Movie Review: Australia

Is Baz Lurhmann's latest a little too "Over the Rainbow"? by Shelley Howard



Director Baz Luhrmann’s latest film is titled “Australia”, but it easily could have been called “The Wizard of Oz” except that title is taken.   How about a bad episode of “Bonanza” that took a tab of acid and ended up on the “Ponderosa” ranch.   If you have seen any of Lurhmann’s rare output of films such as “Moulin Rouge” or “Romeo and Juliet” you know exactly what I am taking about.  His imagery and quick cuts are quite trippy, but his over the top portraitures are not for everyone.

It is 1939.  Nicole Kidman is British Aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley.  She has inherited a massive cattle ranch in Australia, and needs to drive her herd to Darwin, to supply the Army with fresh beef.   Along to help her is the ridiculously handsome Drover, played by Hugh Jackman.   Initially these two have a testy but respectful resentment toward each other.   Of course, if they are not having sex by the second reel, you know there is something seriously wrong with the plot manipulation.   David Wenham plays Neil Fletcher, the rival cattle baron.   He is such cliché villain his evil is almost a cartoon-just like the wicked witch in Oz.

The central figure of this epic is young Brandon Walters, an Aboriginal boy who plays the Dorothy role. He is trying to get to Oz...I mean, he is trying to go on a walkabout, a spiritual awakening which will hasten his manhood.  Australia had a very prejudicial policy of dealing with the “lost generations”...that is children who were half white, and half aboriginal.   The official government policy was to take these children from their mothers, and try to save them with the influence of the church.   The rest of the players take on the Tinman, Scarecrow, etc. personas as they interact with the boy alternating between helping and trying to prevent him from this quest.   The Australian outback is Oz, and like they say, there is no place like home.    The background score keeps going back to “Over the Rainbow” as it’s central theme.   Hell, they even cut in snippets of the film.   We all know that Oz was released in 1939, and it’s story suggested the anxiety of the world as war clouds gathered.   Australia is set in the same time, and the threat of war coming to the homeland drives the plot.   When the Japanese planes that struck Pearl Harbor bomb Darwin, they are like the flying monkeys in Oz.

I read that Luhrmann’s next project will be a film adaptation of “Wicked”  You have to wonder, did he have an eye on that project when he was making Australia?

Chicago native Shelley Howard has been called the “Hunter S. Thompson of Facebook status updates”   He makes Rock and Roll graphics by day, and can be found in the Viagra Triangle by night spouting politics and gonzo philosophy. 

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