|
 Admittedly, whenever the word
outback crossed my mind it was either followed by thoughts of Aussie
chips, Crocodile Dundee or baby-devouring dingos. Homesteads and cattle
drives akin to those in stories of the pioneers of the American Wild
West never occurred to me. Apparently, cowboys (-
and girls)
did exist in the land down under and with Australia, director Baz
Luhrmann dons his best John Ford drag to tell us so.
In this old timey story of
cattle barons and rustlers, Lady Sarah Ashley traverses the hemisphere
after her husband, aiming to extract him from the farmland that has kept
in Oz too long for Sarah’s comfort. Despite all worries and warnings
for her feminine delicacy, Sarah is a modern woman of the 1930’s and
intent on making the crossing into the middle of the country, forcibly
accompanied only by the Drover, a rough and tumble cattle herder who
enjoys his freedom as much as he dislikes Sarah’s imperious, prissy
ways. Sarah arrives to find the ranch, Faraway Downs, in chaos with
virtually no alternative but to sell out to her husband’s biggest
competitor, King Carney. The culture shock of the wild outback
astonishes the high-strung noblewoman, who finds herself taking charge
of Nullah, a young Aborigine boy on the ranch whose mixed breeding makes
him liable to be dragged away from his family to a mission whose whole
purpose is to segregate the lighter children and keep them from
procreating with darker folks of their own race. Saving Faraway Downs
and keeping Nullah from the clutches of government-sponsored racists
sends Sarah, the Drover, and her small band of rag-tag ranch hands on a
hell-bent-for-leather cattle drive across the Australian desert in a
last ditch effort to beat King Carney’s nefarious scheme to force her
out.
All this and World War II; it’s
a heck of a lot of movie Australia is. ‘Tis the season for prestige
films that go on and on for three years trying to impress the Academy,
yet despite its hefty 165-minute running time, I was up for every minute
of Australia. You name it, it’s here; got your manly-man fisticuffs and
cowboy action, your hate-each-other-then-love-each-other-madly romance
between two gorgeous stars, stunning Howard Hawks style cinematography
of the plains and mountains of the Australian Outback, wartime
pyrotechnics, a racism-is-bad political message, fabulous costumes from
a glamourous era, a Snidely Whiplash eeevil villain to hiss at and a
heart-tugging story about an endangered adorable little kid. In hands
less agile, a production of this scope and size holds the potential for
disaster, but helmed by the man who reignited the movie musical with the
surreal fever dream, Moulin Rouge!, Luhrmann’s Australia is
simultaneously old-fashioned and post-modern and all classic.
If this movie doesn’t make Hugh
Jackman a bona-fide movie star, nothing will. I’ve been rooting for
Jackman to be taken seriously Stateside for anything other than his
ability to snarl becomingly whilst sporting the world’s worst mutton
chops and leather jumpsuit in the X-Men movies, but time and again, my
hopes were dashed. Baz Luhrmann appears to have heard my pleas and as
the rugged Australian alpha-male Drover, Jackman is equal parts Clark
Gable, Alan Ladd, John Wayne and Gary Cooper. The Drover is strong,
silent type with a chip on his shoulder and pain in his heart, who will
be owned by neither man nor Kid-man. Speaking of wish-fulfillment, I
would like to personally thank Mr. Luhrmann for an early payoff in which
Drover demonstrates how to keep so fresh and so clean during those long
rides across the outback. The shirtless sudsing and bucket-rinse -
complete with audience-winking Greek God poses provides an opportunity
for heterosexual men across the planet to say, “Egads, that’s guy’s
handsome,” with self-impunity. Playing up his star’s muscular, earthy
physique, Luhrmann almost makes Jackman into a fetish object; if he’s
neither sans shirt nor in a form-fitting Henley undershirt, Jackman’s in
a Bogart-sharp white jacketed tux as if to impress upon us his utter
star-worthy ness. Thanks, Baz, for serious.
Nicole Kidman’s gotten a lot of
stick in the press lately for having turned into some kind of ice-lady
(- where it came from,
I dunno), but in
Australia, that image is grabbed by the short horns and used to
perfection as the willful, prim-and-proper Englishwoman who’s wound a
bit too tight. Lady Sarah has, for all intents, been abandoned by her
husband for a cattle ranch in the middle of nowhere. Her intention to
single-handedly set things to rights, heedless of the conditions or
dangers she could find herself in is all fish-out-of water laughs for
the first 20 minutes of the film. The rough, unpretentious land and
people she discovers are nothing like she’s ever experienced and she’s
forced by her aggrieved circumstances to remove the stick out of her
immaculately tailored backside. As Sarah comes to care both for the
Drover and for the threatened little boy, Nullah, the stiff upper lip
loosens and the ice queen thaws, becoming a fighter, lover and a
mother. I would actually have liked more by way of love scenes between
Sarah and the Drover; their chemistry deserved more of a payoff.
Another aspect I enjoyed is Kidman playing a character who is not a
young girl, but a capable, assertive (-
perhaps to a fault)
grown woman. Like everybody else in the audience, Sarah is staring with
eyes bugged out at the Drover’s bucket wash (-
and washboard).
When Sarah has to make a decision to let Nullah go on Walkabout, the
Aboriginal rite of passage, with his grandfather, her panicked refusal
is the fear of a woman who’s finally found her family. Special luv must
go to Brandon Walters for his preternatural debut performance as Nullah,
the half-caste Aborigine trapped between two worlds, who is the soul of
the entire film. With the most stunning pair of limpid black eyes this
side of a Goya painting, the young boy holds the world in a his gaze
while keeping all the innocence of a lad never off the homestead. Sweet
and charming without every being precocious, Walters makes Sarah’s
lioness-like devotion to Nullah totally understandable.
Australia starts with the broad,
campy humour Luhrmann injects into all his films, quirky camera cuts and
slapstick, but the yukfest passes quickly once the ranchers start on the
cattle drive. The cattle race features some of the most gorgeous
scenery in the film and a heart-pounding stampede that will knock you
for a loop. The last act is the Japanese bombing of the Australian
coast and seems the most superfluous of the piece, but it’s still filmed
beautifully and the explosions are neat. There’s a Wizard of Oz theme
that does get old after a while: Okay, we get it, the little Aborigine
boy is on a journey and he’s got to find his way home, we really don’t
have to hear various instrumentations of Over the Rainbow a hundred
times. Nullah’s grandfather popping up everywhere as the mystical
Jiminy Cricket of the piece gets a little stale, as well. I’m feeling
you, original people! Laughably bad is the character of Fletcher, the
double-dealing bad guy, played by Lord of the Rings’ David Wenham.
Wenham is sneeringly fine for what he’s given, but his pure obsession
with murdering the small half-Aboriginal boy becomes jokingly
repetitive.
Small gripes, these, and
certainly not enough to keep me from wanting to see Australia again the
minute it was over. I adored it for the keeping alive so many of the
sumptuous, romanced-drenched elements of classic films like Gone With
the Wind, Casablanca and Giant, and for its gorgeous, ambitious epic
scale all achieved with Luhrmann’s inimitable style. Nicole Kidman and
Hugh Jackman are at their best and awfully nice to look at. What’s not
to love?
~ The Lady Miz Diva
Nov 26th
2008
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