Some thoughts on “Australia” now that the screening is let out and people are likely rushing to judgement on the IPhone/Twitter posts or whatever.
1. Baz Luhrmann sure wasn’t kidding when he said he would be delivering a huge, full-on meal. The film is a banquet, a feast, a overstuffed treat with dessert and the whole trimmings. There’s an argument made that this seven-course-meal tries to gorge you, but it is unapologetically vast and rich. It is cliche riddled, but it does its damndest to transcend those moments.
2.It’s a throwback film for sure. A classic Hollywood, old-fashioned Western cum romance beast complete with that same kind of cornball, light-on-its-feet humor and overacting you have to adjust to at first. The prim woman hates the unrefined man is straight, “Out of Africa.”
3. This is a Baz Luhrmann movie with everything that brings. It’s an over-the-top spectacle, lush, sumptuous and dreamy. It’s overblown: that gushing ooze of almost John Williams-esque music, lens-flared frames, melodrama, and thrilling sequences. The poster really does say it all for better or worse. It’s not subtle and neither is the movie.
4. There’s little in way of realism, it’s very magical, fanciful, swooning, a lot of elements you’d expect if you’d follow Luhrmann’s career over the years. The villains twirl their moustaches, the good guy is rugged horse, who rode around on a few adventures by his lady is finally broken in, giving in to big sweeping romance.
5. The star of this thing is the country and the little aboriginal boy Brandon Walters. He is a charming delight and with less of a captivating boy, the film may not have worked. He is the glue that holds the picture together. And the story is more or less about him anyhow.
6. Oscar? Hmmm, much like “Moulin Rouge,” this will be a polarizing film. Some will love its ambition and gorgeous photography and some will find its excess leaves them with a toothache. Technical achievements are shoo-ins. Mandy Walker can dust off her cinematography nomination now, but we get a sense that this may be too overindulgent to some. Critics will likely be mixed. Neither Jackman nor Kidman are getting anywhere near the Academy podium and you’ve surely deduced that by now, but Jackman does do a solid job, of playing the leading man.
7. The cynic in us tell us we must laugh off some of the cheesier moments in the film, and the optimist is almost swept up off our feet in the drunken swirl of romance. The cineaste is us does admittedly get a boner from some of the panoramic vistas and the unbridled spectacle of it all. One might not have enjoyed it or been drawn in by its highly stylized affectations, but one has to at least admire its grandiosity at the very least.
Will audiences connect with en masse. As we predicted before, it’ll depend on whether Oscar endorses it or not. And right now, we’d say that’s 50/50 and no sure bet. We’ll have to wait and see how American critics take to it, but it’s not a perfect and a bumpy, unwieldy ride at times. We’ll say this: at 2 and a half hours length, we were never restless or checking our watches. It could have wrapped up perhaps 10 minutes quicker, but that’s no dealbreaker.