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Australia (2008 film)
Encyclopedia
Australia is a 2008 epic historical romance film
directed by Baz Luhrmann
and starring Nicole Kidman
and Hugh Jackman
. It is the second-highest grossing Australia
n film of all time, behind Crocodile Dundee. The screenplay was written by Luhrmann and screenwriter Stuart Beattie
, with Ronald Harwood
. The film is a character
story, set between 1939 and 1942 against a dramatised backdrop of events across northern Australia at the time, such as the bombing of Darwin during World War II
. Production took place in Sydney
, Darwin
, Kununurra
, and Bowen
. The movie was released in both Australia and the United States on 26 November 2008, with subsequent worldwide release dates throughout late December 2008 and January and February 2009.
) travels from England
to northern Australia
to force her philandering husband to sell his faltering cattle station
, Faraway Downs. Her husband sends an independent cattle drover
(Hugh Jackman
), called "Drover", to transport her to Faraway Downs.
Lady Sarah's husband is murdered shortly before she arrives, and the authorities tell her that the killer is an Aboriginal elder, "King George" (David Gulpilil
). Meanwhile, cattle station manager Neil Fletcher (David Wenham
) is trying to gain control of Faraway Downs, so that Lesley 'King' Carney (Bryan Brown
) will have a complete cattle monopoly, giving him negotiating leverage with an Australian army officer, Captain Dutton (Ben Mendelsohn
).
The childless Lady Sarah is captivated by the boy Nullah (Brandon Walters
), who has an Aboriginal
mother and a white father. Nullah tells her that he has seen her cattle being driven onto Carney's land — in other words, stolen from her. Because of this Fletcher mistreats Nullah and threatens him and his mother, so Lady Sarah fires Fletcher and decides to try and run the cattle station herself. When Nullah and his mother hide from the authorities in a water tower, his mother drowns. Lady Sarah comforts Nullah by singing the song "Over the Rainbow
" from the film The Wizard of Oz
. Nullah tells her that "King George" is his grandfather, and that like the Wizard, he too is a "magic man".
Lady Sarah persuades Drover to take the cattle to Darwin for sale. Drover is friendly with the Aborigines, and therefore shunned by many of the other whites in the territory. It is revealed that he was married to an Aboriginal woman, who died after being refused medical treatment in a hospital because of her race. Lady Sarah also reveals she is barren.
Drover leads a team of six other riders, including Lady Sarah, Drover's Aboriginal brother-in-law Magarri (David Ngoombujarra
), Nullah, and the station's accountant Kipling Flynn (Jack Thompson
), to drive the 1,500 cattle to Darwin. They encounter various obstacles along the way, including a fire set by Carney's men that scares the cattle, resulting in the death of Flynn when the group tries to stop the cattle from stampeding over a cliff. Lady Sarah and Drover fall in love, and she gains a new appreciation for the Australian territory. The team drive the cattle through the dangerous Never Never
desert. Then, when at last delivering the cattle in Darwin, the group has to race them onto the ship before Carney's cattle are loaded.
Afterwards, Lady Sarah, Nullah, and Drover live together happily at Faraway Downs for two years. Meanwhile, Fletcher kills Carney, marries his daughter Cath Carney, takes over Carney's cattle empire, and continues to menace Lady Sarah. It is established that Fletcher was the actual murderer of Lady Sarah's husband, and is also Nullah's father.
Nullah is drawn to perform a walkabout
with his grandfather "King George", but is instead taken by the authorities and sent to live on Mission Island with the other half-Aboriginal children (dubbed the "Stolen Generations"). Lady Sarah, who has come to regard Nullah as her adopted son, vows to rescue him. Meanwhile, she works as a radio operator in Darwin during the escalation of World War II
. When the Japanese attack the island and Darwin in 1942, Lady Sarah fears that Nullah has been killed.
Drover, who had quarrelled with Lady Sarah and left, returns to Darwin and hears (mistakenly) that she has been killed in the bombing. Drover learns of Nullah's abduction to Mission Island, and goes with Magarri and a young priest to rescue him and the other children. Meanwhile, Lady Sarah is about to evacuate, but when Drover and the children sail back into port at Darwin, and Nullah plays "Over the Rainbow" on his harmonica, Lady Sarah hears the music and the three are reunited.
Fletcher, distraught at the ruination of his plans, attempts to shoot Nullah, but is speared by King George and falls dead. Lady Sarah, Drover, and Nullah return to the safety of remote Faraway Downs. There, King George calls for Nullah, who returns to the Outback with his grandfather.
/E.Y. Harburg song "Over the Rainbow
" from The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
. The song bonds Lady Sarah and Nullah, and relates to the Aboriginal
concepts of Rainbow Serpent
, songlines
, Dreamtime
, and "magic men" like Nullah's grandfather and Nullah himself. In a scene set in October 1939, Nullah is seen raptly watching Oz in a Darwin cinema.
Bach
's aria "Schafe können sicher weiden ("Sheep may safely graze")" from the Hunting Cantata
BWV 208 is another recurring motif in the film.
Although the Wizard Of Oz was not released in Australia until 18 April 1940, in the movie it said they were watching it in 1939.
composed the score to Australia. Interpolated musical numbers include the jazz standards "Begin the Beguine
," "Tuxedo Junction
," "Sing Sing Sing (With a Swing)
," and "Brazil
." Edward Elgar
's "Nimrod" from "Enigma" Variations
is heard in the final scene of the film. Luhrmann hired singer Rolf Harris
to record his wobble board
for the opening credits, and Elton John
composed and performed a song called "The Drover's Ballad," to lyrics by Luhrmann, for the end credits. Also used in the end credits is "By the Boab Tree," a song nominated for a 2008 Satellite Award, again with Luhrmann lyrics, performed by Sydney singer Angela Little. Little's rendition of "Waltzing Matilda
" completes the end credits in some versions of the film. The jazz sound track to "Australia" was performed by the Ralph Pyle big band with clarinet solos by Andy Firth.
and Nicole Kidman, with a screenplay by David Hare
. The director had built a studio in the northern Sahara but a rival film
made by Oliver Stone
was released first and after several years in development, Luhrmann abandoned the project to make a film closer to home.
