CNS Movie Review: Australia

Australia

By Harry Forbes
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Large-scale romantic adventures have become a screen rarity, so lovers of that genre will happily wallow in all three hours of "Australia" (Fox), despite fanciful plot contrivances and some awkward tonal shifts.

The sprawling, generally entertaining epic is set just before and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor as Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), a starchy English widow, takes over her late husband's cattle station down under.

It doesn't take long before she falls in love with a rough-hewn horseman known simply as Drover (Hugh Jackman). He's hired to escort her to her property, Faraway Downs, and she later convinces him to help drive the animals to port ahead of rival magnate King Carney's (Bryan Brown) villainous henchman, Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), who clearly had a hand in her husband's demise.

Narrating the story in somewhat cloying fashion is the otherwise appealing 13-year-old Brandon Walters, playing half-Aboriginal, half-Caucasian Nullah. Though Sarah confesses she's not very comfortable around children, when the boy tragically loses his mother, her latent maternal instincts come to the fore. Sarah comforts the orphaned boy with a humorously shaky rendition of "Over the Rainbow," the strains of which sentimentally permeate the rest of the movie.

Nullah is guided by an Aboriginal shaman named King George (David Gulpilil) who watches over the boy from afar, sometimes offering "magical" intercession when the boy gets into scrapes and encouraging Nullah to use his own powers -- as when he's standing on the edge of a precipice and facing a cattle stampede head-on, and is able to stop the rampaging herd through what looks like sheer mental willpower. (The Aboriginal mastery of nature here is somewhat akin to those ascribed to Native Americans in latter-day Westerns.)

The stampede is but one of the many set-pieces around which director and co-writer Baz Luhrmann has fashioned his story: a rambunctious barroom fight, a swanky ball and the Japanese invasion. (The script was co-written with Stuart Beattie, Ronald Harwood and Richard Flanagan.)

It would seem Luhrmann's primary goal was to pay lavish homage to classic epics and Westerns, creating an old-style Hollywood love story, courtesy of its magnetic leads. Kidman and Jackman indeed make a handsome pair -- their transformations to enlightened crusader and committed protector, respectively, are well conveyed -- and they're solidly supported by Aussie acting pros like Brown, Wenham and Jack Thompson as Sarah's boozy accountant.

One can easily imagine, say, Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum in these roles several decades ago, though the script would probably have had more logic and coherence than the narrative here. Still, the historical backdrop is quite interesting. The shameful forced evacuation of mixed-race children, to remove them from their indigenous backgrounds and families and "re-educate" them, is a lesser-known piece of history. Though priests are involved in this misguided practice, they are portrayed as genuinely concerned for the children's welfare. The victims of this displacement came to be known as the "Stolen Generations."

So, too, the deadly 1942 bombing of Darwin, the waterfront outpost of the Northern Territory, by the same fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor, is also vividly dramatized.

With its reverential portrayals of the indigenous characters, the film carries a strong plea for racial tolerance, much like the subplot of George Stevens' "Giant," which charted the easing of prejudice toward Hispanics in Texas.

Sex, language and violent elements are remarkably restrained. Apart from the implication of Sarah and Drover cohabiting -- and one very brief but nongraphic bedroom scene -- and a pointed use of a rough expletive by Jackman, expressing righteous indignation when a bartender shows reluctance to pour a drink for an Aboriginal companion, the film might well have been made in the more circumspect 1950s.

The film contains moderate action violence, a mostly implied nonmarital relationship including a very brief sexual encounter without nudity, mild innuendo, one use of the F-word and some Aboriginal mysticism; it's acceptable for older teens. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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Forbes is director of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. More reviews are available online at www.usccb.org/movies.

END

Copyright (c) 2008 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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