All's Fair In Love And War Movies - 'Australia' Review...
Australia has the old-fashioned feel of a classic war film (I've even heard it compared to Gone With The Wind) combined with a strange, polished futuristic feel of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It takes place during World War II. Hitler has invaded Poland and the Australians fear that the Japanese forces may overflow into their northern territories at any time. The allied armies of the world will need to eat and it is the aim of a cattle-raising juggernaut in northern Australia named King Carney to be the sole provider of Australian beef to the war effort.Nicole Kidman plays Lady Sarah Ashley, the wife of a British rancher living in Australia receives disturbing reports that her husband has been philandering recklessly while he's supposed to be handling the business of their massive norther Australian cattle ranch, Faraway Downs. She travels to Australia to find out what's going on only to find that the rivalry in the Australian beef industry has taken a deadly turn. She finds her husband murdered and herself in the middle of a complex but confusing plot by the Carney people to trick her into selling her land, not knowing that that was her intention in the first place. When she discovers the truth about what they're doing, she changes her mind and decide to fight them for the war contracts.
Lady Sarah attempts to enlist the help of Drover (Hugh Jackman), who is hesitant because he refuses to accept any other job other than an independent contractor out of a deep dislike of the hiring/firing processes. Meanwhile, a young half-caste boy named Nullah has been living on the ranch with his mother and grandmother, hiding out in the water tower because, at that time, any aboriginal children who had been fathered or mothered by blacks were taken away and shipped to an island out on the ocean where the black will be "bred out of them."The boy gives an astonishing performance, too. He provides the narrative centerpiece of the story, all other events ultimately revolve around him, including his grandfather, who is something of a witch doctor who the Carneys are trying to frame for the murder of Lady Sarah's husband.
Australia is listed in part as a western, because it takes place in the dusty expanses of the Australian desert, across the most dangerous sections of which Lady Sarah and Drover must attempt to drive 1,500 head of cattle and load them onto the boats at the docks in northern Australia, all the while pursued by Carney's henchmen.
The movie gives us a brilliantly presented picture of mid-WWII life in Australia, but it is also much too highly polished. The colors and textures are so bright that it almost looks like we're looking at the future, which left me with the feel that it would have been a much better movie had it had a much smaller budget.But worst of all is that, amidst all of the high-budget trickery and technological polish, the movie is literally peppered with obvious soundstages, cheap CGI and bad blue screens. How did that happen? Maybe they spent all their post-production budget too soon by hiring Hugh Jackmand and Nicole Kidman?
The performances are almost universally outstanding, however, if a little over-exaggerated in some cases. Australian pubs, for example, are not exactly lady-friendly even 70 years after the movie takes place, but the comedic dramatization is pretty hard to miss.
Nicole Kidman is outstanding as the highly proper British aristocrat suddenly thrown into company amidst hardened Australian cattle herders, although I imagine it would be nearly impossible to get a bad performance out of her in a role like that. Hugh Jackman, similarly, inhabits his role remarkably well.But unfortunately, despite being what might normally be called a sweeping historical epic, the movie is so over-processed that it has a permeating feeling of fakeness that never seems to go away, and not just because of the bad sound-stage scenes. For the most part it's beautiful photographed, is full of wonderful performances and as an engaging story, but there is always a sense that it's trying to be something even bigger but isn't exactly sure how to do it.
The Bean Meter
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