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Spoilers for the first film.
XVII: Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008)
I was a decreasing fan of the Red Curtain trilogy - the hyperreality of Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!. In all three there is a tension between material and its treatment - the overblown emotions of competitive dance and two doomed loved stories where we know the ending from the start. Perhaps it's even worth the price of admission alone for Jim Broadbent singing "Like a Virgin". Whilst it's too much to say the films weren't political, there was no clear political exploration.
Australia, however, purports to be about racism and the stolen generations: the aboriginal-white children taken into care by the Australian governments right up to 1973. This is a live issue - treatred in part in The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith in terms of interracial identities, and I understand in Rabbit Proof Fence which I still haven't seen. Kevin Rudd offered a formal apology in 2008. Is this then a suitable means of exploring Australian institutional racism - a magpie postmodernism, never able to plays something straight when camp is available?
The central child, Nullah (Brandon Walters) is allowed to narrate, although obviously he is not present for chunks of the story which are then interwoven with hers. We see a cartoonish depiction of life in England as Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) sets off on the eve of war to Australia, complete with ballooning maps and dotted lines. Her arrival in the Faraway Downs settlement coincides with the murder of her husband, allegedly at the hands of an aboriginal, King George (David Gulpilil, from Walkabout), but more likely at the hands of one of the men of their rival, the moustache twitching King Carney (Bryan Brown). Lady Sarah wants to drive her cattle across land to Darwin to supply the army, and break Carney's monopoly - so the first half of this Australian Gone With the Wind is presumably a version of The Overlanders. She enlists the help of the gruff, tough and buff drover (Hugh Jackman), who takes on the thankless task.
As Clive James pointed out last night, each of the 50,000 cattle have their own close up, and it is a relief in the second half of the film when the Japanese get around to bombing Darwin. Lady Sarah was not exactly a grieving widow, but comes on screen like a Cruella De Ville - well, like a Mrs Coulter - and then suddenly becomes a romantic if tough-cookie heroine. Why establish her as a lady if the protocols are so easily tossed aside?
So the two retire to Faraway Downs with Nullah as adoptive son, but an argument over Nullah going walkabout slits them up. Nullah is caught and deported to a church home for foundlings, and King George is arrested. The Japanese strike, and the Drover goes to rescue his "son". The ending is the requisite happy one - tinged with cultural correctness as Nullah is allowed to go. Is Elgar's Nimrod really the right piece of music to play here? It's awfully, awfully English in its associations - although perhaps something more didgeridoo based would seem like a cliche.
I have to say that this film had some of the worst special effects I've seen in a long time - clearly the cattle were augmented, as were parts of the settlements, but the warships off Darwin were about as convincing as Hitchcock's backdrops in Marnie. The rendered objects clearly sat on their backgrounds. I think it makes sense in the heart of a postmodern ironic love story - white English rose tames the drover, tough drover shows English rose reality - but it was all too distracting in a film that at least aspired to explore racism. Every character was a cliche, or a stereotype (an archetype if you will), everyone was overacting. It's just too much.
And not enough.
Wait for the DVD.
XVIII: Interstate 60 (Bob Gale, 2002)
A film which I'm not clear why I put on my rental list - the debut feature of Gale, the author of 1941 and Back to the Future and outings for Gary Oldman, Chris Cooper, maybe even James Marsden.
Mixed-up rich kid Neil Oliver (Marsden) doesn't want to be a lawyer and is sent to deliver a package by the mysterious Ray (Christopher Lloyd). En route he picks up the even more mysterious O.W. Grant (Oldman, who should do more comedy), who grants wishes to people. The bulk of the film is then a series of cameos - a town where drugs are legalised, a town entirely of lawyers, and an encounter with a killer on the run. The non-existent Interstate 60 is at right angles to reality, where dreams can come truw. There's a also a girl (Amy Smart) to be won, of course. Undemanding but amusing road movie cousin to Eerie, Indiana.
