While you watch “Australia” it is easy to be swept up in its movie magic: The action and energy of the film, the travelogue aspect of the Outback scenery, in the romantic relationships, the mysticism of the Aborigine culture, and the sheer forward momentum of the narrative. But then you drive home and your critical faculties come into play. After dinner you have a different view of the film. You end up thinking, I was wowed by it in the theater, but I feel underwhelmed now. On second thought, there are holes galore in “Australia” when you take a hard look at it; and a lot of borrowings from other films.
First of all, the film starts out as if was going to be a Romantic Comedy dressed as an offbeat Western. Nicole Kidman is Lady Sarah Ashley, a prim, aristocratic British woman who is a caricature of her class. She’s brittle, uppity, herky-jerky in movement, and there’s a comic twang to her accent. Her husband, for some damn reason, has gone to Australia to make a fortune raising beef for the Army. It is 1939 and everyone has some sense that a war is coming. But some local cattle baron named King Carney (Bryan Brown) wants to buy him out for a fraction of what the ranch and cattle are worth, so she decides to fly down under to see if she can settle matters more equitably. When she arrives she’s met by a ruffian named Drover (Hugh Jackman) who is fighting some local blokes, all in fun actually, like John Wayne used to do it. This broad tone is maintained as he drives her to the ranch named “Faraway Downs.” They banter back and forth like Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn in the early part of “The African Queen.” They say they don’t like each other, but we know better. It’s The Incredible Hunk vs. Lady Chatterley. There are a number of ostentatious displays of Jackman’s massive torso, as much for the enjoyment of the audience as for Lady C.
But the light-hearted tone disappears when they reach the ranch, for her husband has been killed and the foreman, who is an agent of King Carney’s, blames an Abo named King George (David Gupilli) who hangs around the ranch because his grandson lives there with his Abo mother. His name is Nallah (Brandon Walters) and he is biracial. (Later we learn the foreman is his father and the killer of Lady Ashley’s husband.) There is a racial element throughout the story involving how the whites feel about the Aborigines. Suddenly, we are in the middle of a serious drama. And in no time at all Kidman drops the playful accent and the silly mannerism she had when she arrived in Australia. She becomes just plain Sarah. She decides to battle King Carney and hires Drover to play John Wayne again, this time the driver of 1500 cattle across god-forsaken country to Darwin, where they can sell the herd to the Army. I thought of both “Red River” and “Lawrence of Arabia” in this longish section of the film. There is a set-piece stampede that is exciting to see and the boy, Nallah, shows some of his magic, which he has inherited from his grandfather. The cattle drive is fraught with incredible difficulties, like crossing a stretch of desert that rivals “God’s anvil” in “Lawrence of Arabia.” One night the Hunk and The Lady find themselves kissing, but it generates little heat. When they make it to Darwin Drover takes the joyous Sarah into a bar for a drink, and just like the scene at the end of “Out of Africa,” this male domain lets her have one because she has proved her mettle on the drive to Darwin. They eventually make love too, which is when we find out this is really a family film. They grope each other in the semi-dark, but it’s a lollipop of a sex scene. The two may be good friends in real life, and have been for years, but they displayed little chemistry in bed. Or perhaps the best part of the scene was cut because the director wanted to keep the film Disney-like.
The last third of the movie deals with the prelude to a surprise attack by the Japanese and its aftermath for the population of Darwin. The bombing scene looks like it was lifted right out of “Pearl Harbor,” with many CGI effects. All three of the major characters get separated and the melodrama of the three of them getting back together—well, the director, Baz Luhrmann, pulls out all the stops, like he was Cecil B. De Mille making one of his extravaganzas. “Somewhere over the Rainbow” unites them and the three, now a family, go back to Faraway Downs to live happily ever after.
Except for one thing. Nallah has to do a ‘Walkabout’ with his grandfather first, and then he can return home a man. Drover and Sarah understand he needs to do this and do not try to stop him.
Finally, I should tell you the movie is two and a half hours long.
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