Tonight I went to the Aero for a sneak preview of Australia, the new epic by Baz Lurhmann and the first movie he's directed since 2001's Moulin Rouge!. Baz takes his time directing movies. He was thirty when he made his feature debut, Strictly Ballroom, back in 1992. He did Romeo + Juliet four years later, and then Moulin Rouge! after that. I have to admit I haven't seen those first two flicks, and I was sort of blah about Moulin Rouge!. Still, when I saw the trailer for Australia, I was intrigued. Let's just say I'm a sucker for historical epics. Oh, and you've got Nicole Kidman too. She never hurts. And I did see a stage production of La Boheme Baz directed for L.A.'s Center Theater Group back in 2004 or so. That was terrific, although I'm not sure why he had to update the storyline to the fifties, but whatever.
While I enjoyed Australia overall, it wasn't the epic masterpiece I was hoping for. Baz takes an unconventional approach by trying to mesh a whole bunch of genres together. Actually, he doesn't marry them so much as lay them out in a sequence. At first it's sort of like a comedy and a musical, then it becomes more of an adventure, then a romance, and then a drama. I think it sort of worked, but I don't think it's possible to do that and create a masterpiece at the same time. Tugging your audience across the emotional spectrum in two and a half hours isn't very realistic. Still, if you appreciate great photography, then by all means check this out. There were times when I detached from the story and just sat there with my mouth agape while taking in the landscapes.
Here's the story in a nutshell. It's set in the late thirties and early forties, leading up to the Japanese attack on the city of Darwin, which came soon after Pearl Harbor. Nicole Kidman plays 
a rich English gal named Sarah Ashley. When the story starts, her hubby's just kicked off and left her this huge ranch in northern Australia. No sooner does she get to the ranch than she finds out that there's this rancher nearby named King Carney who's trying to usurp it by slowly but surely poaching her livestock. Playing King Carney, by the way, is the long lost Bryan Brown. Okay maybe he isn't really long lost, but I don't think I've seen him since those F/X movies he did with Brian Dennehy back in the eighties. I really liked those flicks. I think they did two of them. Anyway, he's brilliant as King Carney. He's got the local cops in his pocket, but he's not all bad. He's just complicated.
a rich English gal named Sarah Ashley. When the story starts, her hubby's just kicked off and left her this huge ranch in northern Australia. No sooner does she get to the ranch than she finds out that there's this rancher nearby named King Carney who's trying to usurp it by slowly but surely poaching her livestock. Playing King Carney, by the way, is the long lost Bryan Brown. Okay maybe he isn't really long lost, but I don't think I've seen him since those F/X movies he did with Brian Dennehy back in the eighties. I really liked those flicks. I think they did two of them. Anyway, he's brilliant as King Carney. He's got the local cops in his pocket, but he's not all bad. He's just complicated.Nah, the real baddie here is a chap called Fletcher, Neil Fletcher, played by David Wenham. Did you see The Lord of the Rings flicks? Dave played Faramir, brother of Boromir, the one in the second and third flicks who helps Frodo and Sam get closer to that dag nab frickin' volcano. And
he also starred as Hugh Jackman's sidekick in that awful horror mishmash Van Helsing back in 2004. Ugh. Like a stake through the ol' ticker just thinking of that travesty. I've got to give props where props are due, though. David Wenham's got range. As Faramir he was this noble, chivalrous type, although it took him a bit to trust Frodo and Sam. In Van Helsing he was this bumbling moron who tripped over his own feet. And now here, as Neil Fletcher, he's this quiet malevolent type. At first it seems he's another version of Faramir. Uh uh. He's Faramir's evil cowboy twin. And I mean evil. Dave really amps up the nastiness as Neil, but he never overdoes it. Dude definitely comes from the school of less is more, and his performance is all the better for it. In addition to Hugh Jackman, Dave's also got a history with Baz. He had a supporting part in Moulin Rouge!.
