Review of Australia (1989) by Jonathan A — 08 Jul 2010

"Australia" is a disaster on almost every conceivable level. A messy, confused, overlong, overhyped, undercooked, misguided, cringe-inducing and downright ridiculously bad attempt at cinematic storytelling.

The principal problem with the film is that it tries so hard to be a big, broad, romantic epic, while it should just BE a romantic epic. The story, by its nature, is sweeping and romantic and kind of silly, and Baz has tried to accentuate and celebrate that in his execution. The result isn't fun, its alienating. The fun of the genre is getting swept up on an adventure with characters you like and want to see come through it all. Australia's character's are such over-the-top pantomime version's of real characters, it becomes difficult for us to feel anything at all for them. A better director would let the nature of the story, with all of its broad strokes and classic themes, come through naturally. Lurhmann's take is like an impressionist version of the movie he was aiming for.

I give it half a star for Catherine Martin's sumptuous production and costume design work, which is complemented by Mandy Walker's detailed and richly-textured cinematography - for which I give it another half star. But thats it, and thats being generous.

Remember when you were watching Peter Jackson's "King Kong, and you saw that Brontosaurus stampede scene with the really dodgy compositing effects and you thought to yourself "this is bullshit. $200, 000, 0000 and it looks like a scene from Peter Hyams' "Sound of Thunder". WTF Peter Jackson?" Wait til you see this. You'll be sorry you ever said a bad word about Kong. You'll want to ring up Jackson and formally apologise, begging him to forgive you, because you just didn't know how bad it COULD have been. Now you do. The blue screen/green screen/compositing effects in Australia are laughably bad in the most extreme "TV movie of the week" kind of way. But thats not the film's main problem.

Think to last week, when so many were complaining about Marc Forster's apparent inability to shoot an action sequence with any degree of coherency in Quantum of Solace. Well, start drafting those apologies again. You'd have more luck figuring out the colour of Bond's undies than the geography of any of Luhrmann's DIALOGUE sequences, much less the poor excuses for action in this film.

To be fair, I can see where it all went wrong, and this isn't the case of a studio recklessly pouring money into stupid time-waste of a film. I can see the attraction to the script - an epic, balls-out action-adventure western set in the Australian outback. Thats how the script would have read. But I really wouldn't want to have been one of Fox's studio execs, waiting in a private screening room with anticipation of a modern epic by a talented auteur, only to be horrified by $130, 000, 000 effort of amateur quality. I can imagine their internal monologue".

"OK, that started out OK...cinematography is nice...what the fuck is with Nicole's panto walk?...what the hell is going on...people, talking...bad editing...this is not looking good...ah, OK we're getting to the big journey now things should pick up, lets not worry about all that crap at the start we can fix that later...ah, finally the big round-up sequence, this is what we coughed up for...What.The. FUCK.".

The round-up set piece is impressively conceived, but in execution its one of the most mind-bogglingly amateurish sequences I've ever seen in any film. It looks like some cheap computer representation of a cattle drive one might see on the Discovery channel. Its shot without any sense of clarity or geography, and it isn't engaging in the least, much less exciting.

With Australia, Baz Lurhmann show's himself to be one of the most incompetent director's ever to helm a big-budget film. And I don't just mean he's lazy, like George Lucas, or bland, like Shawn Levy or Adam Shankman...just flat-out incompetent. There are a thousands upon thousands of television and commercial and straight-to-DVD director's out there who will be watching this film and wondering how the hell Lurhmann ever passed his entrance examination, much less landed a personal project with a bloated budget like this.

I suppose the answer is that he's done good work before - I am a fan of his Red Curtain trilogy. I think Romeo + Juliet is his best - a film clearly directed by someone with a mission to engage, to excite, to redefine. That film is full of the broad, anything goes stylistic flourishes Lurhmann is known for, but in that context they work. In Australia, they feel forced. And its not just the out-of-place visual style or the bad effects and action sequences...every scene is poorly handled, confusing in their blocking and pacing, jarring with their OTT performances. When I say amateurish, I mean it - this feels like the work of a 13-year-old boy telling a world-class cast and crew how to do their jobs. They could have drawn a name out of a hat at your local Lawn Bowls club and I'd bet my life savings we would have a better film...at least that person might have been more inclined to listen their crew rather than forcing an inappropriate signature style on every shot. I'm starting to fear that his trademark OTT style is simply a cover for the fact that he has no sense of subtly or any control over the story. When you throw everything at the screen, something's gotta stick.

I haven't been this shocked by amatuerish direction since Susan Stroman's reprehensible film version of The Producers. This also may be the worst film I've seen since that abomination. Both are films with great potential let down by poor execution by their directors.

At least they provide some answer to the question of what a director does - so often, no-one can really answer that. But looking at Australia, what a director does is evident in what the films is lacking...

So, yeah, I didn't like it much.