My plane leaves for Sydney and Canberra (via Washington and LA) in a few hours, but I figured I’d get a head start on my month in Australia via yesterday’s10 am showing of the latest Baz Luhrmann epic, the fittingly named Australia. At the very least, I hoped to add to my limited knowledge about the continent/country, my only previous knowledge coming from The Simpsons, Monty Python, Patrick O’Brian, Men at Work and Midnight Oil (does INXS count as an Australian band, or were they traded sometime in the 90s?).
I didn’t expect much, given the middling-to-nasty reviews it’s received. But, wow. It takes major stones to name your film after a country and, for my money, I think Luhrmann pulled it off. Roger Ebert calls it "exuberantly old fashioned," and he's exactly right. Its plot isn't exactly groundbreaking: Will uptight British aristocrat Nicole Kidman save her cattle ranch? Will she find True Love with the impeccably muscled Hugh Jackman? Will mean ol’ King Carney steal the ranch? Will the Japs’ bombing of Darwin ruin everything? And what will happen to the adorable young Nullah, half-white, half-aboriginal and outcast in two cultures? It's a big melodrama, and if that's not your thing, you'd best move on. As for me, I laughed, I cried, I decided to spend a month Down Under.
It also didn’t hurt that the night before I’d seen the nearly unwatchable Quantum of Solace. At least Luhrmann knows how to assemble a film.
Australia’s been criticized for offering up one Australian stereotype after another (Kangaroos? Check. Aborigines with mystical connection to the land? Check. Parched landscape? Check. Exclamatory use of the word “crikey”? Triple check.), but I think this critique misses the point. Luhrmann’s isn't really talking about Australia's history, but rather its symbols and myths and archetypes, in particular the importance of a connection to the land. In the movie, both whites and aborigines are judged in large part by their sympathy for and understanding of the Australian outback. To get meta for a second, Luhrmann's Australia is a story about Australia's story. When you're working on that level, it's hard to avoid stereotypes. And anyway, you don’t go see a movie by the director of Moulin Rouge! expecting gritty realism.
We’ll see how the actual country compares.