The visual effects were done by the Animal Logic
films and The LaB Sydney.
Luhrmann spent six months researching general Australian history. At one point he considered setting his film during the First Fleet
, 11 ships that sailed from Britain in 1787 and set up the first colony in New South Wales
. The director wanted to explore Australia's relationship with England and with its indigenous population. He decided to set the film between World Wars I and II in order to merge a historical romance with the Stolen Generations, where thousands of mixed-race Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families by the state and integrated into white society. Luhrmann has said that his film depicts "a mythologised Australia".
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In May 2005, Russell Crowe
and Nicole Kidman entered negotiations to star in an untitled 20th Century Fox
project written by director Baz Luhrmann and screenwriter Stuart Beattie, with Luhrmann directing the film. For her role, Kidman learned to round up cattle. In May 2006, due to Crowe's demanding personal script approval before signing onto the project, Luhrmann sought to replace the actor with Heath Ledger
. Crowe said he didn't want to work in an environment that was influenced by budgetary needs. About this casting issue, Luhrmann said, "it was hard pinning [Crowe] down. Every time I was ready, Russell was in something else, and every time he was ready, I would be having another turmoil". The following June, Luhrmann replaced Crowe with actor Hugh Jackman.
In January 2007, actors Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, and David Wenham were cast into Australia. In November 2006, Luhrmann began searching for an actor to play an Aboriginal boy of 8–10 years old and by April 2007, 11-year-old Brandon Walters was cast into the role.
The untitled project was scheduled to begin production in September 2006, but scheduling conflicts and budget issues postponed the start of production to February 2007. In November 2006, Luhrmann explored The Kimberley to determine the amount of production to be shot there. In December 2006, Bowen
was chosen as a filming location for a third of the production, portraying the look of Darwin. Bowen was chosen as a prospect due to the financing of $500,000 by the Queensland government. In April, Kununurra
was chosen as another location for Australia, this time to serve as Faraway Downs, the homestead owned by Kidman's character. Entire sets were built from scratch, including a stand-alone set in the Queensland town of Bowen, the re-creation of war scenes near Darwin Harbour, and the construction of an outback homestead in Western Australia.
-printed Chinese cheongsam or qipao
that was made for Nicole Kidman's character. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design.
Filming in Kununurra was a gruelling experience for the cast and crew with temperatures soaring to 43 °C (109.4 °F) which, one day, caused Kidman to faint while on a horse. In addition, she worked 14 and 15-hour days while dealing with morning sickness. While shooting in a remote region of Western Australia, the shoot had to be rescheduled when the Faraway Downs set, the homestead central to the film's story, was reduced to mud from torrential rain – the first in 50 years. The cast and crew went back to Sydney to shoot interior scenes until the expensive set dried out. In addition, at one point, the entire country's horses were in lock down over equine flu.
Filming lasted five months, wrapping up at Fox Studios
, Sydney, on 19 December 2007. In late April, Luhrmann titled his project Australia. Two other titles that he considered for the film had been Great Southern Land and Faraway Downs. On 11 August 2008, eight months after filming wrapped, several members of the cast and crew were back at Fox Studios, Sydney, to film pick up shots.
, which dedicated an entire episode of the program to the film, and Fox Co-Chairman Tom Rothman spoke to the Los Angeles Times
where he described the Telegraph article as "patently nonsensical. It's all too typical of the way the world works today that everybody picked up an unsourced, anonymous quote-filled story in a tabloid from Sydney and nobody ever bothered to check to see if it was accurate". Rothman also said that Luhrmann had final cut on his film. The director admitted that he wrote six endings in the drafts he authored, and shot three of them.
spent $1 million on a campaign linked with the release of Australia in the United States, Canada, Japan, Europe and South Korea that ties in with an international Tourism Australia plan. Concerned about the recession and fluctuating international fuel prices, the tourism industry hoped that Luhrmann's film would deliver visitors from all over the world in the same kind of numbers that came to the country following the 1986 release of Crocodile Dundee
, and follow the significant increase in visitors to New Zealand
since 2001 after the release of the Lord of the Rings
films. Federal Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson said, "This movie will potentially be seen by tens of millions of people, and it will bring life to little-known aspects of Australia's extraordinary natural environment, history and indigenous culture". Tourism Australia worked with Luhrmann and 20th Century Fox on a publicity campaign titled, "See the Movie, See the Country", based on movie maps
and location guides, to transform the film into "a real-life travel adventure". In addition, the director made a $50 million series of commercials promoting the country.
reported that as of 4 October 2010, 55% of critics gave the film a positive write-up, based upon a sample of 199, with an average
score of 5.9/10. The site reported that the consensus was that while the film features "lavish vistas" and "impeccable production," it suffers due to its "lack of originality" and "thinly-drawn characters." At Metacritic
, which assigns a normalised
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 53, based on 31 reviews, denoting "mixed or average reviews."
Chris Tookey, in his review for the Daily Mail
wrote, "Kidman and Jackman have great sexual chemistry, as well as the glamour of Forties cinema idols." He also rated the film the maximum five stars. The News of the World
followed suit by rating the film with five stars, the reviewer Robie Collin praised the casting and camerawork; "The jaw-dropping, picture postcard camerawork, that will have your eyes scouring each scene for every last delicious detail.The uproarious comic interludes (Nicole’s rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow, and the build-up to it, is one of the best-played comic set pieces of the year)..The magnetic and irksomely handsome Hugh Jackman, the undisputed star of the show."
Claire Sutherland, in her review for the Herald Sun
wrote, "A love letter to the Australian landscape and our history, Australia has international blockbuster written all over it". In his review for The Australian
, David Stratton wrote, "It's not the masterpiece that we were hoping for, but I think you could say that it's a very good film in many ways. While it will be very popular with many people I think there's a slight air of disappointment after it all. Despite its flaws — and it certainly has flaws — I think Australia is an impressive and important film."
Anne Barrowclough of The Times
(United Kingdom) gave the film four out of five stars, and states the film defies expectation and "in what turns out to be a multi-layered story it describes an Australia of the 1940s that is at once compellingly beautiful and breathtakingly cruel".
