Australia

By Paul Fischer

During WWII, English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) inherits a large cattle ranch in northern Australia. When local cattle barons plot to steal her land, Sarah reluctantly joins forces with the Drover (Hugh Jackman), a tough Outback cowboy, to drive her 2,000 head of cattle across the country. As they traverse the unforgiving lands of the continent, the Japanese bomb Darwin, engulfing their world in chaos and war.

Few films arrive with as much fanfare of recent memory in the non-summer period, as Baz Luhrmann’s ”Australia”, but to truly appreciate this simply majestic film, one needs to forget the hype and simply appreciate this work for what it is and what it set out to be: an old-fashioned epic piece of narrative cinema akin to the likes of ”Gone sith the Wind”. Here is a movie that is rarely made at a time when audiences are conditioned to be fed a staple diet of CGI effects, thinly delineated characters and simplistic performances. Film making in Hollywood has become such a business where everything is fashioned towards a generic style, that we forget about the visionary directors that make films that don’t depend on pure formula, and Australia’s Baz Luhrmann is one such director. His ”Australia” is a tale of sweeping vistas, a land on the verge of maturity, of cultural conflicts, of disparate souls surviving amidst war, avarice and isolation. This is a thematically rich and immense work, one that is clearly a labour of love, heightened by a visual intensity rarely seen on the screen.

The Australian landscape is seen through the sharply detailed lens of cinematographer Mandy Walker, and the film’s contrasting images including its harsh browns of the deserts are beautifully realised as are the sharp realisms of Catherine Martin’s stunning production design and razor-sharp accuracy of her costumes that exemplify cultural and class distinctions. Composer David Hirschfelder, whose first feature film score was Luhrmann’s ”Strictly Ballroom”, uses music to both underscore character and enhance the film’s cultural subtext and it’s a beautiful, but not overpowering score, while the director uses period songs, including Judy Garland’s iconic Over the Rainbow, to powerful, thematic effect.

The film is a cinematic epic, yet it is full of vivid characters brought to life by an impressive ensemble of Australian talent that reads like a veritable who’s who of actors that are as well known Australian institutions as the likes of the Sydney opera House. Resisting the opportunity to cast his British female lead from abroad, Nicole Kidman returns to Australian cinema with a flourish. As her Lady Sarah Ashley enters the screen, she is over-the-top as very British snob who settles down as her character faces the reality of the Australian landscape and a relationship with The Drover. It’s an effective performance that fits in with Luhrmann’s own stylistic choices as the film develops, and Kidman is superb and often deliciously fun to watch. She is in contrast with Hugh Jackman who gives the performance of his career, embodying Australian masculinity, but at the same gives depth and passion to this career-defining performance. Bryan Brown and David Wenham are clearly having the time of their lives as the movie’s nemeses. But it is Brandon Walters as Nullah, the Aboriginal child through whose eyes much of Australia is told, who steals the film with his combination of pure innocence and ultimate sense of indigenous identity.

At its heart, ”Australia” is simply magnificent, enthralling entertainment on a grand scale, as spectacular an achievement as anything seen in the movies this year, and simply an old fashioned romance for grown ups that is heart-pounding, thrilling and cinematically exquisite, directed by a master filmmaker who has his own unique style. And these days, uniqueness at the movies is in short supply.