'Australia' - It would seem Baz Luhrmann still has a taste for the theatrics.

Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman star in Australia.
Photo copyright © 2008 20th Century Fox

It's been far, far too long since Baz Luhrmann made a film.  In 2001, he closed out his so-called "Red Curtain Trilogy" - three films designed to bring the sublime pleasures of the stage to people who preferred to go to the movies - with Moulin Rouge! in 2001, representing the musical.  (The other two films were Strictly Ballroom in 1992 representing dance, and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet in 1996 representing, of course, Shakespeare.)

The style he brought to these films has made me a fan.  There's an audacity to his last two films (unfortunately, I haven't seen more than a few minutes of Strictly Ballroom) that I can't help but admire.  Maybe it's the way the contemporary and the classical collide.  It may not be a new thing to modernize old stories, but few people are brazen enough to do it like Baz Luhrmann did with Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge.  I mean, going strictly by what's on paper, does it sound like a good idea to set Shakespeare's legendary play in modern day southern California - but keep most of the original dialogue?  How about a musical set in turn-of-the-century France - where the cast sings mostly modern pop music standards instead of an original set of era-appropriate songs?  Man, there's plenty of people who think that these are bad ideas in practice.

Of course these aren't universally beloved films.  By their very nature, they can't be, and I don't want to give the impression that I think they're to be treated as anything more than delightful abberations.  However, the fact that somebody could pull these movies off with such gusto is something that I've always felt a need to commend.  Sure, I loved those movies on my own terms (although looking back, Romeo + Juliet feels silly at times), apart from how unique their concepts were.  But again, the key word here is "audacity"; I also loved that Baz Luhrmann was insane enough to try them, and ever since I finished Moulin Rouge all those years ago, I've been waiting with baited breath to see what he'd try next.

With Australia, Luhrmann looks like he's scaling himself back with a concept as experimental as his last two efforts.  For sure, he's also telling a story with the kind of broad scope that a title like Australia implies.  The question is, can Luhrmann's storytelling skills service a more straightforward epic?

I don't know.  It turns out this isn't really that straighforward an epic.

I'm not surprised to hear that this film has been getting mixed reviews.  I haven't read any of them yet (I try not to before writing my own take), but I think I can see where people might have problems.  To put it simply, Luhrmann hasn't abandoned his love of theatrical staging, and as a result, certain aspects of the film feel over the top and maybe disingenuous if you don't look at it in the right light.

It's explained in a roundabout way: This film starts in September 1939, and is told from the perspective of a young Aborigine boy, Nullah (Brandon Walters).  Nullah was taught by his grandfather, a "magic man" named King George (David Gulpilil), about the importance of storytelling.  As this comes from a child under that sort of influence, certain aspects of the story have the feeling of a tall tale, and you'll either go with it, or you won't.  I totally went with it, but I have to say that I still had one nearly dealbreaking problem with the film that I'll get into later.

Let's stick with the tall-tale aspects of the story for now.  When we're introduced to Nicole Kidman's character, Sarah Ashley, she's a caricature of a prim and proper British Lady who is appalled to find that her absentee husband has been working to save an unprofitable ranch in northern Australia.  World War II is about to break out, but she doesn't much care - she jumps on the next plane to Australia with every intention of selling the blasted thing.

The next ten minutes unfold in a rapid-fire bombardment of exposition.  Luhrmann and his editors (Dody Dorn and Michael McCusker) make it fun to watch, but if you don't give it your undivided attention, you're going to be lost.  (In fact, forgive me, I was so busy trying to keep up with the movie I forgot to write down the name of the ranch that the film centers on.  I think it's "Faraway Downs" but I may be mistaken.)

Within this frenzy of exposition, we're introduced to Hugh Jackman's character, a man known only as The Drover.  Yet another tall-tale touch - throughout the film, as our two protagonists become more and more romantically involved, that's the only name anybody ever knows him by.  Lady Ashley doesn't even bring it up as far as I can remember.  In any other film, it would create a level of impersonality that keeps the relationship from going anywhere beyond a common affair.  Instead, the lack of a proper name just felt like another quirk of this tall tale that Nullah tells.

And of course there's King George himself, who observes the story as it unfolds, and at times acts as a deus ex machina to move characters to places they need to be in order to move the story forward.  Luhrmann doesn't even pretend that this man is natural - while he doesn't outright introduce him as someone with magical powers, he leaves an aura of mysticism about him that feels appropriate for this tall tale.

To sum up the rest of the story: Lady Ashley gets to the worn down ranch and finds that her husband is dead.  Soon after that, she discovers that one of his employees, Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), has been sabatoging the place on behalf of the local cattle baron, King Carney (Bryan Brown).  She fires him, and taps Drover to help her round up her cattle and get it to the Australian army in a last ditch effort to break Carney's monopoly and save the ranch.  The rest of the film focuses on Sarah's struggle against Carney, as well as her relationship with Drover and Nullah, as northern Australia is slowly drawn into the havoc of World War II.

As you'd expect, it's a big story, and Luhrmann uses all of his movie's two hours and forty-five minutes to tell it, and I certainly didn't mind watching.  It helps that he and his DP, Mandy Walker (who, it seems, has never been involved in a project of this scale), shot a gorgeous film.  It also helps that Nicole Kidman is seemingly so comfortable with Luhrmann; I alluded that the prim and proper English lady she starts the film as is way over the top.  Some would see her as annoying.  Anybody who's been watching movies for as long as I have will get that they're obviously setting her up to eventually fall in love with her scrappy little piece of land, and that may make her character ring false, particularly in the beginning.  But Kidman's clearly jumping into this role with both feet; she makes Sarah Ashley's transformation from proper British lady to rough and ready cattle drover a blast to watch, and not a moment of her relationship with Hugh Jackman (who shines here) comes off as forced.  Really, as long as you view Australia as a tall tale, it works well enough.

However, when I watch something from Baz Luhrmann, "well enough" doesn't cut it.  There are certain emotional high points that Luhrmann is aiming for, and he just can't hit them.  My feeling is that by widening his scope, Luhrmann bit off more than even he could chew.  There's so many aspects to this story that he needs to worry about, Luhrmann ultimately can't give them all the attention they need to be really effective.  As a result, these emotional highs and lows don't feel as sharp as they should be.  The movie might not collapse under its own weight, but you can certainly see it buckle at times.  And that's a shame - it turns a possible top ten contender into a really good try.

So in the end, I'm ultimately disappointed with Baz Luhrmann's return to the big screen, and I can only give a reserved recommendation for anybody willing to embrace this movie as a tall tale, and not the serious, straightforward epic that Australia was advertised as.  If that doesn't sound like something you can do, save your money and three hours of your life.

All that out of the way, I really did enjoy this movie, even if I didn't go crazy for it like I wanted to.  Luhrmann hasn't completely dashed my excitment to see what he does next.  In fact, I see that he's currently attached to the big screen adaptation of Wicked - an absolutely inspired idea if it ends up happening.  But whatever happens next time out, here's hoping he'll get 'em then.