Wenham in particular has great fun chewing the scenery. One almost expects Bryan Brown (who plays the mean 'King' Carney) and David Wenham (as the even meaner Neil Fletcher) to have handlebar moustaches to twirl while they glower at Kidman. Walters delivers the most naturalistic performance in the film.Ĭonversely, the one-dimensional baddies who try to take over Lady Ashley’s ranch could have stepped right out of The Perils of Pauline. His role is essentially a single-character metaphor for the tragedy of Australia’s Stolen Generations: Aboriginal kids who were taken away from their families. He gets almost as much screen time as Jackman and Kidman, and has to alternate between spiritual and playful, courageous and terrified. The real acting discovery here is 12-year-old Brandon Walters as Nullah – a half-Aboriginal, half-Caucasian child who falls under the maternal wing of Lady Ashley when things start to fall apart at her ranch. Jackman is believable as the rough-hewn herder, even when he says lines like, 'I mix with dingoes, not duchesses.' Kidman is convincing at the start, when her character arrives in rural Australia, dripping with comic condescension she has less success when she is required to drop her reserve and fall unabashedly for The Drover. ((James Fisher/Twentieth Century Fox) )īut the romance at the heart of the tale veers in and out of focus, which is perhaps inevitable given all the plot and genre elements Luhrmann insists on juggling. He definitely gets the sweeping visuals right: a CGI-enhanced stampede scene at the edge of a cliff and some of the wartime sets are particularly breathtaking.īrandon Walters portrays Nullah, a half-Aboriginal, half-Caucasian boy in Australia. Luhrmann is clearly aiming high, trying to fashion a modern-day epic along the lines of classics like Stagecoach, The African Queen and Gone with the Wind. If that sounds like an expansive storyline, it is. Their subsequent love story bumps up against a Japanese war plane attack and a concurrent plot about the shameful treatment of Aborigines. After inheriting a ranch that’s in danger of being overtaken by evil cattle barons, she enlists 'The Drover' – played by a buff Hugh Jackman as a kind of Crocodile Dundee on steroids – to help her herd thousands of cattle across the outback to the naval port of Darwin. Nicole Kidman – looking paler than ever – plays Lady Sarah Ashley, an English aristocrat who arrives in Australia as the Second World War is about to start. The director’s outsized ambitions are dramatized on a suitably immense canvas: the Australian landscape. It’s a mammoth, visually stunning project that will no doubt please the large constituency of fans who love his films precisely because of those collage-like qualities. Add impeccable art direction and period costumes, and you have a stew that contains all of Luhrmann’s standard ingredients. Ultra-broad acting abounds, and the tonal shifts can be jarring. The different elements don’t always cohere, and once again, the camp quotient is extremely high. Clocking in at almost three hours, it’s several epics in one: part romance, part western, part war flick, with large helpings of music and aboriginal-inspired magic realism thrown in for good measure. Now, with Australia, we have Luhrmann’s biggest film yet, and one that could only have sprung from his unique mind. It’s a singular vision, one that polarizes both audiences and critics. The maker of Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet is a true mash-up artist, a synthesizer of cinematic and pop-culture styles who has a driving compulsion to entertain.

Luhrmann’s movies are brimming with ornate design, theatricality and larger-than-life melodrama. Baz Luhrmann is a true mash-up artist, a synthesizer of cinematic and pop-culture styles who has a driving compulsion to entertain. That picture was set in 1899 Paris, but contained an array of influences - Italian grand opera, Bollywood cinema, Busby Berkeley musicals, even late-20th-century pop tunes by Elton John, Paul McCartney and Nirvana - that had nothing to do with its time frame or locale. It’s what we’ve come to expect from the Aussie director, whose previous film was the frenetic Moulin Rouge! (2001). ((James Fisher/Twentieth Century Fox) )īaz Luhrmann isn’t a subtle filmmaker, nor does he subscribe to the minimalist tenet 'less is more.' In his latest movie, Australia, he throws everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at the screen. Hugh Jackman, left, and Nicole Kidman star in Baz Luhrmann's epic period film Australia.

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