moviereview - Australia

AUSTRALIA

	When Lady Sarah Ashley lands in Australia, she is confronted by a dead husband and a failing cattle farm. Enlisting the help of a dashing stockman, she begins to turn things around.	score 4	moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
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Cast
Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Brandon Walters, David Wenham, Bryan Brown, Ben Mendelsohn, Jack Thompson

Director
Baz Luhrmann

Screenwriter
Stuart Beattie

Country
Australia

Rating / Running Time
M / 165 minutes

Australian Release
November 2008

Official Site

Can a film, or its director, possibly live up to the amount of hype and anticipation that surrounds Australia? The country’s biggest film with a title as big as the country has to support its own expectation and those dropped on its shoulders by a film industry looking for a winner. Surprisingly, it almost does.

This is old-school filmmaking, an epic spectacular that strives for a little of something for everyone: romance, action, children, horses, cattle, sunsets, bombs, boats, magic and even a touch of social commentary all wrapped in a chocolate box of retina threatening colour saturation.

Australia is an oft-told, fish-out-of-water story underpinned by the redemptive power of love; an old chestnut that has become a Luhrmann signature. Set in a 1940’s neverland of the Northern Territory, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) arrives from England to find her husband recently deceased and thrust into saving a cattle farm. After sacking her fraudulent foreman (David Wenham), she enlists a no-nonsense drover (Hugh Jackman) to help. The story’s magic rests with a young aboriginal boy Nullah (Brandon Walters) whom Ashley inherits and, naturally, comes to love. Oh, and she falls for Drover too.

Australia is the consummate crowd-pleaser, a film whose nods and winks at the audience are not lost, and are well appreciated. Everyone is in on the fun, such as Drover’s clean-shaven, white tuxedo appearance at a ball that is clinched with a spectacular rain-sodden snog. The hyper-colour of matinee production reflects many influences drawn from Gone With The Wind through Giant to Tora! Tora! Tora! You can almost taste the painted cardboard sets. David Hirschfelder’s lavish score always suggests a song is just around the corner.

As they make their way to the Japanese bombing of Darwin, everything comes together in a crescendo of entertainment that, in lesser hands, would have crumbled like so much dry cheese. Although a judicious trim would have done no harm and an oddly comic introduction is unsettling, Luhrmann plays it just about right. We swoon for the good guy, cheer when the bad guy gets his goods. Australia is nothing if not over the top as it wears a hopelessly romantic heart on its sleeve, fulfilling a promise of a spectacularly good time.

// COLIN FRASER