Megan Lehmann, writing in The Hollywood Reporter
, said that the film "defies all but the most cynical not to get carried away by the force of its grandiose imagery and storytelling", and it is "much less earnest than the trailer suggests, layered with a thin veneer of camp and a nod and a wink to accompany the requisite Aussie clichés", and the bottom line is "In epic style, Baz Luhrmann weaves his wizardry on Oz".
Roger Ebert
gave the film 3 stars out of 4, noting "Baz Luhrmann dreamed of making the Australian Gone With the Wind
, and so he has, with much of that film's lush epic beauty and some of the same awkwardness with a national legacy of racism".
David Ansen
, in his review for Newsweek
, wrote, "Kidman seems to blossom under Luhrmann's direction: she's funny, warm and charming, and the erotic charge between her and the gruff, hunky Jackman is delicious. In a solemn season, Australias bold, kitschy, unapologetic artifice is a welcome respite".
In her review for the New York Times, Manohla Dargis
wrote, "this creation story about modern Australia is a testament to movie love at its most devout, cinematic spectacle at its most extreme, and kitsch as an act of aesthetic communion".
Writing for The Age
, Jim Schembri had problems with the length of the film: "The film is fine, and never boring but, boy, is it overlong. At a mammoth 165 minutes it feels too much like a work-in-progress. There is a lot of narrative flab and longueurs in the first two hours and the film often has the pace of a steamroller with engine trouble".
Andrew Sarris
, in his review for the New York Observer
, wrote, "Australia is clearly a labor of love, and a matter of national pride. It is also a bit of a mess. I must confess that I might have been harder on Mr Luhrmann's film if I had not remained entranced by Ms Kidman ever since I first saw her in Phillip Noyce
's Dead Calm
in 1989; in my opinion, she has lost none of her luster in the 20 years since".
In his review for Time
, Richard Schickel
wrote, "Have you seen everything Australia has on offer a dozen times before? Sure you have. It's a movie less created by director and co-writer Baz Luhrmann than assembled, Dr Frankenstein-style, from the leftover body parts of earlier movies. Which leaves us asking this question: How come it is so damnably entertaining?"
Ann Hornaday, in her review for the Washington Post, wrote, "A wildly ambitious, luridly indulgent spectacle of romance, action, melodrama and revisionism, Australia is windy, overblown, utterly preposterous and insanely entertaining".
Mark Naglazas of The West Australian
accused positive reviews from News Ltd press outlets of being manipulated by 20th Century Fox
, calling Australia a film of "unrelenting awfulness" that "lurches drunkenly from crazy comedy to Mills and Boonish melodrama in the space of a couple of scenes".
Bonnie Malkin of The Daily Telegraph
stated: "Local critics had worried that the much-anticipated film Australia would present to the world a series of time-honoured Antipodean
clichés. Their fears were well founded".
In her review for Salon.com
, Stephanie Zacharek wrote, "The second half of Australia, Luhrmann's attempt to pull off a wartime weeper, is so aggressively sentimental that it begins to feel more like punishment than pleasure. I left Australia feeling drained and weakened, as if I'd suffered a gradual poisoning at the hands of a mad scientist".
In Australia, the film grossed A$
6.37 million in its opening weekend, setting the record for the highest grossing opening weekend for an Australian film and bumping the latest James Bond
movie Quantum of Solace to second place.
Australia performed less well in the U.S., where it surprised box office analysts by opening only at #5, behind Quantum of Solace, Twilight
, Bolt, and Four Christmases
, and grossed $20 million opening weekend. However, Fox officials were reportedly happy with the numbers, as they said they were expecting only an $18 million opening gross for the movie. They further pointed out that Baz Luhrmann's other films, like Moulin Rouge!
, Strictly Ballroom
, and Romeo + Juliet, started slowly and then built momentum. Australia eventually grossed $49,554,002 in the U.S., 23.4% of its total worldwide gross.
Australia's ticket sales outside of the U.S. are $161,788,219 from 51 countries. It opened at No. 1 in Spain, France, Australia, and Germany, and at No. 3 in Britain. Australia grossed $87,555,757 at the box office in Australia.
The DVD was released in the U.S. on 3 March 2009, opening at #2, and sold 728,000 units in the opening weekend, translating to revenue of $12.3 million. Australia sold almost two million DVDs in one month, 80% of what the studio predicted it would sell altogether. As of 15 November 2009, Australia has sold 1,739,700 units in the U.S., for a revenue of $27.9 million. Since being released in Australia, the DVD has sold double what the studio expected.
Romance film
Romance films are love stories that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate involvement of the main characters and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus...
directed by Baz Luhrmann
Baz Luhrmann
Mark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann is an Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for The Red Curtain Trilogy, which includes his films Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!...
and starring Nicole Kidman
Nicole Kidman
Nicole Mary Kidman, AC is an American-born Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm...
and Hugh Jackman
Hugh Jackman
Hugh Michael Jackman is an Australian actor and producer who is involved in film, musical theatre, and television.Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as action/superhero, period and romance characters...
. It is the second-highest grossing Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n film of all time, behind Crocodile Dundee. The screenplay was written by Luhrmann and screenwriter Stuart Beattie
Stuart Beattie
Stuart Beattie is an Australian screenwriter and film director. He attended Knox Grammar School, in Sydney, Australia, where his mother, Sandra, was a languages teacher, and later Charles Sturt University in Bathurst.-Filmography:...
, with Ronald Harwood
Ronald Harwood
Sir Ronald Harwood CBE is an author, playwright and screenwriter. He is most noted for his plays for the British stage as well as the screenplays for The Dresser and The Pianist, for which he won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay...
. The film is a character
Character (arts)
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
story, set between 1939 and 1942 against a dramatised backdrop of events across northern Australia at the time, such as the bombing of Darwin during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Production took place in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, Darwin
Darwin, Northern Territory
Darwin is the capital city of the Northern Territory, Australia. Situated on the Timor Sea, Darwin has a population of 127,500, making it by far the largest and most populated city in the sparsely populated Northern Territory, but the least populous of all Australia's capital cities...
, Kununurra
Kununurra, Western Australia
Kununurra is a town in far northern Western Australia located at the eastern extremity of the Kimberley Region approximately from the border with the Northern Territory. Kununurra was initiated to service the Ord River Irrigation scheme....
