No worries, mate. “Australia” offers a “g’day” — if not a perfect day — at the movies.
Inspired by his “Moulin Rouge” muse Nicole Kidman, Baz Luhrmann’s long-planned epic tackles a subject no less imposing than racial bigotry amid sweeping bush vistas, World War II, cattle roundups, ruthless profiteers, kangaroos and People magazine’s deserving new Sexiest Man Alive.
(If Hugh Jackman’s rippling, scarred torso isn’t the most memorable scenery in Australia — the eponymous movie and the continent — it sure comes close.)
Director and co-writer Luhrmann, who debuted with 1992’s whimsical “Strictly Ballroom,” applies his idiosyncratically extravagant style to a sprawling visual poem to his nation. The sometimes indulgent visionary deserves kudos for rejecting modern genre commercialism to revive golden-age Hollywood. His multi-faceted period piece has the scale of “Gone With the Wind,” the female fish-out-of-water character arc of “Out of Africa,” the beauty and length of a David Lean opus, and numerous direct (if cheesy) references to “The Wizard of Oz.”
Yet, to its detriment, the ambitious narrative often goes on walkabout.
Whiplash-inducing plot shifts, cartoonish villains and other clichés send the tone from over the top or tongue-in-cheek to magically lyrical or deadly serious. But the uneven marathon has a magnetic emotional anchor: Little Brandon Walters portrays the “half-caste” aborigine boy Nullah. His character struggles to evade the forced segregation and assimilation that then befell mixed-race children (today called “the Stolen Generation”). His evocative face and the fading mystical culture it embodies become the beating heart of Australia and “Australia.”
Prim English aristocrat Sarah Ashley (Kidman) comes to her Northern Territory cattle station as war looms. She finds her husband dead and her place under threat by a corrupt beef monopolist (Bryan Brown) and his violent henchman (David Wenham). Sarah enlists her polar opposite and inevitable paramour, the hardscrabble cowboy Drover (Jackman), to drive her cattle to Darwin and save the day before the Japanese attack. But through their growing closeness to Nullah, more even than to each other, the two main white characters are transformed.
Their love story is the movie’s marketing hook but not what causes it to soar.
Kidman and Jackman deliver useful individual star charisma if not an overpowering passion between them. Instead, it is the unforgettable imagery wrought by Walters’ Nullah, actor David Gulpilil as his aboriginal shaman grandfather, cinematographer Mandy Walker and production designer Catherine Martin that make this outback outstanding.
Quick Info
“Australia”
4 out of 5 Stars
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Bryan Brown
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Rated PG 13 for some violence, a scene of sensuality and brief strong language.
Running Time: 155 minutes
