Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

The films of Baz Luhrmann (STRICLTY BALLROOM, ROMEO AND JULIET, MOULIN ROUGE) continue to get bigger and grander in both scale and visionary prowess. I think it's fair to say that no other director working today mounts the kind of massive exercises in Big Film-making that Luhrmann does. His latest, AUSTRALIA, feels like three movies packed into one enormous undertaking, and somehow he manages to do justice by all of its many plots and subplots, primary and supporting characters, large and small emotional moments. In an unfortunate turn resulting from a collective attention deficit disorder, many of today's movie-going audiences have become resistant to epic films, but Luhrmann reminds us how to piece one together and make the experience not just enjoyable but damn near transcendent (most of the time). In the end, it doesn't really matter if Luhrmann is making the Australian equivalent to GONE WITH THE WIND or LAWRENCE OF ARABIA or RED RIVER or even PEARL HARBOR, AUSTRALIA fills every inch of the screen with something magnificent, and while the story isn't always compelling 100 percent of the time, it's still nothing short of a treat to watch such an excellent filmmaker get a chance to stretch his visionary wings and really tell a story with no restrictions of size or scope. There are few directors I'd want to see do something that expansive, but Luhrmann is definitely one of them.

I wasn't kidding when I said there are three films packed into this one. The film has fairly clear break points in its two-hour 45-minute running time. The first story is a plain and simple Western, set during Australia's early involvement in World War II, featuring Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), a fish-out-of-water English aristocrat, who arrives in the outback to meet her cattle-driving husband only to find he's been killed just before she arrives. The locals all believe that the native Aborigines have slaughtered him, but most suspect this might not be the case. The Ashley cattle must be driven from their land to the docks at Darwin, where army ships await them for wartime meal rations. Lord Ashley had a contract with the army, but rival cattle rancher King Carney (Bryan Brown) and his devious right-hand man Neil Fletcher (David Wenham, Faramir from Lord of the Rings and the one-eyed Dilios from 300) have been systematically stealing unbranded cattle from Ashley and making it generally impossible for them to drive the cattle the long route to the seaside. Hugh Jackman plays Drover, a sweaty cowboy who earns a living driving cattle and spent many of his earlier years living among the Aborigine. Lady Ashley hires him to pull together just enough people to move the cattle, and thus our story begins.

But AUSTRALIA is also the story of a young mixed-race boy named Nullah (newcomer Brandon Walters), who lives on the Ashley's ranch and whose mother works as a housekeeper for the family. In fact, Nullah is our narrator and the movie is as much his story of growing up amidst these extraordinary events, attempting to stay true to his roots while still living in the world of the whites. His grandfather is a magic-man called King George (David Gulpilil, from WALKABOUT, RABBIT PROOF FENCE and the recent TEN CANOES), who is suspected by some of killing Lord Ashley. Luhrmann lives as much in George's mystical world filled with incantations and walkabouts as he does in the very real world of the whites that inhabit this land. One of the film's many subplot involves the nation's practice of removing half-caste children from their homes and putting them in missions where they can learn Western ways and eventually, as one character puts it, "have the black bred out of them." It's a deplorable practice, to be sure, but this particular story point seems a bit forcibly wedged into the movie.

After the cattle drive, Luhrmann concerns himself with a love story between Drover and Lady Ashley. When the rain comes and the land turns green, Drover runs the place like the man of the house, but when the seasons change, he leaves for six-month stretches to do what he was raised to do — drive cattle and break horses. But with war coming, Australia is destined to get pulled into the conflict due to its proximity to Japan and its allegiance to Great Britain. The sequence in which Japan does invade is merciless and phenomenal to watch unfold, especially when you realize that the first target of the Japanese planes is the small island where the mixed-race children are being housed.

Because of the film's emphasis on race relations and the shameless treatment of these children, the comparisons between AUSTRALIA and GONE WITH THE WIND make the most sense. Luhrmann goes almost too far out of his way to comment on the unenviable position the Aborigine people were in at the time (not that their world got much better any time soon after WWII), but if that nation's preeminent filmmaker doesn't address the issue in a film of this scale, it's unlikely anyone else will. The problems I had with AUSTRALIA were fairly minor. When we first meet Lady Ashley, Kidman plays here a bit too prim and proper, almost to the point of being unbearable to watch. But once she gets into the swing of things on the ranch and begins the cattle drive, she's much more fun to watch dive into this character. Along those same, over-the-top lines, Wenham's evil Fletcher portrayal is far too mustache-twisting-bad-guy obvious. And even when we get a limp attempt at a psychological explanation for Fletcher's deep-seated resentment of those better off than himself, it doesn't ring true and eats up unnecessary time in an already lengthy endeavor.

But Jackman and Kidman are pretty damned exciting to watch, and Luhrmann keeps things moving along, as well he should. There are some truly spectacular set pieces, including a bull stampede on a cliff's edge and the aforementioned Japanese attack on Darwin. But where the film really shines is in capturing the pulse of a nation during a time of one of its greatest transformations and transitions. AUSTRALIA isn't meant to feel completely real and authentic. There's certainly a surreal quality to the work, the way there is in all of Luhrmann's films. The Aborigine spiritualism is the primary source of this other-worldly vibe, but it's not the only source. And Jackman and Kidman have a strong enough collective presence to make it all seem believable and exciting. This film is unabashedly romantic, passionate and spiritual. If you consider these bad words, stay the hell away from AUSTRALIA. But if you want to be truly swept away by a film, this is the clear choice.

-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com