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Monday, December 1, 2008
Australia: A mesmerizing mishmash of movie love
When people say Baz Luhrmann’s Australia is overlong, overwrought and overstuffed, I agree with them.
However, when these same people say these qualities make Australia a bad movie, or at best a misfire, I firmly disagree. Yes, the movie is sometimes a sprawling, ungainly mishmash - but that’s part of its charm.
In other words, it’s every inch a movie by the director of Moulin Rouge! This homage to Luhrmann’s homeland isn’t as frenzied as that musical, nor is it as potent, but it’s just as imaginative and willing to go for broke.
Australia’s very messiness gives it character, as was the case with last year’s Across the Universe. The movie is like Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the Wind, Rabbit Proof Fence and Tora Tora Tora mashed up in one tangled ball. It doesn’t always work, but even its missteps are weirdly endearing.
Here’s the litmus test: If you can make it past the deliberately hyperactive opening act, you’ll probably love Australia. If the first act makes you shake your head in confusion, the movie might be a tough sit.
Just as Moulin Rouge! did, Australia opens with very broad flourishes, both visually and narratively, to get the audience used to the idea it’s not your typical movie. At times, it plays like a slapstick comedy with Nicole Kidman, relentlessly mugging for the camera. She plays a British aristocrat who inherits a ranch in the title country, working with a mysterious cattle driver known as “the drover” (Hugh Jackman).
Of course, sparks fly between Kidman and Jackman, but that romance isn’t really the heart of the story, as the ads would have you believe. The true emotional center of the film is an aborigine boy named Nullah (newcomer Brandon Walters) struggling to become a man amid the chaos of World War II, and the prejudices against his race. The Kidman/Jackman romance is important and effective, but the scenes with Nullah resonate most strongly, thanks to Walters’ touching performance.
That’s a lot of ground to cover for one movie, and Luhrmann bit off a bit more than he can chew. The film doesn’t always flow very well. Characters drop in and out with little or no explanation, and the shifts in tone from comedy to romance to war drama and beyond are sometimes jarring. Luhrmann was editing this right up the 11th hour, 59th minute and 59th second, and it shows. If he had more time to finesse the final cut, the movie might have been a minor masterpiece.
Even so, Australia remains a gripping, one of a kind odyssey. Luhrmann is obviously in love with the power of movies, and that comes through most strongly in the many references to the greatest fantasy of them all, The Wizard of Oz.
Whether Australia incorporates the tune of “Over the Rainbow” or shows Nullah rapturously watching Judy Garland at a movie theater, Luhrmann’s film pulses with life, even when it doesn’t make sense. I was getting such a rush out of Luhrmann flipping his switches and pulling his levers, I couldn’t help but pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
I’ll take an ambitious mess like Australia over an unimaginative, passable entertainment like Four Christmases any day of the week. It may not be an unequivocal success, but Australia is like nothing else in theaters right now - or at any other time.
GRADE: A-
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