Dvd
Australia
The audacious visual stylist Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, Romeo and Juliet) has made an epic historical romance about his native country. The film is set in northern Australia prior to World War II and centers on an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) who inherits a massive cattle station. When Aussie cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn stock-man (Hugh Jackman) to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor months earlier. The film also deals with the Lost Generation.
Starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, David Wenham, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson
Directed by Baz Luhrmann ('Strictly Ballroom', 'Moulin Rouge')
Written by Baz Luhrmann, Ronald Harwood, Stuart Beattie, Richard Flanagan
2hr 45mins | Rated (M) | contains violence & offensive language | Origin: USA, Australia | Official Site »
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Flicks review
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3
Director Baz Luhrman, with a history of successful reinvention, sets a tale of ravenous romance against a backdrop of frontier Australia, the Stolen Generation, and an encroaching Japanese threat on 1940s Darwin. It’s a giddy, indulgent, pretty-faces-on-pretty-landscapes styled epic with the crosshairs aimed squarely on the romantic grandiose of old Hollywood. The ambition is palpable and the exuberance is endearing, but the film strains so hard to implore a sense of the epic that the result is well overwrought.
Nicole Kidman charms as English Rose, Lady Sarah, giving her role spirit and heart. Also great is her opposite to attract, Hugh Jackman as a manbeast Ocker. But the show is stolen by cheeky, soulful youngen Brandon Walters as Nullah – the “mixed” Aboriginal kid at the centre of the movie’s most intriguing angle: the relationship between Australia’s settlers and Aborigines. There are stunning set pieces and it looks gorgeous too, with CG backdrops used to create a painterly, water-coloured, soundstage aesthetic.
Australia had me for the first hour but by film’s end, too many ideas muddle. There are too many red herrings, too many renditions of 'Over the Rainbow' and Hugh Jackman emerges from the mist too many times. It flagrantly repeats itself, and the result feels laboured. While I don’t doubt some will fall head over heels for the film’s sense of romance and high drama, running at over two and half hours, you’ll certainly want to take a cushion. I could’ve done with a sleeping bag.
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The people's reviews
19 reviews
Press Reviews
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Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]
It is exuberantly old-fashioned, and I mean that as a compliment.
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Empire [Australia]
4
Bravo, Baz Luhrmann. He’s created one of the best-realised films in Australian history. Strewth.
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Hollywood Reporter
Defies all but the most cynical not to get carried away by the force of its grandiose imagery and storytelling.
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Los Angeles Times
If you are willing to take the plunge and view things through Luhrmann's prism, "Australia" does deliver the classic dramatic and romantic satisfactions its ambitious advertising campaign promises.
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New York Times
A testament to movie love at its most devout, cinematic spectacle at its most extreme, and kitsch as an act of aesthetic communion.
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Rolling Stone [USA]
If looks were everything, director Baz Luhrmann's epic salute to his native land would be the movie of the year. But, crikey, a padded script bloated with subplots and shameless sentimentality can wear you down.
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San Francisco Chronicle
Australia shows all the signs of having been a labor of love for director Baz Luhrmann. One problem: It's his love, and the audience's labor.
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Sydney Morning Herald
A big-hearted melodrama, it takes a series of fascinating risks, some of which come off. But it's no super-movie.
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Variety [USA]
Deliberately anachronistic in its heightened style of romance, villainy and destiny, the epic lays an Aussie accent on colorful motifs drawn from Hollywood Westerns, war films, love stories and socially conscious dramas. Some of it plays, some doesn't, and it is long.
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