“Australia”

Rated PG-13 for some violence, a scene of sensuality, and brief strong language.



Australia is an epic film, or perhaps more accurately, two films rolled into one. It is both a “western” and a war film. However the “west” in this film’s case is the Northern Territory “Down Under” and the “war” is the Japanese attack on the City of Darwin and a remote northern island, the location of a Catholic mission for children of mixed race.

Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), an aristocratic English woman, is not pleased with her husband, owner and resident of a ragged ranch in Australia, known as Far Away Downs. The Northern Territory ’s Cattle Baron, King Carney, is squeezing the competition, specifically Lady Ashley’s husband, who dies before the latecomers find their seats in the movie theater.

Lady Ashley is met at the airport by The Drover (Hugh Jackman). Whenever a guy in a “western” doesn’t have a name, you can bet he has plenty of testosterone … and is good looking … and has some hairy pectorals. He and Lady Ashley clashed immediately. So, of course, they are destined to fall in love, right?

I should back up a bit and share this important plot element: the narrator of this tale is none other than a young boy named Nullah (the little scene-stealing moppet named Brandon Walters). Nullah is the son of a white man and an Aborigine woman. Children of such relationships were, back then, forcibly taken from their mothers and raised in a mission where they were taught “civilized behavior.” But Nulluh doesn’t want to go; he wants to stay around for the fun. For example: Lady Ashley falling in love with The Drover, Lady Ashley and Drover battling with King Carney, and last but not least, Nullah learning from his Aboriginal grandfather, King George. Nullah’s father is a real cad, the kind we yearn to see pulverized, all before the trailers begin to fade from our memory.

There is a wonderful plot treatment using The Wizard of Oz and the song, “Over the Rainbow.” No small coincidence that Australia (the country) is occasionally referred to as “Oz,” by the way.

I am running out of column inches … yet there is plenty more to tell. Suffice it to write, there are thrills, chills and tears. Australia is sort of a giant pot of melodrama stew, something like a cross between “Gone With the Wind” and “Lawrence of Arabia” but with “Tora! Tora! Tora!” seasoning. There is lots of “cinematic” stuff in “Australia” — maybe a bit too much, all running a bit too long.

Director Baz Luhrmann (“Moulin Rouge”) likes bold colors, literal and figurative. And Australia is jammed pack with it. Everything in Bazland is bigger than average … like the bottles of Australian beer. For some, it may be somewhat overindulgent — sort of like a recent Thanksgiving meal. You may feel stuffed after watching it, and maybe for a few, a slight case of dyspepsia will occur. For most it is more a buffet of comfort food than a sampling of elegant Epicurean pleasures.

But the real thrust of the story, the heart of it, is how a white society treated an indigenous culture and how man’s cruelty to man continues, yet, as time goes by, mankind’s humanity advances by inches. Back there, in Oz, a boy, neither black nor white, is stranded between his two worlds, unable to go home. But miracles happen, and in the end, he finds his own path “over the rainbow.”

The irony was not lost on me.

“Australia” earns four bow ties out of five.