What Women Want

Movie Review Sunday:
Australia

My 12- year- old Jane Eyre, Gone with the Wind, loving daughter, pretty much had to drag me to this movie. I find that it’s a rare film that needs to be over two hours. I was concerned about the mediocre reviews and the fact that it was directed by Baz Luhrmann, of the over-the-top and irreverent Moulin Rouge. Australia has been criticized for being overstuffed, corny, shallow and old fashioned. In retrospect, I find these descriptions accurate, but in a good way.

From the first scenes showing the majestic and somber landscape of the Australian outback, to the end, the movie unapologetically makes and fulfills it’s promise to the audience of being derivative of a Golden Age Hollywood epic. Predictable? Yes, but so were Gone with Wind and The Sound of Music, and The Wizard of Oz. All of the elements which made me love these movies and want to see them again and again are here: Lip-locking, bomb-dropping, a pleasing mix of handsome and diabolical characters, big-eyed children and the larger context of looming world change.

There was enough going on that we didn’t want a plot that turned too wide or a character drawn too deep. We confidently suspended ourselves in Luhrmann’s able hands to be swept away in his fantastical vision that included nary a superhero for almost three hours. There were no Juno type “issues” to consider and discuss afterwards; we didn’t get to know any of the main characters better than we wanted to on a Saturday afternoon. And I didn’t have to cover M’s ears or eyes once.

Brandon Walters, plays the young boy, Nullah, an old-souled “cremey”, who is half white and half Aboriginal and therefore at constant risk of being whisked away and sold into slavery. His wide- eyed, knobby-kneed beauty and manifestation of Aboriginal magic and mystery facilitate the film’s most poignant emotional chords. He literally “sings” Lady Ashley to him which reminded me of one of our other favorite family-appropriate films of the past year, August Rush. Apparently, I’m a soft touch for this particular type of movie manipulation.

Nicole Kidman’s performance as Lady Ashley was mesmerizing – just what the fictional elements of the story demanded – an old world performance where we’re not supposed to want to be her best friend. She’s on the silver screen and we’re not. She hangs on a wall in a museum and we come to see. She seems to know the movie isn’t about her. Hugh Jackman as Drover, the cattle handler who is thrown with Lady Ashley, brings a light, slightly comic yet, vulnerable swagger, balancing Kidman’s iciness in perfect measure.

We laughed, we cried; we ate too much popcorn. What else could Hollywood or women want?

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