I saw Australia! (the movie)

Cafe Society
1

I thought it was wonderful and will pay to see it again (last night’s viewing was a free advanced screening). I’d heard it was long but it didn’t feel that way to me, it all pretty much zipped by. It’s unabashedly romantic, a sweeping epic that swept me off my feet. Not Titanic level great (and if that phrase makes you cringe because you hate Titanic, do yourself a favor and stay away) but pretty damned good. I went in knowing I would probably like it because I love Baz Luhrman, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman anyway, and maybe I didn’t love it quite as much as I had hoped, it was fully as good as I expected it to be.

Set a couple of years before World War II, it tells the story of an English woman (Kidman) who comes to Australia to oversee her late husband’s beef farm, how she comes to appreciate the people and the land, and becomes a part of history completely by accident.

Nicole Kidman’s character is insufferable at first, but gets much better and I ended up liking her a lot. She’s gorgeous too. Hugh Jackman is, well, swoony as always as Drover, a man who lives on and by the land and helps Kidman. The Aborigine child, Brandon Walters as Nullah, is wonderful, especially considering this is his first movie and he’s the heart and soul of the film. David Gulpilil as “King George” the majestic Aborigine falsely accused of murder is always worth watching. David Wenham (Faramir in LOTR) is a good actor but was a bit miscast. It’s hard to see him as a bad guy, especially since his character is shallow and unredeeming (is that a word?), very hard to take seriously. Maybe some of his scenes explaining why he was the way he was ended up on the cutting room floor. There are several smaller roles that were all done well and some of them I would like to have known far more about (Nullah’s mom, Cath Carney, or the drunk lawyer to name three)

The movie is excruciatingly beautiful to look at, rendering the Australian outback as at first dry, dusty and boring, then gradually more and more magical and awe-inspiring. Some people will have problems with the special effects used to depict the bombing of Darwin, but I didn’t have a problem with it. Some of the movie is stylized and it fit right in for me.

I also loved the deep respect it gives the Aboriginal people and how it touches on some of the prejudice and appalling policies they faced, such as taking half-caste kids away from their mothers to be raised in white households, with an eye to “breeding the black out” of them when they got older. I would imagine that anyone who’s seen the movie Rabbit-Proof Fence (not to mention Walkabout) would have a leg up on understanding some of what goes on and is talked about in the film.

It’s not going to be for everybody and I can already hear some of the bitching and moaning sure to come (“it’s too loooong/I can’t understand the accents/it’s confusing, I don’t know what’s going on/the Japanese never bombed Australia, give me a break*/that Nicole Kidman character is a real bitch/whine whine whine whine whine”) but for those who go in knowing that it’s a long movie and you just have to go with it, let it happen to you and not look too hard for nitpicks, you’ll probably enjoy it.

*sneer at this one, which is something I actually heard, because yes, in fact, the Japanese did attack Australia.

I don’t know how it will do with American audiences, but even if it “bombs” in the US, it’s still going to be a massive hit in Australia and probably elsewhere too. It’s an Australian movie made for Australians, using a very important (and little-known) part of Australia’s history and folklore as a backdrop. If it doesn’t work for Americans, that’s America’s problem, not the movie’s problem.

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I’m definitely looking forward to this. I haven’t loved everything Luhrman’s done, but I certainly appreciate his voice as a filmmaker. I saw an extended preview for Australia last night before Synecdoche and it looks like exactly what I would want in this kind of movie.

3

Oprah had Kidman and Jackman on her show, screened the movie for the audience, everyone praised it.

Does that have as much impact in movies as it does with books in terms of financial success?

4

Somewhat but not tremendously. She seems to fawn all over any guest and their movie when she has them on. I remember her having the cast of Wild Hogs on (Travolta, Allen, Macy) and the way she was carrying on about how funny and great this movie was you’d have thought it was Blazing Saddles.

5

I think that’s probably all i need to know.

I’m an Australian, and am a fairly strong booster of Australian cinema, but i think i’ll be giving this one a miss, despite the presence of quite a few of my favorite Aussie character actors.

