Review of Australia (2008) by Harry W — 04 Mar 2014

I think that Baz Luhrmann is the worst Australian filmmaker of all time because of what he did to The Great Gastby and the fact that he couldn't even tell a story with Moulin Rouge, so I didn't expect much from Australia. But I knew its cast was talented and figured it was worthwhile to see for their sake.

I can admit that I did go into seeing Australia with expectation that I wouldn't enjoy it because it was a Baz Luhrmann film, but as an avid patriot who loves my country, I figured perhaps I could learn something from Australia. What I learned was that Baz Luhrmann's head is even further up his polished rectum than I ever thought. I think his head has been stuck so far up his own ass that he is essentially wearing himself as a hat.

I have no idea why somebody actually gave funding to Baz Lurhmann to direct a serious epic drama film, because it was like when Michael Bay got funding for his awful epic-romantic war film Pearl Harbour which is memorable for being a laughably awful, long and slow. Australia isn't laughably awful, it's simply awful, long and ridiculously fast. But the worst part is that he tries to make it a meaningful film, but just like Michael Bay, Baz Luhrmann and something meaningful mix no better than the DNA of an elephant and a pig. They just don't splice, and so Australia turns into a massive misfire of boring storytelling that Baz Luhrmann attempts to hide beneath glamourised visuals, and in the end makes a film similar to the 1980 industry changing failure Heaven's Gate except much worse. Michael Cimino's film deserved to succeed much more than Baz Lurhmann, because the director of The Deer Hunter deserved a much more successful career than the butcher who made The Great Gatsby.

The script is rushed because when Nicole Kidman first speaks she is saying something that takes at least a few lines before she cuts to the chase. She comes and goes in a second and says few words that lack any realism to them, and from then on the scrips maintains a slightly slower speed but no more intelligence. While it does have a lot of stereotypical Australian language in it without going overboard into stereotypical area, it isn't anything intelligent but just a bunch of drongos shouting senseless dribble to each other in Australian while trapped in a terrible Baz Luhrmann film. It becomes dull fast, and the script is bereft of characters that are anything but artificial one-dimensional beings.

And in regards to the subject matter, the last person to handle a film about Australian and Aboriginal relationships should be Baz Luhrmann as he is the least Australian of all Australian filmmakers. He is the Sam Worthington of filmmaking, or alternatively the Nicole Kidman of filmmaking who takes the lead role in this multi-million dollar disaster.

I got sick of Nicole Kidman's voice way too fast in Australia. The film did nothing but remind me what my dad always called her a terrible actress. While she was decent in Moulin Rouge! and was great early on in her career in the Australian thriller Dead Calm, by 2008 she has become nothing much more than a commercial actress whose face has too much botox and voice has little appeal anymore since all she does is screech a high-pitched forced English accent from the root of her thinly written character. In Australia I just found myself staring at her face waiting for it to turn into one big white marshmallow, and that is something I have never said about any actor or actress before. I may have said things about how Courtney Cox cannot act underneath all her plastic surgery, but in Australia Nicole Kidman doesn't do too much more unfortunately. I know she has some talent, but she doesn't really use it in Australia.

Hugh Jackman seemed to have been cast more for his looks and his fame than anything else in Australia because those are the only things that the film really makes use of, but there is no arguing that his natural amiable charm as an actor and as an Aussie is appealing in Australia. He provides a decent lead role and its enjoyable to watch him go at it in an Australian setting because that is where his roots are.

David Wenham is one of the greatest Australian actors of the contemporary age in my opinion, and I don't find that his talented is appreciated enough by international audiences, so the one good thing that comes from Australia is that his talents are put on display in a large scale epic which became to widely distributed and for some reason commercially successful. His performance is ripe with his natural Australian charm and efforts as an actor, and he combines an instinctive strength behind his line delivery with a lot of emotional intensity put into his line delivery.

And the performance of the young Brandon Walters is one of the better elements of the film because he proves that as an actor he has a lot of dedicated charm and determination to make the story feel more meaningful than it would have been without him or his characters as a member of the cast.

And I can't deny that Australia has a lot of beautiful cinematography and incredible production design as well as convincing costumes with the only problem being that the editing is a bit too fast along with the pace of the film in general. But its ok and I will admit that the imagery from Australia is memorable.

But if not for being a visual spectacle, I would have no trouble calling Australia the single worst Australian film of all time which is fairly ironic when you think about it, and it is so easy to write about the film because it is actually that awful that I don't need to put too much thought into what is wrong with it.