One of the most basic methods of criticism is to judge whether a work achieved its purposes. Usually we must infer the purposes, but with the epic Australia (2008), Baz Luhrmann, the man in charge of the project, has explained in several interviews what he was trying to achieve. Although we are entitled to see other intentions in this sprawling movie, I think Luhrmann’s stated purposes manifest themselves clearly.
Luhrmann says, as in the classic Gone with the Wind, he wanted to present “a passionate love story that is played out on the canvases of the country’s landscape and historical events.” It is a toss of the coin whether or not the love story works. On one side, no, the movie does not convince us that a prudish English aristocratic woman, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) and a freedom-loving, rough-as-guts cattle drover (Hugh Jackman) would fall in love. On the flip side, yes, the movie presents some good reasons it could happen. He is a hunk (aside: the readers of some magazine recently voted him the sexiest man on the planet), and she is nothing to sneeze at either, so physical attraction is not out of the question. Practically speaking, she is out of her element—an English woman deciding to run a cattle ranch in the outback—and he has the requisite expertise. She has an indomitable spirit and a way with horses that he admires. Realistically, the romance is not all that passionate for much of the movie because neither Sarah nor Drover quite realize what they have. After she has told him to stay or leave for good, after he thinks she has been killed in the Japanese bombing of Darwin, and after their informally adopted boy, Nullah (Brandon Walters), is sent away to an island that gets bombed, the two adults realize how deep the ties actually run.
Luhrmann says he wanted to create an “emotional cinematic banquet.” More specifically, he says, “The film goes from comedy to tragedy to action to drama—and yet, underneath it all is a big, emotional idea.” More concretely, Luhrmann says when he was a kid growing up in rural Australia, they’d finish a big family supper and then all go to the movies—grandparents, parents, and kids all getting something from the classic flicks. But making an old-fashioned movie that might have delighted Aussies and Yanks in the 1950s goes directly against the market fragmentation evident in 2008, and I don’t think Australia overcomes those divisions. Some critics, such as Australian Jim Schembri of The Age, think the film will succeed with specific groups only: The film’s many clichés “provide a great featherbed of easy-to-digest references for the type of sweeping melodramatic saga designed to appeal to the lucrative ‘chick flick’ market and to foreign audiences eager for an attractive holiday destination.” Oprah Winfrey and her studio audience gushed over the movie. Our local cinema has an on-line comment feature which includes the demographic information on viewers, and the 66 viewers who have commented give Australia a slightly below average 7.7/10. But those reviews are split between the over-50s who love the film and the 25-34s who often despise it.
“The important, big idea of the movie,” says Luhrmann, is captured in the concluding words: ‘The rain will fall. The grass grows green. And life begins again.’ “In a world that is full of fear, and things are falling down, the ending gives a sense of hope.” But the problem with an epic, a larger-than-life movie, is that viewers have trouble taking the theme of the saga into their day-to-day lives. I, for example, found the ending touching and uplifting, but it did not, as Luhrmann hoped, leave me “going on stronger in times of adversity.”
So Luhrmann had mixed results meeting his own goals for Australia. But I liked the movie. This had more to do with me than with the movie: I have lived in Oz twice and am a fan. As for the movie, I was impressed that all the actors gave quite realistic, believable performances in a film intended to be an over-the-top epic. I think the movie would have been even better if Luhrmann had done some things differently. First, the movie would have been more believable and less remote if he had refrained from paying homage to Hollywood classics. He says he was inspired by Red River, Giant, Gone with the Wind, From Here to Eternity, and The African Queen. Quite apart from why a film called Australia is filled with old Hollywood references, the cinematic allusions make the movie more remote when it needs to be more nitty gritty. Second, he should have chosen a less grandiose title. The film is not about Australia, it is about three major elements of Australia. The film does not touch on the the other great stories that formed the nation e.g., penal colonies, Ned Kelly and bushrangers, Gallipoli, the dog who shit in the tucker box on the road to Gundagai, and the American infusion of investment in the 1960s. Finally, the film could have been shorter. Luhrmann is on record as being happy with the length: 2 hours and 30 or 40 minutes is about right for an “epic,” he said during editing. But I thought the film was finished twice before it actually ended. For me, the classic adventures, the mighty landscape, and the soaring music created an epic feel that would have survived a movie half an hour shorter.