Sunday, November 30, 2008
A+E, Movies, Reviews

Against all Oz

Overlong epic ‘Australia’ not worth the trip

BY STEVE WARREN

If you’re keeping track of the supposed award contenders being released at the end of the year, you can cross “Australia” off the list. Baz Luhrmann’s pseudo-retro mystical historical Western romance war movie epic homage to “The Wizard of Oz” is a—need I say mish-mash after all that? Oh, and it’s also a screed against racism.

Set between 1939 and 1942, “Australia” features lots of magnificent landscapes, often with figures silhouetted against sunsets. But most of what happens in front of them appears phony, visually and emotionally. I was never really bored during the almost three-hour running time, but I was almost never fully engaged, either.

Nicole Kidman, who is determined to show she can fit into any country in any period, visits her homeland—but playing an Englishwoman—in the early days of World War II. Her Lady Sarah Ashley is also determined, despite moments of clownlike broad comedy before she settles into the stock Kidman character.

Lady Ashley comes to force her cheating husband to sell his cattle station (i.e., ranch), Faraway Downs, and return with her to England. The first complication she runs into is that her husband has just been murdered. The second is that he’d been pressured to sell by King Carney (Bryan Brown), who owns all the other land and cattle in the Northern Territory. The third is that chief hand Neil Fletcher (David Wenham) is in cahoots with Carney, and has been slipping unbranded cattle over to his herd.

Sarah discovers the last rather quickly and fires Fletcher, then learns about the fourth complication: The only way to avoid selling Faraway Downs to Carney is to drive 1,500 head of cattle to the port of Darwin to be sold to the army to feed the troops.

Fortunately, the Drover (Hugh Jackman) is available to lead the drive, but he has to fill the six assistant slots with a motley crew of white, black, yellow and brown people, including two women, a child and a drunk.

The child, Nullah (Brandon Walters), 11, is our narrator and the best thing about “Australia.” Nullah is soon orphaned, bringing out maternal instincts in the barren Sarah. He’s a half-caste, subject to being rounded up by the local authorities and given to the church to raise, their goal being to “breed the black out of them.”

Sarah stops mourning her husband as quickly as she gets a tan. As with her other transitions, she goes abruptly from stranger in a strange land to “I am woman, hear me roar.” She and Drover go through the usual rom-com squabbling before getting down to pleasure, in a scene that pushes the limits of the film’s PG-13 rating. Though we never doubt they’re meant for each other, theirs is an off-again, on-again romance.
 
Working-class or aristocrat, the white people in “Australia” are all racists—except Sarah and Drover, of course. And he’s not even welcome in polite society, because he used to be married to a black woman. Nullah, busted while on walkabout, is sent to Mission Island. The Japanese, fresh from their victory at Pearl Harbor, bomb Darwin and Mission Island in the film’s third act, setting up several climaxes and multiple endings.

Jackman makes a great impression in the early going, from initial shots straight out of a Leone Western to the incredible physique he displays in a (waist-up) shower scene and his overall demeanor as an old-fashioned macho action hero. Once he’s somewhat domesticated, he becomes less interesting.

Between the talk about “The Wizard of Oz,” clips and dialogue from the movie and 17 versions of “Over the Rainbow” in “Australia,” you may wish you’d stayed home and watched the original instead. 2 STARS