Actually, among the Australians you say are the intended audience, the history hardly qualifies as “little-known.” I learned about the bombing of Darwin multiple times in school, as do most Australian kids. And the stuff about the treatment of Aborigines has been at the forefront of Australian culture and politics for quite a while, at least since the release of the Bringing Them Home in 1997, and actually for some years before. You couldn’t go more than a few days in the late 1990s and early 2000s without seeing a newspaper article or a news report about the issue.

6

But does the movie incessantly reuse the theme music from PotC like the ads do?

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Is Australia really going to like it as much as you say they will? Certainly, it’s history that most of them are very familiar with, but there’s a significant number that probably don’t look down as strongly as you’d think on the Aboriginal civil rights struggles. Not all Australians think of those times as bad times, if you know what I mean. I’m wondering if a lot of them will love the movie, but either ignore or give short shrift to Nullah’s character and role in the story.

8

That was badly phrased on my part. Of course those things (Bombing of Darwin, Stolen Generation) would be known to Australians, but would be little-known outside of Australia, and therefore might be of little interest. See, this is why I don’t write many reviews. I kinda suck at it.

Darth Sensitive, previews are often made up long before the original music to the movie is finished, so many, if not most, previews use music from other movies. The music in the finished Australia is original and excellent.

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There is a lot of original music, but there are two existing themes used - pieces by J.S. Bach, and songs from a popular movie of 1939.

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What was the bombing of Darwin scene like Equipoise? My choir recorded the music for that bit.

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Cunctator, I’m not the one to ask about specific music, since most movie music goes right over my head. I’m who they talk about when they say (whoever they are, and however much they’re lying) that if you notice the music then it’s not doing its job. I liked the music that I did notice (especially that using didgeridoos). I’m sure you’re in there and will specifically pay attention to the music in those scenes when I see the movie again. I do remember hearing choir voices at various points in the movie but nothing specific. Congratulations!

I thought the bombing of Darwin scenes were well-done, though perhaps the whole section was a bit too short and maybe hampered by budget cuts? A question mark, because I don’t know. It’s just that reading about the Bombing of Darwin, it seems quite a bit more intense and devastating than what was shown in the movie.

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You’re kidding, I hope. At the time, most Australians thought they were doing the right thing. Here and now, with the benefit of better understanding of Aboriginal culture, and a better appreciation for universal human rights, I really don’t think anyone doesn’t see it as a ‘bad time’.

Having said that, and for the purposes of truthfulness, you’d probably find a few people pointing out that where it succeeded, it succeeded extremely well. But nobody’s pretending it was a great move overall. In a nutshell, it was an idea started with the best of intentions, carried out by people who really wanted to help, and it turned out to be pretty much the biggest balls-up imaginable and left people on both sides of it scarred for life. The indigenous families are still messed up over it and paying for it today.

It was, unequivocally, a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

The majority of Australians look on the treatment of indigenous Australians - from first white settlement through to, in many cases, modern day - with sadness, regret, and a feeling of overall impotence to ‘fix’ it. What we, as a country, did was wrong. In the case of modern-day indigenous townships and regions, I think we’re still getting it wrong. But we don’t know how to make it right - these people have been messed around and messed up and there’s no magic wand to fix their problems. That doesn’t mean we don’t care, or approve of it at all.

I have no interest in seeing this movie. (Sorry Cunctator - I’m sure the music is great!) I live in Australia; do I really need to see more of it on the screen? I don’t think so. Bring me a movie called ‘Norway’ or something. I might learn a little if I went to that. (Even then, honesty compels me to admit I’d wait for it to go to video.)

Also, I may have to give up my Australian citizenship, but I’m not a Nicole fan. She crapped up the screen in every scene she appeared in throughout the Golden Compass, and I’m not looking forward to seeing her unnaturally waxy, immobile, deathmask features in another flick.

By the way, Rabbitproof Fence is a fantastic movie; I heartily recommend it.

