Ryan McNeil
Have we moved beyond the age of The Epic? In the age of headline news and webisodes, is there still an audience for a story that wants to unfold at a leisurely pace? If I told you this movie features beautiful people falling in love, you might jump right for it. Likewise, if I mentioned that it had a sequence of such intense action, it needed to be seen to be believed. But when I remind you that it is two hours and forty six minutes, you might take a pass. For better or for worse, Baz Luhrmann’s AUSTRALIA is the newest in a long line of Hollywood epics. What remains to be seen is if The Epic still has an audience.
AUSTRALIA is the story of Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), an aristocrat who journeys from England to the Northern Territory of Australia to try and convince her husband to sell their fledgling property, Faraway Downs, and come home. However, Faraway Downs isn’t a short jaunt from the landing dock, and as such, she needs to hire a guide to get here there. Enter Drover (Hugh Jackman), a free spirit of nobody’s employ who is one of the best at droving cattle through the wilderness. Slightly amused by how far this Ashley fish is out of her water, Drover agrees to take her to Faraway Downs.
Sadly, when they get there, they discover her husband has been murdered and the land has gone barren. It’s a cattle farm, but there isn’t a cow in sight – they’ve been scattered by a cutthroat competitor. And amongst the help who still remain is a young half-aboriginal boy named Nullah(Brandon Walters), who takes a shining to both Ashley and Drover. Nulluh’s situation is a tough one, since the Australian authorities have been rounding up half-breds and moving them to mission camps. So while both Drover and Ashley care for Nulluh, his presence in their group is a great complication.
Ashley convinces Drover to round up the cattle, and drive them across difficult terrain to the town of Darwin, where she may sell them and thwart the intentions of a rival cattle station. Together they battle sabotage and tough terrain, and do indeed grow closer together to find an unlikely love for each other.
To be clear, I liked AUSTRALIA…but I wanted to love it. Unfortunately I couldn’t love it because there are a handful of flaws that held it back. AUSTRALIA wanted to be the next great epic, and it isn’t…it isn’t even close. That leads to the first problem – the fact that it didn’t need its two hour and forty six minute running time. Had it been more focused, and less sprawling I could well have been raving about it as one of the best of the year. The other problem I have with the film is the fact that the movie tries to remind us all of where it came from. On many an occasion, there are traces of great films from the past, as if AUSTRALIA is their descendant. Unfortunately, it isn’t their descendant, so all of those references just make audiences aware of AUSTRALIA’s shortcomings in comparison.
With those negatives in mind, the film is well worth seeing. Director Baz Luhrmann is the ambitious mind who created MOULIN ROUGE! and STRICTLY BALLROOM, and his first attempt to step away from the Red Curtain Trilogy is an admirable effort. The characters aren’t as hyperactive as those in his other films, but they are all just as passionate. The score is sweeping, and often incorporates “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (the Land of Oz…get it?). By far, the best reason to see this movie on a big screen is to get the full effect of Luhrmann’s stunning photography. The colours are rich and the shots are lavish. More to the point, there are many sequences that are larger than life, and anything less than a theatre environment will do them no justice.
One such sequence involves the cattle drove being sabotaged, with a brush fire being set and the cattle running scared towards the edge of a cliff. During this sequence, everything comes together – photography, direction, sound, acting, and editing to make for one of the most intense scenes ever filmed. To quantify how amazing the scene is, I’m actually finding it hard to focus on so many other details because my brain just keeps going back this one impressive achievement.
AUSTRALIA worked for me, but I fear it won’t work for everybody. the movie has romance, action, and enough sensory overload to make David Lean proud. The unfortunate part is that it doesn’t have any of them in mass quantities. If you’re the sort of moviegoer that gets antsy with anything past two hours, then I’d advise you give this one a miss. But if you have the time, and you want to see a film that has put genuine effort into trying to achieve greatness, then give AUSTRALIA a look. Just make sure you use the restroom before the movie starts.
Hatter… great review. Almost enough to make me get *over* the 2:46 run time and drag my ‘not if there aren’t space guns’ husband to it.
Interesting note about about a movie that ‘put genuine effort into trying to achieve greatness’. So many movies today put in ‘genuine effort’, but fall flat. Any idea why? Is it development execs? Is it the changing tastes of the moviegoing public? Or is it just that filmmakers today aren’t of the same caliber as they used to be?
Hard to say T…
To be clear, I think AUSTRALIA achieved goodness, even though it was trying for greatness. I give it top marks for effort though. Sometimes I feel it’s that filmmakers/studios don’t care enough to be critical during the process to say “Crap – we screwed up…let’s fix this before we release it”.
As for changing tastes and box office success, don’t pay that any nevermind. If a movie is made well, it will age well and only get better with time. case in point – THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION did almost nothing at the box office!
“To be clear, I liked AUSTRALIA…but I wanted to love it.”
This seems to be the general consensus of my friends who went to go see it. The ones that love epics, the ones that love the director, the ones that love the actors, even the ones who were just curious about the film, all pretty much felt the same way: close, but no cigar.
Good review, the movie looks good. I saw the trailer and it lookes epic. Not sure I have the time to go see it though since MILK and Frost/Nixon are right around the corner.
Great review. I also really wanted to love it, and planned accordingly: afternoon nap and a small fountain drink, so I wouldn’t have to lead mid way for a bathroom break. But it never really reached lift off for me. Have you seen MIlk yet? This is next up for me.
I don’t know, I feel like movies have been getting pretty long for a while now. Maybe that trend’s reverted since I more or less stopped going to the movies, but I do remember suffering through a far-too-long King Kong on which undeserving praise was heaped.
Anyway, I’ve always liked epic so the runtime would not be a turn-off for me. I’ve heard some wildly divergent reactions to this one so I’m kind of curious.