Australia – Love it and Leave it

Before I tell you about Australia, let me be upfront. I don’t really get Baz Luhrmann films. I mean, I understand what I’m meant to get. Luhrmann excels at creating hyper-realities with over the top plots, characters, costumes, soundtracks, colours and settings that provide a visual and auditory feast for the audience. Ballroom dancing competitions are won by following one’s heart rather than traditional steps; the love of one’s life is spotted on the other side of a tank containing the most iridescent fish ever to appear on screen; and drinking too much absinthe results in the appearance of Kylie Minogue rather than a hangover. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a killjoy. I think that fantasy and escapism are reasons enough for a movie to be made. I’m quite happy for a Luhrmann movie to solely function as the calming valium for an audience experiencing our bad-acid-trip-reality of stock market crashes, terrorist attacks, global warming and looming recession*. It’s just that Baz has never done it for me.

I react to a Luhrmann film as I do when presented with a crocheted face-washer, a newborn baby, any sort of interior decoration or a cocktail glass with coloured sugar crystals circumnavigating its rim – sure it looks nice, but so what? What does it do? What purpose does it serve? What’s the point of it? Strictly Ballroom, Romeo & Juliet and Moulin Rouge were all non-events for me, generating intense boredom rather than fulfilling any function of escapism. But this shouldn’t come as a surprise. As a young, white, non-metrosexual male (and as evidenced in the above example) I readily admit that I do not appreciate the value of pure aesthetics. Given this lack of appreciation, I certainly wouldn’t expect to become immersed in Luhrmann films, which are constituted by exuberant superficiality at its unashamed best.

Defying my track record’s predictions however, Australia really engaged me. I left the cinema feeling much more than anticipated nonchalance. Running for over two and a half hours, Australia can quite easily be split down the middle into two distinct halves, so distinct in fact that they are almost two separate films. The action of the first half mainly revolves around a drove of 2000 cattle to Darwin. Led by newly arrived London lady, Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) and rough and ready local lad, Drover (Hugh Jackman), it is an attempt to rescue Ashley’s inherited cattle farm from financial ruin whilst breaking the monopoly of local cattle baron King Carney (Bryan Brown). Carney employee and superb arch-villain Neil Fletcher (David Wenham) pulls out every trick in the book to try to stop them. The second half takes place in Darwin, around the time of its bombing by Japanese warplanes in 1942. The main flavour of the movie changes from action to relationships. Obstacles mainly in the shape of Fletcher and the War obstruct the relationship between Ashley and Drover and their relationship with Nullah (Brandon Walters), the eleven year old boy with an Aboriginal mother and European father whom they have semi-adopted.

The first half of Australia is so self-consciously cheesy it is impossible not to like. The many close-ups of beautiful people against beautiful backgrounds and the presence of caricatures rather than characters make it uncertain at times whether you are watching a Tourism Australia commercial from the 80s, an R.M. Williams ad or a satire. But the trademarked finesse, light-hearted nature and quasi-theatrical approach with which this is executed signals that Luhrmann’s tongue is firmly in cheek. As in other Luhrmann films, the focus is squarely on spectacle. However, unlike the sequined suburban melodrama of Strictly Ballroom, the gaudy religious iconography of Romeo & Juliet or the red red red of Moulin Rouge, Luhrmann opts out of manufacturing a spectacle. Instead, he shows tremendous self restraint by allowing the natural beauty of the Australian wilderness room to breathe. In keeping with the Australian environment, the presentation of visual imagery in Australia is relatively pared back. Gone are the nauseatingly rapid chopping and changing camera angles of can-can dancers and fancy dress parties and in their place are slow pans of waterfalls, rock formations and herds of cattle under a cloudless, azure sky. Mirroring the Australian landscape, Australia‘s colour palette comprises many subtly different shades of red and brown which make a refreshing change from the fluorescent ‘all colours of the rainbow’ approach of other Luhrmann films. The Australian landscape comes to be the most believable and dignified character in Australia in a way reminiscent of films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock and Wolf Creek.

Speaking of believable characters, I really liked Kidman’s performance despite what other reviewers might be saying. Far from being the kiss of death, Kidman’s ‘wooden’ acting facilitates some intentionally funny moments in Australia. Whether this ‘woodenness’ is purposefully crafted by Kidman, an indication of her inability to act, a result of too much Botox or a combination of all three is beside the point. Australia doesn’t require Academy Award winning acting performances. Rather, it needs actors who look incredibly good on screen and both Kidman, with a waist smaller than Hugh Jackman’s bicep, and Jackman, with teeth whiter than Kidman’s jodhpurs, certainly fit that bill. In a nod to patriarchy, Jackman and Kidman are accompanied by an almost all male cast of other well known Australian actors including David Gulpilil, Jack Thompson, Bryan Brown, Ben Mendelsohn, John Jarrett, Barry Otto and David Wenham. And at twelve years of age, newcomer Brandon Walters deserves every bit of good press he’s getting at the moment.

So what went wrong in the second half? In trying to answer this question, I thought about what criteria I use to judge a film and realised it essentially boils down to a movie delivering what it promises to. I’ve enjoyed Mulholland Drive, Tropic Thunder, Kids, Best In Show, Men’s Group and Die Hard all equally. I like serious, perspective-changing take home message movies as much as I do light entertainment. But I want to know what I’m in for. I don’t want to be challenged by Jerry Bruckheimer or lightly entertained by David Lynch. A rare film such as Life Is Beautiful manages to combine both seriousness and light relief effectively but for the most part I think films and directors fairly distinctly fall into one or the other category.

