Australia - a long but unspoilery review
Dec. 3rd, 2008 12:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieOh my goodness!
I just got back from Baz Luhrman's magnum opus Australia and I am breathless, hormonal and in need of a cigarette (if I smoked, that is - cake will have to do).
I love.
Oddly enough, I can completely understand why this movie split the critics completely down the middle - it is a bit too long (but I am puzzed as to what to cut out) and, more importantly, this is an incredibly old-fashioned movie: not just a homage (the way Moulin Rouge was to a musical and Bollywood), but an honest-to-goodness old-fashioned epic. This is a movie that could have been made thirty, fifty, or even seventy years ago and you could drop it back then, barring the lovemaking scene or the awareness of the aboriginal issues, and it would work perfectly. Clark Gable as the Drover and Myrna Loy as Lady Sarah and we are set! I love those classic movies and so this was just a huge, huge pleasure but if you are used to ironic, overelaborately plotted/dialogued movies, you will be at a loss.
Another thing that this movie made me think of (probably because I've been thinking of silent movies today) is that Baz is the most "silent movie" director working today. His movies are not about dialogue, never about dialogue but the purity of images. Even in movies where words are ostensibly important: the joy of song in Moulin Rouge, or Shakespeare's gorgeous poetry in R&J, the main thing that drives his movies is always purely visual. You could almost make them silent with title intercards. Take out dialogue (and replace it with a soundtrack) and the core magic remains - the images. In this movie what sticks with me is not the dialogue (though it's fine enough) or even the plot (though it's quite good) but the images: the sheer sweeping red vistas of the Northern Territory, Nullah and his Mother floundering among water in the tank, Lady Sarah in her red dress striding through the crowd, the tight close-ups of the Drover weeping about his loss at the bar, the herd of cattle running towards the cliff, the Japanese planes swooping low...images, images. I wish I had this movie to screencap already! It's one of the most gorgeous things I have seen.
In a way, Luhrman's strength is also his weakness. His strength is not social commentary but that almost unique ability to capture the hothouse of that passion, that first emotion that makes you feel as you will die if you don't have that person you love right now. He tries to address the social issues and he doesn't do it badly or anything, but in comparison with the power of his visuals or the almost primal tug of the love story, it pales. When the movie tries to address social issues (i.e. the Stolen Generation) I found my attention wandering. Maybe I am just a curmudgeon but movie children are almost never my thing and I was pretty bored with the character of Nullah.I didn't pay my $10 to watch a little kid mangle English and run around - I paid it to see Kidman and Jackson sex it up. Though if a movie child is the price I have to pay for a shirtless or weeping Hugh Jackman - I'll deal.
Because yes - what worked the most for me in the movie, in addition to the sheer power of images, was that tug between Lady Sarah and the Drover. Kidman and Jackman have purely incredible chemistry - I found myself almost forgetting to breathe when they are on screen together(side note: I have never got what ladies saw in Hugh Jackman before but oh boy do I get it now!). The scenes that stay with me are all about their longing or fulfillment - the scene in the bush when she is tipsy and tries to teach him to dance and they stumble and he leans in as if he can't help it and I thought I the viewer would die if they did not kiss right then and there and the release when the did was almost visceral. Or when they talk about their past, or the scene at the ball, or in the rain, or the love-making scene (which is just so sexy it reminds me what you can do without showing nipples or crotches if you know what you are doing), or the scene when he looks for her after the Darwin bombing.
The bottom line: it's a flawed movie but a gorgeous and romantic one (and surprisingly and on-purpose-funny in parts), so I highly recommend.
A parting image..."Down Under" has a whole new meaning to me now :)
I just got back from Baz Luhrman's magnum opus Australia and I am breathless, hormonal and in need of a cigarette (if I smoked, that is - cake will have to do).
I love.
Oddly enough, I can completely understand why this movie split the critics completely down the middle - it is a bit too long (but I am puzzed as to what to cut out) and, more importantly, this is an incredibly old-fashioned movie: not just a homage (the way Moulin Rouge was to a musical and Bollywood), but an honest-to-goodness old-fashioned epic. This is a movie that could have been made thirty, fifty, or even seventy years ago and you could drop it back then, barring the lovemaking scene or the awareness of the aboriginal issues, and it would work perfectly. Clark Gable as the Drover and Myrna Loy as Lady Sarah and we are set! I love those classic movies and so this was just a huge, huge pleasure but if you are used to ironic, overelaborately plotted/dialogued movies, you will be at a loss.
Another thing that this movie made me think of (probably because I've been thinking of silent movies today) is that Baz is the most "silent movie" director working today. His movies are not about dialogue, never about dialogue but the purity of images. Even in movies where words are ostensibly important: the joy of song in Moulin Rouge, or Shakespeare's gorgeous poetry in R&J, the main thing that drives his movies is always purely visual. You could almost make them silent with title intercards. Take out dialogue (and replace it with a soundtrack) and the core magic remains - the images. In this movie what sticks with me is not the dialogue (though it's fine enough) or even the plot (though it's quite good) but the images: the sheer sweeping red vistas of the Northern Territory, Nullah and his Mother floundering among water in the tank, Lady Sarah in her red dress striding through the crowd, the tight close-ups of the Drover weeping about his loss at the bar, the herd of cattle running towards the cliff, the Japanese planes swooping low...images, images. I wish I had this movie to screencap already! It's one of the most gorgeous things I have seen.
In a way, Luhrman's strength is also his weakness. His strength is not social commentary but that almost unique ability to capture the hothouse of that passion, that first emotion that makes you feel as you will die if you don't have that person you love right now. He tries to address the social issues and he doesn't do it badly or anything, but in comparison with the power of his visuals or the almost primal tug of the love story, it pales. When the movie tries to address social issues (i.e. the Stolen Generation) I found my attention wandering. Maybe I am just a curmudgeon but movie children are almost never my thing and I was pretty bored with the character of Nullah.
Because yes - what worked the most for me in the movie, in addition to the sheer power of images, was that tug between Lady Sarah and the Drover. Kidman and Jackman have purely incredible chemistry - I found myself almost forgetting to breathe when they are on screen together(side note: I have never got what ladies saw in Hugh Jackman before but oh boy do I get it now!). The scenes that stay with me are all about their longing or fulfillment - the scene in the bush when she is tipsy and tries to teach him to dance and they stumble and he leans in as if he can't help it and I thought I the viewer would die if they did not kiss right then and there and the release when the did was almost visceral. Or when they talk about their past, or the scene at the ball, or in the rain, or the love-making scene (which is just so sexy it reminds me what you can do without showing nipples or crotches if you know what you are doing), or the scene when he looks for her after the Darwin bombing.
The bottom line: it's a flawed movie but a gorgeous and romantic one (and surprisingly and on-purpose-funny in parts), so I highly recommend.
A parting image..."Down Under" has a whole new meaning to me now :)
