Directed by:
Baz LuhrmannCinematography:
Mandy WalkerComposer:
David HirschfelderCast:
Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Brandon Walters, David Wenham, Bryan Brown, Bruce Spence, Jack Thompson, Bill Hunter, John Jarratt, Jacek Koman, Ben Mendelsohn (more)VOD (2)
Plots(1)
A romantic action-adventure epic set in Australia prior to World War II that centers on an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) who inherits a large ranch. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle drover (Hugh Jackman) to protect her ranch. Together they experience four life-altering years, a love affair and the bombing of Darwin during World War II. (20th Century Fox)
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Reviews (10)
I'll be upfront and honest - I'm not at all surprised that Australia has such a low rating here and also that it has barely earned its own budget back. Why? Because you need a special and proper approach to this film. Admittedly, if the running time had been a third shorter, nothing would have happened. Maybe?! But for me, despite its 150 minutes, Australia is interesting and engaging. The setting in the Australian outback was a pretty good choice. The cinematographer did a great job and many times a lot of the scenes are just about the camera (and a pretty good one at that). The cast I thought was good and the characters fit the actors perfectly. And then, of course, there's the mix of different genres: a narrative romance between kangaroos against the backdrop of war and other dramas of life. Simply put, a long film, perhaps, but still something special and engaging that deserves the 5* from me.
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It begins like an unfunny, madcap comedy (all praise to those kangaroos), then it suddenly turns into rather a good adventure fantasy movie about hunters with magic and a nice amount of tongue in cheek, but then subsequently flops over into a remake of Pearl Harbor. Just even stupider and deadly serious into the bargain. At the end it becomes a politically correct appeal with at least seventeen ending acts. The cherry on the cake is the finale “gets out of boat and rifle shot" which easily wins the prize for sky-high dumbness in the movie theaters this year. Of course, you shed some tears while watching it, which certainly was the filmmakers’ aim, but I’m not so sure that they were meant to be tears of laughter. It’s all in a visual guise which, unlike Moulin Rouge!, doesn’t balance playfully on the line between kitsch and genius, but becomes puke-worthy digital kitsch of the third kind. The characters (not the actors - they do their very best to save things) are a parody of themselves, because for instance every ten minutes Sarah turns into a different character, thinking, acting and behaving completely differently to before. A movie about strength and the need to tell a story that doesn’t have a clue about how to tell a story is bound to fail. And it does.
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In the first half, Luhrmann tells the story with gusto, passionately and fully applying his almost grotesque sense of humour (which I like and which his previous film, Moulin Rouge, was packed with), but when he arrives in Darwin midway through the film, he seems to wave a magic wand, and the narrative, full of life and the enchanting atmosphere of the Australian outback, becomes a game of playing with the audience's patience, where it's as if the filmmakers are trying to see what clichés and screenwriting gimmicks they can get away with. That cheesy ending is something that not even Danielle Steele, the queen of rosy books, would dare write. Still, I sense Luhrmann's sincere effort to pay homage to his beloved native Australia throughout the work, and so I can't entirely damn it.
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"Every continent should have its blockbuster," said likely director Baz Luhrmann and made the film "Australia," which is a patriotic film, but shows the dark sides that Australia had to go through in the 20th century. After the first few minutes, the viewer is unsure of what they are actually watching. Is this supposed to be a comedy, which tries to showcase the two big Australian stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in beautiful shots? Or should we take the film seriously and expect that there will be a little more to it in the end, and that we can look forward to some drama that will really move our emotions? In the end, it turns out to be a drama that wants to be grand, but actually remains somewhat small. It still focuses on the main actors and how good they look, especially Hugh Jackman, which raises the question of whether Luhrmann might be gay. He is not, at least as far as I can judge from the fact that he is married to a woman. The story of the little boy, which the film is actually about, is not as touching as it was supposed to be, and therefore - but not only for that reason - the film did not gain much favor with me, because on a runtime of almost three hours, it is not that exceptional. More: http://www.filmovy-denik.cz/2012/05/noc-patri-nam-voda-pro-slony-posledni.html
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A fairy tale about how a dog and a cat cooked up a movie. After regularly encountering the immeasurable power of passion in Into the Beat and after some time away from Moulin Rouge!, which I eventually accepted, I was expecting a lot from Australia. However, the result is... something I'm willing to close both eyes to just for the prosaic fact that Nicole looks immeasurably great after 1939. Which isn't much, but also not too little for moving pictures.
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