I frowned at my sister. We were standing in front of the ticket booth in Glorietta, trying to decide what flick to see when we chose to drop by the cinema on impulse. After all, we had both been itching to watch a decent movie for the past three weeks in order to block out the recurring images of Tanging Ina in our heads but our weekends were always full.
"Noooo!" I protested. The last three weeks have been really artery-stretching in terms of stress and this particular Saturday was no exception, especially when you get called on to recite with absolutely nothing in your hands except the warm, smooth feel of the surface of a wooden desk in contrast to your cold, clammy palms.
Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman both headline Baz Luhrmann's Australia. The title is practically a give away if the actors don't do the job. Nicole Kidman is Lady Sarah Ashley, an English aristocrat as formal as her thoroughbreds. Her husband owns and manages a cattle ranch calle Faraway Downs in the Land Down Under. She flies to Australia to be with Lord Ashley and is met by Drover (Jackman), a man who works for her husband in the ranch on a commission basis and vaguely reminds me of a buffer, way better looking version of Aragorn. After enduring a long, dusty ride through Australia's unforgiving terrain (where she has her first brush with a kangaroo both in action and in death), she finds her lifeless husband lying on the kitchen table in Faraway Downs, allegedly skewered with a spear by an aborigine nicknamed "King George." Sarah is introduced to the hired help in Faraway Downs - among them an alcoholic accountant, an Asian cook, an aborigine woman and her daughter and Faraway Downs' cattle manager named Fletcher (David Wenham of The Lord of the Rings, 300). Fletcher has apparently fathered a child with the aborigine woman's daughter, an intelligent little boy named Nullah who is actually the grandson of "King George." Nullah is labelled by the Caucasians as one of the "creams," a derogatory term used to refer to the "stolen generations," a growing population of children of aborigine women sired by white men. Such children are usually taken away from their mothers and brought to "mission centers" where they supposedly are educated and cared for.
Through Nullah's stories, Sarah discovers that Fletcher also works for Carney (Bryan Brown of The Thornbirds), her husband's rival in the cattle business and Australia's biggest supplier of beef. Fletcher had been secretly transporting some of the cattle to Carney's ranch and had also tricked Lord Ashley to believe that Faraway Downs was operating at a loss. She fires Fletcher but is left with no one to help her with the cattle. To bring in money for Faraway Downs, she has to deliver the cattle to Darwin for loading to a ship. She turns to Drover who, at first, turns her down as he supposedly hates being tied down to anything or anyone. But then a man can change his mind when the price is right...which, in this case, came in the form of Sarah's prized capricorn.
After journeying through the desert with a lot of setbacks in the form of bushfires, stampedes and poisoned water courtesy of Fletcher's sinister mind, Sarah manages to make her delivery. Throughout her ordeal, she forms an extraordinarily strong bond with Nullah and falls in love with Drover (come on, who wouldn't?). She seems to have settled in Faraway Downs in an almost idyllic, slow mo-perfect fairytale ending with the flowers and the white-washed house but Fletcher persistenyly snaps at their heels as he schemes to acquire the cattle ranch. As if that were enough and with the second world war brewing above their heads like the dust in the Australian outback, Sarah realizes she could be losing more than just Faraway Downs as Nullah yearns to be with his grandfather to learn his heritage through a coming-of-age ceremony called a walkabout and Drover still battles with commitment and settling down. And, as they say, commitment used to be the good guy.
Clocking in at almost 3 hours, Australia is not a pain to watch. The storyline was, for starters, pretty simple and straightforward. With the brain functions set aside, it was relatively easy to be swept away with the film, thanks to its epic-like appeal and old Hollywood glamour. As usual, Baz Luhrmann did not disappoint. Australia stands out like a white dress in a rack of red when compared to his earlier works as it actually attempts to be normal in the sense that there is a near-absence of Luhrmann's theatrics and exaggeration. But Luhrmann still manages to be grand and ostentatious despite the seeming normalcy with his breathtaking cinematography which he perfectly couples with his signature slow-mos and close-ups. The action, drama and romance are all so real, I almost felt like I were part of the movie. I loved his shots of the horses whipping up dust in the outback as they ran around Faraway Downs, the shots of of Sarah, Drover and company as they steered the cattle through the outback, the aerial shots of the cattle stampede during the bushfire in the cliff and the last shot toward the end of the film where Drover's small boat with the white sails carrying the half-aborigine, half-Caucasian children cuts through thick smoke and a mass of charred ships. To really hit the nail on the head, the cinematic experience of watching Austrlia is further enhanced by a rich musical score punctuated by occasional aborigine chanting, giving the film that swell that comes with the approach of the tide.
Nicole Kidman is engaging as Sarah. One notes her character's subtle development as she starts off as a distant, well-bred aristocrat thrust into the wild, untamed world of the Australian outback and later evolves into a woman who finds her own strength but never loses her heart. The first half or so of the movie is bursting with her seeming endless supply of faux pas as she glares and gloats at Jackman, sings a jumbled, operetta version of "Over the Rainbow" in terms of both lyrics and notes and attempts to do telekinesis on cows. What I love about her character is that she is not melodramatic. She is deeply hurt when Drover walks out of her life and is heartbroken when Nullah is taken away from her and yet she remains in complete control of herself and her pain. I was so thankful she didn't hurl herself at pillows or pound at the wall like a human hammer.
The runaway scene stealer though was Nullah (Brandon Walters). He had beautiful, soulful eyes which lent Nullah sensitivity, intelligence and a dash of mischievousness every now and then. To me, Nullah's character was a pillar in the movie as a spine is to a book. His mixed heritage pretty much indicated how he both belonged to the country of his ancestors and the new world which the Caucasian settlers brought with them. He loved his aboriginal predecessors but also shared a strong bond with Sarah and Drover. Among all the characters in the movie, he had the best lines, the most memorable being "I'll sing you to me" which always left me feeling like I was shot in the heart or something.
Addendum: The song which plays as the credits roll in the end is really nice. It's called "By the Boab Tree" by Angela Little.
No comments:
Post a Comment