he also starred as Hugh Jackman's sidekick in that awful horror mishmash Van Helsing back in 2004. Ugh. Like a stake through the ol' ticker just thinking of that travesty. I've got to give props where props are due, though. David Wenham's got range. As Faramir he was this noble, chivalrous type, although it took him a bit to trust Frodo and Sam. In Van Helsing he was this bumbling moron who tripped over his own feet. And now here, as Neil Fletcher, he's this quiet malevolent type. At first it seems he's another version of Faramir. Uh uh. He's Faramir's evil cowboy twin. And I mean evil. Dave really amps up the nastiness as Neil, but he never overdoes it. Dude definitely comes from the school of less is more, and his performance is all the better for it. In addition to Hugh Jackman, Dave's also got a history with Baz. He had a supporting part in Moulin Rouge!.But wait. Speaking of Hugh Jackman, I haven't gotten to his character yet, the first person Nicole Kidman meets on her arrival in the great outback. Known only as Drover, he's sort of a freelance, uh, drover. Someone who drives cattle and livestock over great distances. He's a freelancer, but he does have a working history with Nicole Kidman's late husband. At first, Nicole and Hugh's characters go together as well as oil and water. He's this rough-hewn sort of guy, a Han Solo of the outback. And Nicole's this prim and proper English gal. Still, the sexual tension's pretty much apparent from the get-go. And it doesn't really take long at all for...well you know.
The main conflict of the story is this. Nicole's ranch is pretty much out of money. Her only hope is a beef contract with the Australian army. If she has any hope of closing the deal, she needs to get all her late hubby's livestock, something like two thousand heads, to the city of Darwin by a certain deadline. And from her ranch to Darwin is quite the trip. She doesn't have a hope of getting it done without Drover. And it's this epic journey that constitutes the beef (pardon the pun) of the movie. On the way, not only do they have to contend with an absolutely unforgivable (if absolutely beautiful) landscape, but they've got Neil Fletcher and his goons on their tail, trying to make life as complicated as possible.
So that's pretty much the setup. And over the course of the film, we're building up to the inevitable attack on Darwin by Japanese forces. In fact, it's the exact same squadron of planes that ambushed Pearl Harbor. Many Americans (like, say, me before this film) don't realize that Pearl Harbor was only a warm-up for those pilots. Apparently they blew up Pearl Harbor, then did a U-turn and headed over to Darwin.
Before I get to Baz's Q&A, let me mention my favorite thing about this film. That would be the Aborigine kid named Nullah. He's part of the Aborigine family who live and work on Nicole's ranch. His mom dies pretty early on courtesy of those corrupt cops, and then Nicole slowly but surely becomes a sort of mother figure to him. Actually she and Hugh Jackman become his surrogate parents. His central conflict is whether or not he should do the walkabout. Not if, but when. Anyway, he's adorable. Very charismatic. And his relationship with his mysterious grandfather King George, who hovers in and out of the film like a guiding spirit, is very intriguing.
Peter Hammond from the L.A. Times moderated the Q&A. The first thing Baz talked about was how this project grew out of his failed Alexander the Great project four years ago. He and Oliver
Stone were working on competing projects about Alexander. Oliver finished his in time for Thanksgiving 2004. Did you catch it? It's perfectly fine if you didn't. With Colin Farrell as Alexander and Angelina Jolie as his mom and Val Kilmer as his dad, it just didn't work. Too all over the place. So it's too bad Baz's version fell apart because it's hard to imagine how it could've been any worse. Baz wasn't very specific about why it fell through. He had Steven Spielberg signed on as the producer. Huge sets had been built in Morocco. It was all due to start shooting with a fall 2005 release date, giving audiences a full year to get over the Oliver Stone fiasco. But it just didn't happen. That's obviously how he found the time to direct La Boheme in L.A.
Stone were working on competing projects about Alexander. Oliver finished his in time for Thanksgiving 2004. Did you catch it? It's perfectly fine if you didn't. With Colin Farrell as Alexander and Angelina Jolie as his mom and Val Kilmer as his dad, it just didn't work. Too all over the place. So it's too bad Baz's version fell apart because it's hard to imagine how it could've been any worse. Baz wasn't very specific about why it fell through. He had Steven Spielberg signed on as the producer. Huge sets had been built in Morocco. It was all due to start shooting with a fall 2005 release date, giving audiences a full year to get over the Oliver Stone fiasco. But it just didn't happen. That's obviously how he found the time to direct La Boheme in L.A.So he went back to his wife in Paris and decided to have a second child. Their first, a daughter, was born in the fall of '03. And their second, a son, was born in Paris during the summer of 2005. His wife, by the way, this gal named Catherine Martin, does the production design for his movies. In fact, she scored an Oscar for Moulin Rouge!.