Totals: 18 - Cinema: 5; DVD: 13; Television: 0
XVII: Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008)
I was a decreasing fan of the Red Curtain trilogy - the hyperreality of Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!. In all three there is a tension between material and its treatment - the overblown emotions of competitive dance and two doomed loved stories where we know the ending from the start. Perhaps it's even worth the price of admission alone for Jim Broadbent singing "Like a Virgin". Whilst it's too much to say the films weren't political, there was no clear political exploration.
Australia, however, purports to be about racism and the stolen generations: the aboriginal-white children taken into care by the Australian governments right up to 1973. This is a live issue - treatred in part in The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith in terms of interracial identities, and I understand in Rabbit Proof Fence which I still haven't seen. Kevin Rudd offered a formal apology in 2008. Is this then a suitable means of exploring Australian institutional racism - a magpie postmodernism, never able to plays something straight when camp is available?
The central child, Nullah (Brandon Walters) is allowed to narrate, although obviously he is not present for chunks of the story which are then interwoven with hers. We see a cartoonish depiction of life in England as Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) sets off on the eve of war to Australia, complete with ballooning maps and dotted lines. Her arrival in the Faraway Downs settlement coincides with the murder of her husband, allegedly at the hands of an aboriginal, King George (David Gulpilil, from Walkabout), but more likely at the hands of one of the men of their rival, the moustache twitching King Carney (Bryan Brown). Lady Sarah wants to drive her cattle across land to Darwin to supply the army, and break Carney's monopoly - so the first half of this Australian Gone With the Wind is presumably a version of The Overlanders. She enlists the help of the gruff, tough and buff drover (Hugh Jackman), who takes on the thankless task.
As Clive James pointed out last night, each of the 50,000 cattle have their own close up, and it is a relief in the second half of the film when the Japanese get around to bombing Darwin. Lady Sarah was not exactly a grieving widow, but comes on screen like a Cruella De Ville - well, like a Mrs Coulter - and then suddenly becomes a romantic if tough-cookie heroine. Why establish her as a lady if the protocols are so easily tossed aside?
So the two retire to Faraway Downs with Nullah as adoptive son, but an argument over Nullah going walkabout slits them up. Nullah is caught and deported to a church home for foundlings, and King George is arrested. The Japanese strike, and the Drover goes to rescue his "son". The ending is the requisite happy one - tinged with cultural correctness as Nullah is allowed to go. Is Elgar's Nimrod really the right piece of music to play here? It's awfully, awfully English in its associations - although perhaps something more didgeridoo based would seem like a cliche.
I have to say that this film had some of the worst special effects I've seen in a long time - clearly the cattle were augmented, as were parts of the settlements, but the warships off Darwin were about as convincing as Hitchcock's backdrops in Marnie. The rendered objects clearly sat on their backgrounds. I think it makes sense in the heart of a postmodern ironic love story - white English rose tames the drover, tough drover shows English rose reality - but it was all too distracting in a film that at least aspired to explore racism. Every character was a cliche, or a stereotype (an archetype if you will), everyone was overacting. It's just too much.
And not enough.
Wait for the DVD.
XVIII: Interstate 60 (Bob Gale, 2002)
A film which I'm not clear why I put on my rental list - the debut feature of Gale, the author of 1941 and Back to the Future and outings for Gary Oldman, Chris Cooper, maybe even James Marsden.
Mixed-up rich kid Neil Oliver (Marsden) doesn't want to be a lawyer and is sent to deliver a package by the mysterious Ray (Christopher Lloyd). En route he picks up the even more mysterious O.W. Grant (Oldman, who should do more comedy), who grants wishes to people. The bulk of the film is then a series of cameos - a town where drugs are legalised, a town entirely of lawyers, and an encounter with a killer on the run. The non-existent Interstate 60 is at right angles to reality, where dreams can come truw. There's a also a girl (Amy Smart) to be won, of course. Undemanding but amusing road movie cousin to Eerie, Indiana.
Totals: 18 - Cinema: 5; DVD: 13; Television: 0
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