, and Bowen
Bowen, Queensland
Bowen is a town on the eastern coast of Queensland, Australia. At the 2006 census, Bowen had a population of 7,484.-Geography:Bowen is located on the north-east coast of Australia, at exactly twenty degrees south of the equator. In fact, the twentieth parallel crosses the main street...
. The movie was released in both Australia and the United States on 26 November 2008, with subsequent worldwide release dates throughout late December 2008 and January and February 2009.
Plot
In 1939, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole KidmanNicole Kidman
Nicole Mary Kidman, AC is an American-born Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm...
) travels from England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
to northern Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
to force her philandering husband to sell his faltering cattle station
Cattle station
Cattle station is an Australian term for a large farm , whose main activity is the rearing of cattle. In Australia, the owner of a cattle station is called a grazier...
, Faraway Downs. Her husband sends an independent cattle drover
Drover (Australian)
A drover in Australia is a person, typically an experienced stockman, who moves livestock, usually sheep or cattle, "on the hoof" over long distances. Reasons for droving may include: delivering animals to a new owner's property, taking animals to market, or moving animals during a drought in...
(Hugh Jackman
Hugh Jackman
Hugh Michael Jackman is an Australian actor and producer who is involved in film, musical theatre, and television.Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as action/superhero, period and romance characters...
), called "Drover", to transport her to Faraway Downs.
Lady Sarah's husband is murdered shortly before she arrives, and the authorities tell her that the killer is an Aboriginal elder, "King George" (David Gulpilil
David Gulpilil
David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu , is an Indigenous Australian traditional dancer and actor. His first starring role was Walkabout....
). Meanwhile, cattle station manager Neil Fletcher (David Wenham
David Wenham
David Wenham is an Australian actor who has appeared in movies, television series and theatre productions. He is known in Hollywood for his roles as Faramir in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Carl in Van Helsing and Dilios in 300 and Neil Fletcher in Australia...
) is trying to gain control of Faraway Downs, so that Lesley 'King' Carney (Bryan Brown
Bryan Brown
Bryan Neathway Brown, AM is an Australian actor.-Early life:Brown was born in Sydney, the son of John Brown and Molly Brown, a house cleaner who worked as a pianist in the early days of the Langshaw School of Ballet. He grew up in the south-western Sydney suburb of Bankstown and began working at...
) will have a complete cattle monopoly, giving him negotiating leverage with an Australian army officer, Captain Dutton (Ben Mendelsohn
Ben Mendelsohn
Paul Benjamin "Ben" Mendelsohn is an Australian actor.-Early life:Mendelsohn was born in Melbourne, Australia, the son of Carole Ann and Frederick Mendelsohn. He attended Heidelberg Primary School and Banyule High School. His father is a prominent medical researcher who heads the Howard Florey...
).
The childless Lady Sarah is captivated by the boy Nullah (Brandon Walters
Brandon Walters
Brandon Walters is an Indigenous Australian child actor known for his performance as Nullah in the 2008 film Australia.-Life and career:...
), who has an Aboriginal
Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines , also called Aboriginal Australians, from the latin ab originem , are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continentthat is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania...
mother and a white father. Nullah tells her that he has seen her cattle being driven onto Carney's land — in other words, stolen from her. Because of this Fletcher mistreats Nullah and threatens him and his mother, so Lady Sarah fires Fletcher and decides to try and run the cattle station herself. When Nullah and his mother hide from the authorities in a water tower, his mother drowns. Lady Sarah comforts Nullah by singing the song "Over the Rainbow
Over the Rainbow
"Over the Rainbow" is a classic Academy Award-winning ballad song with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg. It was written for the movie The Wizard of Oz, and was sung by Judy Garland in the movie...
" from the film The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
. Nullah tells her that "King George" is his grandfather, and that like the Wizard, he too is a "magic man".
Lady Sarah persuades Drover to take the cattle to Darwin for sale. Drover is friendly with the Aborigines, and therefore shunned by many of the other whites in the territory. It is revealed that he was married to an Aboriginal woman, who died after being refused medical treatment in a hospital because of her race. Lady Sarah also reveals she is barren.
Drover leads a team of six other riders, including Lady Sarah, Drover's Aboriginal brother-in-law Magarri (David Ngoombujarra
David Ngoombujarra
David Ngoombujarra was an Indigenous Australian actor of the Yamatji people. Born David Bernard Starr in Meekatharra, Western Australia, his acting career spanned over two decades from the 1980s to the present; he won three Australian Film Institute Awards...
), Nullah, and the station's accountant Kipling Flynn (Jack Thompson
Jack Thompson (actor)
Jack Thompson, AM is an Australian actor and one of the major figures of Australian cinema. He was educated at University of Queensland, before embarking on his acting career. In 2002, he was made an honorary member of the Australian Cinematographers Society...
), to drive the 1,500 cattle to Darwin. They encounter various obstacles along the way, including a fire set by Carney's men that scares the cattle, resulting in the death of Flynn when the group tries to stop the cattle from stampeding over a cliff. Lady Sarah and Drover fall in love, and she gains a new appreciation for the Australian territory. The team drive the cattle through the dangerous Never Never
Never Never (Australian outback)
The Never Never is the name of a vast, remote area of the Australian Outback, as described in Barcroft Boake's poem "Where the Dead Men Lie":...
desert. Then, when at last delivering the cattle in Darwin, the group has to race them onto the ship before Carney's cattle are loaded.
Afterwards, Lady Sarah, Nullah, and Drover live together happily at Faraway Downs for two years. Meanwhile, Fletcher kills Carney, marries his daughter Cath Carney, takes over Carney's cattle empire, and continues to menace Lady Sarah. It is established that Fletcher was the actual murderer of Lady Sarah's husband, and is also Nullah's father.
Nullah is drawn to perform a walkabout
Walkabout
The walkabout is a purported Australian aboriginal ritual of manhood.Walkabout may also refer to:- Art :*Walkabout , a 1959 book written by James Vance Marshall, set in the Australian outback...
with his grandfather "King George", but is instead taken by the authorities and sent to live on Mission Island with the other half-Aboriginal children (dubbed the "Stolen Generations"). Lady Sarah, who has come to regard Nullah as her adopted son, vows to rescue him. Meanwhile, she works as a radio operator in Darwin during the escalation of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. When the Japanese attack the island and Darwin in 1942, Lady Sarah fears that Nullah has been killed.
