthropology & spirituality & gorgeous nature of the country. plus a steamy romance. a success!!
- K, ventura, ca, 25/12/2008 00:53
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The film seemed to be more about epic scenes and spouting off to me all the time i'm a great movie. I agree with Peter Rabbit Proof Fence did a better job at showing the stolen generation. I don't even get why the mother went into hiding when she's a mother, its not like they stole mothers! They never hid, i've heard stories and seen renactmeants on tv they always show the mothers hiding the children and just acting like they were with relatives or out bush with relatives far far away. They weren't running away too. I have no problem with their acting, but the film is very rushed. To compare that to Gone with the Wind like Baz wanted is riducolus it wasn't rushed, Gone with the wind that is. And it doesn't make me think of the Australia i know, i know a different Australia, i've never been to the Outback. I know the country town i grew up in, the city i partly grew up in and have lived for a long time as an adult, the bush. The Blue Moutains, bush that is whats there. Rain, it rained at the premier for crying out loud in Sydney. When it is Sunny, acch! Its like walking in a furness, i don't know how people run around so much in that heat in the outback. Hugh showing his Sydney on Opera is not my Sydney eirther, not the rich Sydney he showed. Well the Harbour boat rides are expensive and helicopter rides?! The area he hangs out in looks like the North Shore. I know urban city, suburan area with mostly flats and an Asian area that i live in. So many chinese resturants and shops
- Snakechild, Syndey, Australia, 19/12/2008 00:19
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What a hodge-podge of a movie this is!
The first few scenes seem like a cartoon with caricatures of the main subjects--the awfully,awfully English woman; the hard-nut Aussie drover.
We were then subjected to a remake of "The Overlanders", complete with poisoned waterholes and the staring-down of stampeding cattle. I was waiting for the wichetty-bug to turn up and became quite disappointed when it didn't!
I didn't find Kidman's acting as bad as some others did. Although she comes over as a wooden personality I felt that reflected the prim, uptight, aristocratic character she was playing.
Virtually nothing new was added to my knowledge of Australia. Anybody who is not aware of racism in any of the former British colonies has been asleep for the past century or two, and of course the specific topic of the "stolen generation" is better covered in "Rabbit-Proof Fence". And the objections to the treatment of the mixed-blood children seemed out of character for the 'English' wives--not to mention the army officer--who were probably all in favour of the programme.
It's been said that Brandon Walters played his part well, but it seemed to me that he was far too pretty for the role of this small boy.
The saving grace for me was the moving and spiritual performance given by David Gulpilil--as ever.
In my opinion the movie should have ended at the finish of the cattle drive--I was ready to leave by then.
- Peter Bradford, Ellicott City, Maryland, USA, 18/12/2008 14:58
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