Movie Review: Australia

Disclaimer: I'm an actor and a playwrite, so I'm a bit snobby about production values.

I saw Australia with my wife last night.  It's the best movie I've seen in a while - one of those that you see, think about, and then ruminate on.  

Plot: It's 1939.  Lady Sarah Ashley is a British duchess in need of money.  Her husband is in Australia taking care of their ranch, Faraway Downs.  She wants him to sell it, but he won't.  She is convinced he's having an affair, and goes to Australia to sell the ranch and reclaim her husband.  She arrives to find her husband dead and the ranch in total disarray.  She joins forces with a local cattle herder (Drover, played by Hugh Jackman) and a mixed-race boy (Nullah) to save the ranch. Baz Luhrman (Moulin Rouge) who also co-wrote the script adeptly mixes historical realities about whites' poor treatment of Aboroginals and the Japanese invasion of Darwin in WWII with a story about love, family, greed, and revenge.  The movie is called an epic because it simply is.

Acting: A fine cast.  Hugh Jackman (X-Men and especially The Illusionist) is very human in this movie.  Luhrman lets him play with everything - from macho "Let's save the cattle!" to his friendship with an Aborigine, to mourning Sarah's death.  A great job.

Nicole Kidman (The Translator, Batman, Moulin Rouge) plays Lady Sarah Ashley.  After watching this movie, I don't understand the hoopla over her Botox.  I couldn't tell.  She has a hilarious stint (some critics didn't like it) as the fish-out-of-water royalty in the Outback to star twith, becomes a partner in saving the ranch, and finally as a passionate advocate for righting wrongs.  It's a wide range, and she pulls it off very well.  

Nullah (I don't think I've seen the kid before, and don't know his name) is also excellent.  During the course of the movie, his father abandons him, his mother dies, he is sent to a missionary island, thinks Sarah dies, is captured by police, and sees some of his friends die, too.  He plays happy realy well.  He never gets to grief, but the kid's maybe 10.  He does every other emotion really well, and serves as the story's narrator for quite a bit.

The villain doesn't get as much face time as maybe he should.  He's evil incarnate, and that's too bad.  He never gets real depth.  

Filming: shot on location in the Outback, the film is a paean to Australian history, culture, and nature.  The color often looks like a colorized B&W film - everything is vibrant.  The camera shots pan huge vistas, and dramatic camera angles (the cattle stampede along a cliff for one) are par for the course.  This movie is meant to be theatrical in the heightened-emotions sense of the word.  It's a beautiful movie to watch just for the artistry of the screen-as-canvas.

Writing: excellent script.  Could have used some more villain development, and some more time on Nullah and his mother's relationship.  Nullah went from having a broken home to being an orphan in about 10 minutes of movie time, and we didn't see him develop as much as we should have.  The racial tension is often palpable - the segregated bars, the poor treatment whites who are friends with black get, the mixed-race children being torn from their parents.  You feel it.  This racial tension is given more of the villain role than the guy who plays the villain is.  

Recommendation: If you are an adult, see it.  There's a little swearing, but it's not bad (the F-bomb comes out once, but if there's a tasteful way to use the word, this was it).  There's a sex scene that I closed my eyes for, so you'd have to ask Katrina about it.  It's a PG-13 movie, though.  I plan to buy it, and show it to my kids when they're in 8th or 9th grade.  Powerful movie with great social themes and excellent production values.  It's a winner on my list.