Drover, who had quarrelled with Lady Sarah and left, returns to Darwin and hears (mistakenly) that she has been killed in the bombing. Drover learns of Nullah's abduction to Mission Island, and goes with Magarri and a young priest to rescue him and the other children. Meanwhile, Lady Sarah is about to evacuate, but when Drover and the children sail back into port at Darwin, and Nullah plays "Over the Rainbow" on his harmonica, Lady Sarah hears the music and the three are reunited.
Fletcher, distraught at the ruination of his plans, attempts to shoot Nullah, but is speared by King George and falls dead. Lady Sarah, Drover, and Nullah return to the safety of remote Faraway Downs. There, King George calls for Nullah, who returns to the Outback with his grandfather.
Recurring motifs
A recurring motif in the film is the Harold ArlenHarold Arlen
Harold Arlen was an American composer of popular music, having written over 500 songs, a number of which have become known the world over. In addition to composing the songs for The Wizard of Oz, including the classic 1938 song, "Over the Rainbow,” Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the...
/E.Y. Harburg song "Over the Rainbow
Over the Rainbow
"Over the Rainbow" is a classic Academy Award-winning ballad song with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg. It was written for the movie The Wizard of Oz, and was sung by Judy Garland in the movie...
" from The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
. The song bonds Lady Sarah and Nullah, and relates to the Aboriginal
Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines , also called Aboriginal Australians, from the latin ab originem , are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continentthat is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania...
concepts of Rainbow Serpent
Rainbow Serpent
The Rainbow Serpent is a common motif in the art and mythology of Aboriginal Australia. It is named for the snake-like meandering of water across a landscape and the colour spectrum caused when sunlight strikes water at an appropriate angle relative to the observer.The Rainbow Serpent is seen as...
, songlines
Songlines
Songlines, also called Dreaming tracks by Indigenous Australians within the animist indigenous belief system, are paths across the land which mark the route followed by localised 'creator-beings' during the Dreaming...
, Dreamtime
Dreamtime
In the animist framework of Australian Aboriginal mythology, The Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral Totemic Spirit Beings formed The Creation.-The Dreaming of the Aboriginal times:...
, and "magic men" like Nullah's grandfather and Nullah himself. In a scene set in October 1939, Nullah is seen raptly watching Oz in a Darwin cinema.
Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's aria "Schafe können sicher weiden ("Sheep may safely graze")" from the Hunting Cantata
Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd
Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd , BWV 208, also known as the Hunting Cantata, is a secular cantata composed in 1713 by Johann Sebastian Bach for the 31st birthday of Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels. Aria 5, "Schafe können sicher weiden" , is the most familiar part of this cantata...
BWV 208 is another recurring motif in the film.
Although the Wizard Of Oz was not released in Australia until 18 April 1940, in the movie it said they were watching it in 1939.
Additional music
David HirschfelderDavid Hirschfelder
David Hirschfelder is an Australian film score composer and performer.Hirschfelder was born and raised in Ballarat, Victoria....
composed the score to Australia. Interpolated musical numbers include the jazz standards "Begin the Beguine
Begin the Beguine
"Begin the Beguine" is a song written by Cole Porter . Porter composed the song at the piano in the bar of the Ritz Hotel in Paris. In October 1935, it was introduced by June Knight in the Broadway musical Jubilee produced at the Imperial Theatre in New York City.-Music:The beguine music and dance...
," "Tuxedo Junction
Tuxedo Junction
"Tuxedo Junction" is a song co-written by Birmingham, Alabama composer Erskine Hawkins and saxophonist and arranger Bill Johnson. Julian Dash is also credited for the music. The song was introduced by Hawkins's orchestra. Lyrics were by Buddy Feyne...
," "Sing Sing Sing (With a Swing)
Sing, Sing, Sing
"Sing, Sing, Sing " is a 1936 song, written by Louis Prima and first recorded by him with the New Orleans Gang and released in March 1936 as a 78 as Brunswick 7628 . It is strongly identified with the big band and swing eras. It was covered by Fletcher Henderson and most famously Benny Goodman...
," and "Brazil
Aquarela do Brasil
"Aquarela do Brasil" , known in the English-speaking world simply as "Brazil", is one of the most famous Brazilian songs of all time, written by Ary Barroso in 1939.-Background and composition:...
." Edward Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
's "Nimrod" from "Enigma" Variations
Enigma Variations
Variations on an Original Theme for orchestra , Op. 36, commonly referred to as the Enigma Variations, is a set of a theme and its fourteen variations written for orchestra by Edward Elgar in 1898–1899. It is Elgar's best-known large-scale composition, for both the music itself and the...
is heard in the final scene of the film. Luhrmann hired singer Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris, CBE, AM is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, composer, painter and television personality.Born in Perth, Western Australia, Harris was a champion swimmer before studying art. He moved to England in 1952, where he started to appear on television programmes on which he drew the...
to record his wobble board
Wobble board
The wobble board is an instrument popularized by the Australian musician and artist Rolf Harris and featured in his best-known song "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport"...
for the opening credits, and Elton John
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
composed and performed a song called "The Drover's Ballad," to lyrics by Luhrmann, for the end credits. Also used in the end credits is "By the Boab Tree," a song nominated for a 2008 Satellite Award, again with Luhrmann lyrics, performed by Sydney singer Angela Little. Little's rendition of "Waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda
"Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's most widely known bush ballad. A country folk song, the song has been referred to as "the unofficial national anthem of Australia"....
" completes the end credits in some versions of the film. The jazz sound track to "Australia" was performed by the Ralph Pyle big band with clarinet solos by Andy Firth.
