In Baz Luhrmann's blockbuster movie Australia, Nicole Kidman plays English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley, who arrives in 1939 at the outback station of Faraway Downs to rescue it from financial ruin. Hugh Jackman plays The Drover, her main hope of doing so.
Bryan Brown is excellent as rival station-owner Leslie Carney, and David Wenham as his very nasty offsider Fletcher. However, best acting credits must go to David Gulpilil as tribal magic man "King" George, eleven year old Brandon Walters as his grandson Nullah, Ursula Yovich as Nullah's mother, and Angus Pilaku as The Drover's offsider and friend.
A curate's egg
The film's theme concerns racism and the Stolen Generation of Aboriginal children. Unfortunately, despite its redeeming qualities this "mixed bag" film is nearly ruined by cliches, stereotypes, melodrama and unconvincing acting from its two main stars.
If the film is intended to serve as an advertisement for Australia, the opening scenes of a pub brawl, which Lady Sarah witnesses with great distress on her arrival in Darwin, would have to rate as a national embarrassment.
One is also left with the uncomfortable feeling that the extracts from The Wizard of Oz, the historically inaccurate scenes of US military forces, and the depiction of the bombing of Darwin, were simply included to increase the film's "pull" for US audiences. (You had Pearl Harbor, we had Darwin!)
The film's jumpy, unstable character is reinforced by its background music, which includes variations on the Marlborough ad jingle, a wobble board mambo, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and a raucous, ragged chorus of Waltzing Matilda. The film concludes with Elgar's Enigma Variations at full blast, almost as a self-parody.
If only the film had matched the sensitivity and quiet power of the wonderful (and much more economical) Rabbit-proof Fence. As it is, Australia's shortcomings carry the risk that its crucial messages about racism and the stolen generation will not be taken seriously.
To see or not to see
Luhrmann's unbelievable cheek in taking the nation's name for the film's title has created an impossible goal for him to meet. Moreover, his apparent belief that the film's thunderous western-type direction would appeal irresistibly to US audiences seems to have been mistaken. Despite showing in 2,500 cinemas, in its first three US screening days it took a relatively modest $US11 million at the box office, and was eclipsed by four escapist movies.
This $180 million film was intended to make huge earnings, principally in the US. The film has also been eagerly welcomed by Australia's ailing tourism industry, for which Luhrmann has made a number of commercials which exploit Australia's spectacular settings.
However, one Australian movie executive recently commented that local directors should forget about beating the US at box office returns, and should concentrate instead on making meaningful films which yield a reasonable profit. That's pretty good advice.
Reviews for Australia have ranged from rapturous to toxic. One reviewer described it as "three hours of cliches." Quoting Oscar Wilde, another noted that "nothing succeeds like excess."
On the other hand, Oprah Winfrey, who is said to have invested US$50 million in its production, raved about it. More importantly, the Koori Mail newspaper's reviewer Mahala Strohfeldt praised it, acknowledging Luhrmann's commitment to exposing the Stolen Generation story, and to ensuring that Aboriginal culture was respected during production and in the film itself.
She commented: "For me it wasn't the Hollywood stars who had me mesmerized, or even the stunning landscape of our country that Luhrmann seemed to capture so well. It was seeing great Indigenous Australian actors up there on the big screen and finally seeing something that you recognize about yourself and your country."
At its conclusion, Australia reminds us that the policy which resulted in the vast tragedy of the stolen generation was not terminated in the Northern Territory until 1973, and that it was only in 2008 that a formal apology was finally offered to Aboriginal people by the Rudd government.
The film Australia is most certainly flawed, but its focus on the historical injustice meted out to Aboriginal people is its greatest claim to importance. That's why readers should see it, and judge its worth for themselves.