13

Fair enough. Nor do I, other than to hear the few minutes of music in which I feature. All the reviews suggest that *Australia *is an overblown, mangled epic. And I agree that Nicole Kidman is a passable actress at best.

14

I’m looking forward to seeing it, it opens here today. I’ve see Gallopoli, My Brilliant Career, Breaker Morant, Quigley Down Under, Rabbit Proof Fence, The Proposition, The Man From Snowy River, a couple versions of Ned Kelly, The Thornbirds, All the Rivers Run, basically any movie about Austalia I can get my hands on. Better Than Sex…(the movie)

I love David Wenham. He played an asshole official in The Proposition, which in my book could go either way as a bad guy/good guy. I loved Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing. I love David Lean type epic movies, and Titanic. Nicole Kidman, well, she looks nice.

I guess I have a big red bullseye on my forehead, yup, I’m the target audience.

(I could go for a nice movie about Norway too.)

15

It was quite good Cunctator! Music fit perfectly.

We saw the film yesterday and liked it a lot. How could we not like a film that stars Judy Garland and has the song, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” played prominently?! Even though it was indeed long, it didn’t feel long…story moved right along and the epic scale worked.

Beautiful photography of Australia, some nice info (for us non-Aussies) and the actors were easy on the eyes.

However, I think you have to be in the mood to see this film…if you don’t like grand, epic style love stories, even though there is lots of action and adventure, I don’t think you will like this as much as we did.

16

I will watch it, but not in theaters. I’ll rent it. I would love to see and learn more about Australia, but see, here’s the thing: I can’t stand Nicole Kidman. Really. It’s gotten to the point that in every film, I only see NK, not the character she’s supposed to play (this happened to me with Meg Ryan, but at least with Meg, you knew she only played Meg Ryan). I think she’s a second rate actor who married Hollywood royalty and got lucky, post divorce. She’d make great hair color commercials.

She’s almost unwatchable for me now, so I won’t pay big bucks to see her in the movie theater.

I wouldn’t worry too much about Americans or others not understanding the film. I didn’t know that the Japanese had bombed Oz, for one, but I think people are open to learning and seeing the beauty of the country. I think more people would visit, if it weren’t so damned far away!

17

I thought this movie was cheesy, predictable, unrealistic in many places, and too eager to please. I also really liked it, would see it again, and would recommend it- sometimes happy endings are good. It’s basically the movie John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara would have made if they’d made a movie about Australia.

Does anybody know what the original ending was? On talk shows Nicole Kidman remarked that test audiences loved the movie but absolutely hated the ending, saying it wrecked the whole movie. My guess would be that in the original

Nullah is shot to death by his father

which I agree would suck.

The actor playing Nullah (who I at first thought was a girl) is absolutely angelic in appearance. It’ll be interesting to see what he looks like in a few years. If I were a producer I’d cast him as an angel in a heartbeat- especially as a fallen angel since evil coming from that face would be really evil.

And I don’t know if anyone else has ever noticed, but Hugh Jackman is hotter than Hell on German Night. ‘I would drank that man’s bathwater’.

18

I went to see this last Friday with my family. My parents wanted to see it, since they were born and raised in Australia, although they’ve lived in the US for over 50 years.

We all found it entertaining but pretty farfetched in a number of places. Not the bombing or the children theft - that’s well known history - but parts of the story. We agreed that Kidman is good at accents, but she’s not a very good actress, and Hugh Jackman is pretty hunky. The kid that played Nullah was very good. We also felt that it was too long. It could have ended at a couple of places earlier in the movie, but it just kept going.

My parents liked the scenery but pointed out that at least parts of it were filmed in very different locations than the actual setting. I get the feeling that it wouldn’t do well in Australia because of this type of thing.

19

Out of curiosity, does anybody know if Jackman’s real life (adopted) son is part aborigonal? He looks similarto the kid who plays Nullah and I was wondering if that had anything to do with why Jackman took the role or why Nullah was as prominent a character.

20

Yeah, some people have noticed. I mean, I am as straight as a pin, but if he offered to share his Huge Ackman with me, I would have to pause before answering.