Cast
- Nicole KidmanNicole KidmanNicole Mary Kidman, AC is an American-born Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm...
as Lady Sarah Ashley, an English aristocrat who inherits the cattle station Faraway Downs in Australia after the death of her husband, Lord Maitland Ashley. - Hugh JackmanHugh JackmanHugh Michael Jackman is an Australian actor and producer who is involved in film, musical theatre, and television.Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as action/superhero, period and romance characters...
as Drover, a droverDrover (Australian)A drover in Australia is a person, typically an experienced stockman, who moves livestock, usually sheep or cattle, "on the hoof" over long distances. Reasons for droving may include: delivering animals to a new owner's property, taking animals to market, or moving animals during a drought in...
who helps Lady Sarah Ashley move the cattle across the property. - David WenhamDavid WenhamDavid Wenham is an Australian actor who has appeared in movies, television series and theatre productions. He is known in Hollywood for his roles as Faramir in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Carl in Van Helsing and Dilios in 300 and Neil Fletcher in Australia...
as Neil Fletcher, a station manager who plans to take Faraway Downs from Lady Sarah Ashley. - Bryan BrownBryan BrownBryan Neathway Brown, AM is an Australian actor.-Early life:Brown was born in Sydney, the son of John Brown and Molly Brown, a house cleaner who worked as a pianist in the early days of the Langshaw School of Ballet. He grew up in the south-western Sydney suburb of Bankstown and began working at...
as Lesley 'King' Carney, a cattle baron who owns much of the land in northern Australia. - Jack ThompsonJack Thompson (actor)Jack Thompson, AM is an Australian actor and one of the major figures of Australian cinema. He was educated at University of Queensland, before embarking on his acting career. In 2002, he was made an honorary member of the Australian Cinematographers Society...
as Kipling Flynn, an alcoholic accountant who enjoys a luxurious lifestyle. - David GulpililDavid GulpililDavid Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu , is an Indigenous Australian traditional dancer and actor. His first starring role was Walkabout....
as King George, a magic tribal elder, grandfather of Nullah. - Brandon WaltersBrandon WaltersBrandon Walters is an Indigenous Australian child actor known for his performance as Nullah in the 2008 film Australia.-Life and career:...
as Nullah, a young Aboriginal boy whom Lady Sarah Ashley finds at Faraway Downs. - Ray BarrettRay BarrettRaymond Charles "Ray" Barrett was an Australian actor. He was one of the more popular leading men on British television in the 1960s, where he was best known for his appearances in The Troubleshooters . Back in Australia he was a leading man in many TV series over the years.-Biography:Barrett was...
as Ramsden, an old friendly fellow. - David NgoombujarraDavid NgoombujarraDavid Ngoombujarra was an Indigenous Australian actor of the Yamatji people. Born David Bernard Starr in Meekatharra, Western Australia, his acting career spanned over two decades from the 1980s to the present; he won three Australian Film Institute Awards...
as Magarri, the Drover's colleague and friend. - Ben MendelsohnBen MendelsohnPaul Benjamin "Ben" Mendelsohn is an Australian actor.-Early life:Mendelsohn was born in Melbourne, Australia, the son of Carole Ann and Frederick Mendelsohn. He attended Heidelberg Primary School and Banyule High School. His father is a prominent medical researcher who heads the Howard Florey...
as Captain Emmett Dutton, a Darwin-based Australian Army officer in charge of beef supply. - Sandy GoreSandy GoreSandy Gore is an Australian actress, renowned for her work in theatre. Was married to Director George Miller and had one daughter. Gore has worked extensively for Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company...
as Gloria Carney, King Carney's wife, and Catherine's mother. - Essie DavisEssie DavisEssie Davis is an Australian actress. Born and raised in Hobart, Tasmania, she is the daughter of locally famed artist George Davis.She emerged from the Old Nick Company at the University of Tasmania in the late 1980s and has gone on to appear in Hollywood movies. She is a graduate of the National...
as Catherine 'Cath' Carney Fletcher, wife of Neil Fletcher and daughter of King Carney. - Barry OttoBarry OttoBarry Otto is an Australian actor with a long list of memorable roles on stage and in film. Otto received an AFI Award for Best Supporting Actor in Strictly Ballroom as well as being nominated for Bliss, Cosi and The More Things Change......
as Administrator Allsop, the Australian government's representative in the Northern Territory. - Ursula YovichUrsula YovichUrsula Yovich is an actress and singer. She received a Helpmann Award in 2007 for her performance in Capricornia and was nominated in 2005 for her performance in The Sapphires...
as Daisy, the mother of Nullah. - Yuen WahYuen WahYuen Wah is a Hong Kong based Chinese action film actor, action choreographer, stuntman and martial artist who has appeared in over 160 films and over 20 television series.-Early life:...
as Sing Song, a Cantonese chef at Faraway Downs. - Jacek KomanJacek Koman-Early life:Koman was born in Bielsko-Biała, Poland and came to Australia in 1982 with his brother Tomek. They landed in Perth, before heading over to Melbourne, where he began acting again.-Personal life:...
as Ivan, the saloonkeeper and innkeeper in Darwin. - Tony BarryTony BarryTony Barry is an Australian actor who has performed in 55 feature films and 45 television series, across a four-decade career.-Filmography:He is known for his roles in the 2008 film Australia, Return to Snowy River, Never Say Die, the 1988 film Surfer and The Coca-Cola Kid.After acting in...
as Sergeant Callahan, the head of the Northern Territory police.
Production
Originally, Baz Luhrmann was planning to make a film about Alexander the Great starring Leonardo DiCaprioLeonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is an American actor and film producer. He has received many awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator , and has been nominated by the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television...
and Nicole Kidman, with a screenplay by David Hare
David Hare (playwright)
Sir David Hare is an English playwright and theatre and film director.-Early life:Hare was born in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, the son of Agnes and Clifford Hare, a sailor. He was educated at Lancing, an independent school in West Sussex, and at Jesus College, Cambridge...
. The director had built a studio in the northern Sahara but a rival film
Alexander (film)
Alexander is a 2004 epic film based on the life of Alexander the Great. It is not a remake of the 1956 film which starred Richard Burton. It was directed by Oliver Stone, with Colin Farrell in the title role...
made by Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
was released first and after several years in development, Luhrmann abandoned the project to make a film closer to home.
The visual effects were done by the Animal Logic
Animal Logic
Animal Logic is an Australian digital visual effects company based at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia and Santa Monica, California. Established in 1991, Animal Logic's core business has traditionally been the design and production of high-end visual effects for commercials and television programs,...
films and The LaB Sydney.
