'Australia:' An Epic Tribute to Epics

"Australia" is a movie that has to be taken on its own terms or not at all.

Director Baz Luhrmann went big in every way with his tribute to his homeland - and to a sort of movie that has largely gone out of style. If you are willing to go along for the ride, it's a gorgeous spectacle (including its leads, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman) and a pleasing mashup of styles that mostly works.

"Australia" is a quirky movie that starts as broadly played romantic farce, morphs into an epic Western, climaxes with a herd of cattle thundering up the Darwin wharf, then starts anew with a World War II drama and a tale of an aboriginal child trying to elude the clutches of mission school reformers.

Along the way, Luhrmann hits notes that can either be read as clichés (The bad guys want the ranch. We can't let them win!) (The cattle are stampeding toward the cliff!) or as the striking of classic mythic chords.

He also pays tribute to epics of days gone by. The cattle drive evokes "Red River." Jackman's character of The Drover evokes Clint Eastwood at his squinty, nameless best. The romance between the mismatched Lady and the Ruffian recalls "The African Queen." Darwin under attack by the Japanese resembles the inferno of Atlanta in "Gone With The Wind." There's a touch of "Out of Africa" and a brawl scene that echoes "North to Alaska" and "The Quiet Man."

"The Wizard of Oz," released in 1939, the year "Australia" starts, is actually a character in the movie.

Either this is going to work for you or it isn't.

If it does, "Australia" offers some genuine rewards. A subplot involving the "Stolen Generations" of aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their families and relocated to mission schools to "civilize" them becomes central in the second half of the movie.

This could have veered into preachy political correctness, but in fact this story thread lends the movie most of its substance. And the 13-year-old first-time actor who plays the young half-caste Nullah is wonderful, perhaps the best thing in the movie.

"Australia" is truly made for the big screen; it's one of those movies that has to be experienced in a theater, like all the epics to which Luhrmann tips his Australian Akubra hat.

It's playing now at Sisters Movie House.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

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