Australia

There are so many things I could say about how badly this movie went in the making, or even the editing, but you could go anywhere to find that stuff. I love Baz Luhrman's romantic sensibilities. He makes these big broad sweeping romances and I fall for it every time. He even modernized Romeo and Juliet and made me like it ( i prefer my Shakespeare traditional). His vision is expensive, bold and always romantic. It is hard to make a big budget movie that holds limited appeal to young people. Look at Pearl Harbor for how not to do it and look to Titanic on how to do it. Australia owes much to those contemporary movies and even more to the big romantic dramas of the late 1930s and early 1940s. It is a long, 2 hrs and 45 minutes, romantic drama with previews that did not even promise the action stunts of a Pearl Harbor. It promised only a Romantic drama of the highest order. This is a lot to swallow for an audience and it was hard to swallow for me as well, but again, I fall for Baz every time, so how could I not see it?

Set a little before that infamous day of Pearl Harbor, Australia is narrated by a young aboriginal boy, Nullah, who tells us this is a fairy tale. You have to remember we are watching a fairy tale for the rest of the movie to make sense. If you cannot remember this is a fairy tale, or a story, then you will not be able to watch it. Nullah tells us life is about the stories we leave and our lives are successful if we leave great stories. The aboriginal people only have history through their stories. Nullah is not fully aboriginal though, he is half white and black, or a "creamie." At this stage in Australian history, "creamies" were ripped from their homes and shipped to an island where men of faith tried to get the black out of them. Nullah manages to always elude the law as he lives on a cattle ranch called Faraway Downs. Lady Ashley(Nicole Kidman) has come to Faraway Downs, which is owned by her husband to get her husband to sell it, but her husband has just been killed and Nullah tells her that all of her cattle are being stolen. Lady Ashley will not stand for it, and she needs to find her cattle and get it to the Australian Army to make money off of it, to sell her land. She enlists The Drover(Hugh Jackman) to help her and they set off on an epic cattle drove. When the drove ends, Lady Ashley and The Drover try living together in harmony but much stands in their way and eventually the drover leaves, and Lady Ashley loses Nullah and then The Japanese bomb Australia the way they bombed Pearl Harbor.

If it seems like my synopsis is a little too broad or doesn't cover it all, that is intentional. There are so many little things that are going on in Australia that one could never cover it all, without just linking someone to the wikipedia site. Baz Luhrman has never been known for thinking small, but with Australia he took his large thinking to a whole new level. Trying to get an epic romance in, tackle racism and religion, fit in a war and try and show how gorgeous Australia is, is no small task, but Baz is supremely up to the challenge. I expected this movie to be a total mess, but that damn Baz Luhrman totally got me again! Every time Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman were on screen together I just could not wait for fireworks from the two. Jackman seems to be relishing the chance to be a full blown Australian man. he is always just a bit dirty and he has a glint in his eye oh and his body made me briefly question my sexuality, I mean DAMN! But beyond that, Baz captures everything he wanted to without flinching. He wants us to watch a long cattle drive and we will watch it all, including a seriously thrilling stampede that relies on us remembering this is a fairy tale.

Luhrman loves his sweeping shots too. I am not sure if there is a crane big enough to capture the scope of his vision, so I am fairly certain some of the big aerial shots had to be shot out of an airplane of some sort. This movie is an expensive love letter to his home continent and he is not sparing anything. Australia looks the way The Lord of the Rings made New Zealand look. You just want to go there! The scope of Australia had to make many a producer nervous and unfortunately the movie tanked, but it did not deserve to, at all. I wish the buzz did not get so bad and I am glad I saw ti regardless of hearing all of those negative things. Luhrman continues his trend of creating these grand sweeping romantic epics. His heart bleeds all over the film here and he goes to painstaking depths to show us the whole story. The entire story hinges on "Somewhere over the Rainbow" and they always use it perfectly to remind us we are watching a beautiful fairy tale. Nullah is our point of view character and we are rooting for him and we are rooting for Lady Ashley and The Drover to make it, but we do not know if this is how it really went, what we know is this is the story they left and that is good enough for us.

Oh and do not think the movie is only about romance. The bombing of Australia is just as epic. With explosions on a grand scale, and a decimated set piece, World War 2 gets very real and then after the initial blast, we get a very tightly shot and paced finale, which includes some very intense moments with Japanese soldiers. Again, the scope of this movie is so massive, it is impossible to cover it all, except to say that Luhrman accomplishes his mission. He manages to tell a truly remarkable love story in the context of World War 2 and the insane racism that existed in Australia. He shows us the ugliest side of his home country, but he redeems it by giving us such romance! Oh and their rain kiss is giving Spiderman a run for its money

Final Grade: B+