Australia

After being delayed by more than a week, I thought I would chuck the ‘Australia’ review. But then I find that its still playing in most of the multiplexes in its second week, so here goes ...

If you are the type who get spellbound at magnificent footage on the huge cinema screen - in movies such as the Gladiator - you are going to like Australia. Attempted on a similar scale and scope, it features some breathtakingly beautiful scenes from the Land of Down Under. However, those of you who caught the word ‘attempted’ in the previous sentence would have guessed it right - there isn’t much to the movie other than beautiful camerawork.

Australia is Baz Luhrmann’s attempt at an epic movie ... combining love, adventure, travel, World War II, family values, racial equality and everything else you can think of. In reality it seems like a movie in two parts where the first part is a complete movie by itself and the second half is a mix of a little of everything else.

The story starts off pretty simply. Nicole Kidman plays Sarah Ashley, an English aristocrat who comes to Australia to dispose off her deceased husband’s cattle ranch, only to land in the middle of rivalry with local rancher King Carney. She then decides to undertake her husband’s last wish and herd 1,500 head of cattle to Darwin to fulfill an Army contract. She hires for help The Drover (Hugh Jackman), a freewheeling Australian cowboy sort of. Along with them comes the narrator of the movie, a half Aborginal child Nullah.

However this accounts for only the first half of the movie. The story then meanders into love, ruthless business rivalry, racism, family ties, blood ties, Japanese invasion of Australia ...

The chemistry between Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman is good in the first half, when Lady Sarah Ashley is trying to come to terms with the Australian outback. However, Nicole Kidman is quite ordinary in the second half, especially in the emotional scenes. Hugh Jackman is cool as ever, acting the macho guy throughout the movie. And Nullah does exceedingly well too.

However the movie is completely let down by its unending storyline. I could hear groans of people all around me waiting for it to end. And the predictable nature of the story meant that the outcome of the movie was very obvious an hour before it actually ends – and the screenplay did nothing to make the intervening hour any interesting. The Japanese bombing of Darwin town looked quite CGIed and honestly, after ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘Pearl Harbour’ the ability of explosions to ‘wow’ us is quite limited now.

Interestingly, after you watch the movie, the strongest impression left on you isn’t Nicole Kidman’s bad acting, but the rampant racism prevalent in Australia at that time. We know about the oppression on blacks in the United States - partly because of reformists like Martin Luther King – but it was an eye opener for me as far as oppression on Aborigines is concerned.

Since I am a sucker for the visual grandeur of cinema, I am giving it an extra 0.5 star solely for the camerawork. If you too enjoy the big screen cinema experience, you can watch Australia. Otherwise you are ok without it.