And here is Luhrmann’s downfall. His delight in ostentation and its primacy in the three films that preceded Australia easily place Luhrmann’s work in the category of light entertainment. The first half of Australia adhered to (and actually outdid) my light entertainment expectations. Unfortunately, Luhrmann’s rapid about face in the middle of the movie sees him seeking to be taken on more than face value and when he is, everything goes to porridge. His newfound seriousness is channelled through making the historical treatment of Aboriginal people, especially children with one Aboriginal and one European parent, the major recurring theme in the second half of Australia. Nestled between the film’s end and the credits are even some lines of text concerning the abolition of assimilationist policy and Rudd’s sorry speech.

Luhrmann’s attempt at seriousness is troubling for a number of reasons. It is difficult to work out why he goes there. If you’re a director renowned for creating surface beauty, why change halfway through your fourth film? And Luhrmann’s attempt at seriousness equates to simplifying an incredibly complex issue and turning it into dramatic technique. A bad character is demarcated from a good character in the film by showing overt racism, prejudice and discrimination towards Aboriginal people. Although the admirable aim of informing and changing audience attitude may underlie this, simply making the audience side with the goodies and shun the baddies seems to be a cheap and easy way of attempting to effect change at a very shallow level. Australia is definitely no Beneath Clouds or Rabbit Proof Fence. These films and TV programs such as First Australians (which screened on SBS recently) offer fresh perspectives on the mistreatment of Aboriginal people at the hands of white people and genuine insights into its implications. These productions challenge and move the audience at a deep level and in a way which, as is evident from Australia, Luhrmann could only ever dream of.

The worst part of Luhrmann becoming serious in the second half of the film is that it changes the lens through which the whole film has now to be perceived. If Luhrmann wants us to take him seriously, then the whole film (especially the frothy first half) now comes under closer scrutiny. Of particular salience, is the way in which Luhrmann represents Aboriginality throughout the film. Although it could be argued that a white director reducing Aboriginality to a handful of crass and commercialised token components is problematic in and of itself, this didn’t matter so much in the first half of the film. When Luhrmann wasn’t trying to be serious everyone was represented terribly and everyone was reduced to a handful of crass and commercialised token components. But because Luhrmann suddenly demands to be taken seriously, this takes on new meaning and starts to matter a lot more. Not sharing genetic or social connections with Aboriginality, I’m not claiming here that I have the authority or knowledge to define what it is constituted by. And I’ve read Stuff White People Like and I’m well aware that #101 on the list is being offended on behalf of other people. But I’m happy to conform to this stereotype for Australia because Luhrmann’s reduction of Aboriginality to stick-leaning, incantation-chanting, fire-dancing, ochre-face-painting and walkabouts is absolutely and completely awful.

It becomes evident that through wildly inaccurate and clichéd representations, Luhrmann is engaging in and perpetuating attitudes and stereotypes (unintentionally one hopes) that are in stark contrast to what he may be trying to achieve by becoming serious. Australia is very similar in look and feel to Charles Chauvel’s 1955 film Jedda and echoes its outdated portrayal of Aboriginal people as exotic, homogenous, primitive ‘others’. Aboriginal and European cultures are portrayed as two different worlds, occupying the same country but existing on two mutually exclusive planes. Aside from being grating, Luhrmann’s continual emphasis on existing as either part of Aboriginal culture or European culture is unrealistic and carries neo-assimilationist overtones. Not only is it at odds with the wide variety of accounts of Aboriginality valued by the Reconciliation movement, it is potentially offensive to the thousands of Aboriginal people who have been forced to exist in an amalgamation of both cultures for the last 200 odd years.  

The film’s cringe-worthy ending (which I won’t give away here) is the most explicit example of Luhrmann segregating Aboriginal and European culture but there are also a number of other striking examples of this in the film. When David Gulpilil’s King George (Luhrmann’s embodiment of ‘true’ Aboriginality who goes everywhere clad in a loincloth, clutching a spear and with an ochre-painted face more often than not) walks the streets of Darwin during the Japanese air raid he is completely immune to the bombs being dropped around him. At another stage in the film, either the Drover’s life or the life of his Aboriginal companion must be sacrificed for the greater good. No prizes for guessing who ends up dead. Although this demonstration of courage and sacrifice could be viewed as portraying Aboriginality in a positive light, death is still the inevitable outcome for an Aboriginal person who tries to exist in the European world. Now don’t hear me saying that European and Aboriginal cultures aren’t unique or that they don’t have differences that should be respected. This is not the case. Again, it’s Luhrmann’s simplistic all-or-nothing take on an issue rich in complexity which causes problems here. Directing a film entitled Australia and knowing it will inevitably have global exposure, Luhrmann should have taken more seriously the responsibility and potentially harmful implications of his choice to be taken more seriously.

So, is Australia worth seeing? I would answer yes … maybe. The first half of Australia is definitely worth seeing for its spectacular scenery, impressive cast both old and new and its general sense of fun. If you stick around for the second half then at least you’ll have more to talk about than you would have had after the end of any other Luhrmann film. But, then again, if you decide to leave halfway through, you won’t be missing much.

* Thanks to Doris McIlwain from Macquarie University for this excellent metaphor.