Anywho, it was while in Paris spending time with his family that he decided to do an epic about 
his homeland. Part of what inspired him was the fact that most people outside Australia have no idea that the forces that attacked Pearl Harbor also did a number on Australia. Darwin was bombed no less than fifty or sixty times. Also, if he was going to do an epic, he wanted it to have a real-life historical backdrop. And he did do his research. Before he started worrying about what the actual story would be, he holed himself up in his Paris flat and spent a good six months doing nothing but reading book after book after book. One thing he didn't have to do much reading about was droving. Baz comes from a family of drovers on his dad's side. They drove Clydesdales, Baz explained. He'd never done it himself, which is why he and two assistants left Paris for Oz to try it out.
his homeland. Part of what inspired him was the fact that most people outside Australia have no idea that the forces that attacked Pearl Harbor also did a number on Australia. Darwin was bombed no less than fifty or sixty times. Also, if he was going to do an epic, he wanted it to have a real-life historical backdrop. And he did do his research. Before he started worrying about what the actual story would be, he holed himself up in his Paris flat and spent a good six months doing nothing but reading book after book after book. One thing he didn't have to do much reading about was droving. Baz comes from a family of drovers on his dad's side. They drove Clydesdales, Baz explained. He'd never done it himself, which is why he and two assistants left Paris for Oz to try it out.Originally he wasn't going to include an Aborigine subplot, but then he thought about his kids. What are they? French? Australian? The daughter was born in Sydney but now lives in France. 
His son was born in Paris. Baz and Catherine are Australian. This issue of his children's identities led to him thinking about the Aborigines. Until 1973 the Australian government had this policy about Aborigine kids who, like Nullah in the film, are half Aborigine and half white. What the government would do was kidnap them from their homes right from birth and raise them in an all-white orphanage where they would eventually be told that their parents were dead. To hammer the point home, Baz said if Barack Obama, who's half white and half black, had been born in Australia, the same thing would've happened to him.
His son was born in Paris. Baz and Catherine are Australian. This issue of his children's identities led to him thinking about the Aborigines. Until 1973 the Australian government had this policy about Aborigine kids who, like Nullah in the film, are half Aborigine and half white. What the government would do was kidnap them from their homes right from birth and raise them in an all-white orphanage where they would eventually be told that their parents were dead. To hammer the point home, Baz said if Barack Obama, who's half white and half black, had been born in Australia, the same thing would've happened to him.It's hard to imagine that happening, isn't it? How strange. Eventually the Australian government did issue a formal apology, but according to Baz, the reason they took so long to get around to it was because they were afraid they'd be sued. Apparently, after they stopped this program in 1973, no one was supposed to talk about it. Everyone was supposed to go about their lives as if it had never happened. So the government thought that if they apologized, they'd be admitting it actually happened, in which case the Aborigines might sue them. Jesus Christ, man. They deserved to be sued, don't ya think? So anyway, the question of who his kids are made Baz think of that, which made him decide to incorporate an Aborigine storyline into his script.
That kid who played Nullah, Brandon Walters, survived umpteen rounds of auditions that originally started with a thousand Aborigine kids from all around Oz. A lot of the auditions took
place without Baz. He didn't get involved until the pool had been winnowed down quite a bit. He was too busy droving. Now that guy who plays Nullah's grandad King George, David Gulpilil, used to work in Ozzie movies and TV shows all the time. Back in the seventies and eighties he was the go-to guy if you needed an Aborigine character. He's still working too. He was in Rabbit-Proof Fence, which came out during the holidays of 2002. That's powerful stuff. Check it out if you haven't seen it. It deals directly with the half-caste Aborigine issue I mentioned above. Anyway, David Gulpilil obviously doesn't get out much. When Baz approached him about playing King George, the first thing David asked was how Jimmi Hendrix was doing.
place without Baz. He didn't get involved until the pool had been winnowed down quite a bit. He was too busy droving. Now that guy who plays Nullah's grandad King George, David Gulpilil, used to work in Ozzie movies and TV shows all the time. Back in the seventies and eighties he was the go-to guy if you needed an Aborigine character. He's still working too. He was in Rabbit-Proof Fence, which came out during the holidays of 2002. That's powerful stuff. Check it out if you haven't seen it. It deals directly with the half-caste Aborigine issue I mentioned above. Anyway, David Gulpilil obviously doesn't get out much. When Baz approached him about playing King George, the first thing David asked was how Jimmi Hendrix was doing.To cover his bases, Baz filmed two endings for this thing: One sad, one happy. In the end he opted for happy. The world's already laden with enough doubt and anxiety. Why should he add to it? Dude just finished mixing this thing eight days ago, and the big premiere's two days from now. Oprah saw a cut of it a while ago before most of it was edited. To fill in the gaps Baz had to use still photographs and rudimentary animation. Anything to get a good quote from Oprah, right? We've seen what her endorsement can do for books. She loved the rough cut of Australia. Now let's hope that love can boost this sucker's sales.