Luhrmann spent six months researching general Australian history. At one point he considered setting his film during the First Fleet
First Fleet
The First Fleet is the name given to the eleven ships which sailed from Great Britain on 13 May 1787 with about 1,487 people, including 778 convicts , to establish the first European colony in Australia, in the region which Captain Cook had named New South Wales. The fleet was led by Captain ...
, 11 ships that sailed from Britain in 1787 and set up the first colony in New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
. The director wanted to explore Australia's relationship with England and with its indigenous population. He decided to set the film between World Wars I and II in order to merge a historical romance with the Stolen Generations, where thousands of mixed-race Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families by the state and integrated into white society. Luhrmann has said that his film depicts "a mythologised Australia".
Casting
Russell Crowe
Russell Ira Crowe is a New Zealander Australian actor , film producer and musician. He came to international attention for his role as Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the 2000 historical epic film Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor, a...
and Nicole Kidman entered negotiations to star in an untitled 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
project written by director Baz Luhrmann and screenwriter Stuart Beattie, with Luhrmann directing the film. For her role, Kidman learned to round up cattle. In May 2006, due to Crowe's demanding personal script approval before signing onto the project, Luhrmann sought to replace the actor with Heath Ledger
Heath Ledger
Heath Andrew Ledger was an Australian television and film actor. After performing roles in Australian television and film during the 1990s, Ledger moved to the United States in 1998 to develop his film career...
. Crowe said he didn't want to work in an environment that was influenced by budgetary needs. About this casting issue, Luhrmann said, "it was hard pinning [Crowe] down. Every time I was ready, Russell was in something else, and every time he was ready, I would be having another turmoil". The following June, Luhrmann replaced Crowe with actor Hugh Jackman.
In January 2007, actors Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson, and David Wenham were cast into Australia. In November 2006, Luhrmann began searching for an actor to play an Aboriginal boy of 8–10 years old and by April 2007, 11-year-old Brandon Walters was cast into the role.
Pre-production
Bowen, Queensland
Bowen is a town on the eastern coast of Queensland, Australia. At the 2006 census, Bowen had a population of 7,484.-Geography:Bowen is located on the north-east coast of Australia, at exactly twenty degrees south of the equator. In fact, the twentieth parallel crosses the main street...
was chosen as a filming location for a third of the production, portraying the look of Darwin. Bowen was chosen as a prospect due to the financing of $500,000 by the Queensland government. In April, Kununurra
Kununurra, Western Australia
Kununurra is a town in far northern Western Australia located at the eastern extremity of the Kimberley Region approximately from the border with the Northern Territory. Kununurra was initiated to service the Ord River Irrigation scheme....
was chosen as another location for Australia, this time to serve as Faraway Downs, the homestead owned by Kidman's character. Entire sets were built from scratch, including a stand-alone set in the Queensland town of Bowen, the re-creation of war scenes near Darwin Harbour, and the construction of an outback homestead in Western Australia.
Costumes
Academy Award winning costume designer Catherine Martin did extensive research for the film's outfits, studying archival images and newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s Australia. She also interviewed descendants of the original Darwin stockmen in order to find out if they "wore socks with his boots when he rode a horse, that's something you either get through a snapshot, or something you have to go talk to the people who lived there about". The Asian-inspired costumes of the film were intended to evoke the romanticism of the era, and one of the centrepieces of the film's costuming is a red chrysanthemumChrysanthemum
Chrysanthemums, often called mums or chrysanths, are of the genus constituting approximately 30 species of perennial flowering plants in the family Asteraceae which is native to Asia and northeastern Europe.-Etymology:...
-printed Chinese cheongsam or qipao
Qipao
The cheongsam is a body-hugging one-piece Chinese dress for women; the male version is the changshan. It is known in Mandarin Chinese as the qípáo Wade-Giles ch'i-p'ao, and is also known in English as a mandarin gown...
that was made for Nicole Kidman's character. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design.
Principal photography
The director planned to begin filming in March 2007. However, principal photography began on 30 April 2007 in Sydney, and Kidman found out that she was pregnant. She instantly withdrew from her next film, The Reader. Afterwards, the production moved to Bowen on 14 May.Filming in Kununurra was a gruelling experience for the cast and crew with temperatures soaring to 43 °C (109.4 °F) which, one day, caused Kidman to faint while on a horse. In addition, she worked 14 and 15-hour days while dealing with morning sickness. While shooting in a remote region of Western Australia, the shoot had to be rescheduled when the Faraway Downs set, the homestead central to the film's story, was reduced to mud from torrential rain – the first in 50 years. The cast and crew went back to Sydney to shoot interior scenes until the expensive set dried out. In addition, at one point, the entire country's horses were in lock down over equine flu.
Filming lasted five months, wrapping up at Fox Studios
Fox Studios Australia
Fox Studios Australia is a major movie studio located in Sydney, Australia, occupying the site of the former Sydney Showground at Moore Park...
, Sydney, on 19 December 2007. In late April, Luhrmann titled his project Australia. Two other titles that he considered for the film had been Great Southern Land and Faraway Downs. On 11 August 2008, eight months after filming wrapped, several members of the cast and crew were back at Fox Studios, Sydney, to film pick up shots.
Post-production
Two weeks before the film's premiere, the Daily Telegraph erroneously reported that Luhrmann gave in to studio pressure after "intense" talks with executives and re-wrote and then re-shot the ending of Australia for a happier conclusion after "disastrous reviews" from test screenings. To counter these negative reports, the studio had Jackman and Kidman promoting Australia on The Oprah Winfrey ShowThe Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American syndicated talk show hosted and produced by its namesake Oprah Winfrey. It ran nationally for 25 seasons beginning in 1986, before concluding in 2011. It is the highest-rated talk show in American television history....
, which dedicated an entire episode of the program to the film, and Fox Co-Chairman Tom Rothman spoke to the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
where he described the Telegraph article as "patently nonsensical. It's all too typical of the way the world works today that everybody picked up an unsourced, anonymous quote-filled story in a tabloid from Sydney and nobody ever bothered to check to see if it was accurate". Rothman also said that Luhrmann had final cut on his film. The director admitted that he wrote six endings in the drafts he authored, and shot three of them.
Tourism tie-in
Tourism Western AustraliaTourism Western Australia
Tourism Western Australia is the statutory authority responsible for promoting Western Australia as a tourist destination.-External links:* * , tourism website run by Tourism Western Australia...
spent $1 million on a campaign linked with the release of Australia in the United States, Canada, Japan, Europe and South Korea that ties in with an international Tourism Australia plan. Concerned about the recession and fluctuating international fuel prices, the tourism industry hoped that Luhrmann's film would deliver visitors from all over the world in the same kind of numbers that came to the country following the 1986 release of Crocodile Dundee
Crocodile Dundee
"Crocodile" Dundee is a 1986 Australian comedy film set in the Australian Outback and in New York City. It stars Paul Hogan as the weathered Mick Dundee and Linda Kozlowski as Sue Charlton....
, and follow the significant increase in visitors to New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
since 2001 after the release of the Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy
The Lord of the Rings is an epic film trilogy consisting of three fantasy adventure films based on the three-volume book of the same name by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are The Fellowship of the Ring , The Two Towers and The Return of the King .The films were directed by Peter...
films. Federal Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson said, "This movie will potentially be seen by tens of millions of people, and it will bring life to little-known aspects of Australia's extraordinary natural environment, history and indigenous culture". Tourism Australia worked with Luhrmann and 20th Century Fox on a publicity campaign titled, "See the Movie, See the Country", based on movie maps
Filming location
A filming location is a place where some or all of a film or television series is produced, in addition to or instead of using sets constructed on a movie studio backlot or soundstage...
and location guides, to transform the film into "a real-life travel adventure". In addition, the director made a $50 million series of commercials promoting the country.
Critical reception
Australia received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reported that as of 4 October 2010, 55% of critics gave the film a positive write-up, based upon a sample of 199, with an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 5.9/10. The site reported that the consensus was that while the film features "lavish vistas" and "impeccable production," it suffers due to its "lack of originality" and "thinly-drawn characters." At Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a normalised
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 53, based on 31 reviews, denoting "mixed or average reviews."
Chris Tookey, in his review for the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
wrote, "Kidman and Jackman have great sexual chemistry, as well as the glamour of Forties cinema idols." He also rated the film the maximum five stars. The News of the World
News of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
followed suit by rating the film with five stars, the reviewer Robie Collin praised the casting and camerawork; "The jaw-dropping, picture postcard camerawork, that will have your eyes scouring each scene for every last delicious detail.The uproarious comic interludes (Nicole’s rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow, and the build-up to it, is one of the best-played comic set pieces of the year)..The magnetic and irksomely handsome Hugh Jackman, the undisputed star of the show."
Claire Sutherland, in her review for the Herald Sun
Herald Sun
The Herald Sun is a morning tabloid newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia. It is published by The Herald and Weekly Times, a subsidiary of News Limited, itself a subsidiary of News Corporation. It is available for purchase throughout Melbourne, Regional Victoria, Tasmania, the Australian Capital...
wrote, "A love letter to the Australian landscape and our history, Australia has international blockbuster written all over it". In his review for The Australian
The Australian
The Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....
, David Stratton wrote, "It's not the masterpiece that we were hoping for, but I think you could say that it's a very good film in many ways. While it will be very popular with many people I think there's a slight air of disappointment after it all. Despite its flaws — and it certainly has flaws — I think Australia is an impressive and important film."
Anne Barrowclough of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
(United Kingdom) gave the film four out of five stars, and states the film defies expectation and "in what turns out to be a multi-layered story it describes an Australia of the 1940s that is at once compellingly beautiful and breathtakingly cruel".
Megan Lehmann, writing in The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
, said that the film "defies all but the most cynical not to get carried away by the force of its grandiose imagery and storytelling", and it is "much less earnest than the trailer suggests, layered with a thin veneer of camp and a nod and a wink to accompany the requisite Aussie clichés", and the bottom line is "In epic style, Baz Luhrmann weaves his wizardry on Oz".
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
gave the film 3 stars out of 4, noting "Baz Luhrmann dreamed of making the Australian Gone With the Wind
Gone with the Wind
The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork and Uncle Peter, and these slaves stay on with their masters even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 sets them free...
, and so he has, with much of that film's lush epic beauty and some of the same awkwardness with a national legacy of racism".
David Ansen
David Ansen
David Ansen is a reviewer and senior editor for Newsweek, where he has been reviewing movies since 1977. He came to Newsweek after several years as the chief film critic at Boston's The Real Paper...
, in his review for Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, wrote, "Kidman seems to blossom under Luhrmann's direction: she's funny, warm and charming, and the erotic charge between her and the gruff, hunky Jackman is delicious. In a solemn season, Australias bold, kitschy, unapologetic artifice is a welcome respite".
In her review for the New York Times, Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and...
wrote, "this creation story about modern Australia is a testament to movie love at its most devout, cinematic spectacle at its most extreme, and kitsch as an act of aesthetic communion".
Writing for The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
, Jim Schembri had problems with the length of the film: "The film is fine, and never boring but, boy, is it overlong. At a mammoth 165 minutes it feels too much like a work-in-progress. There is a lot of narrative flab and longueurs in the first two hours and the film often has the pace of a steamroller with engine trouble".
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.-Career:Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S...
, in his review for the New York Observer
New York Observer
The New York Observer is a weekly newspaper first published in New York City on September 22, 1987, by Arthur L. Carter, a very successful former investment banker with publishing interests. The Observer focuses on the city's culture, real estate, the media, politics and the entertainment and...
, wrote, "Australia is clearly a labor of love, and a matter of national pride. It is also a bit of a mess. I must confess that I might have been harder on Mr Luhrmann's film if I had not remained entranced by Ms Kidman ever since I first saw her in Phillip Noyce
Phillip Noyce
Phillip Noyce is an Australian film director.-Life and career:Noyce was born in Griffith, New South Wales, attended Barker College, Sydney, and began making short films at the age of 18, starting with Better to Reign in Hell, using his friends as the cast...
's Dead Calm
Dead Calm
Dead Calm is a 1963 novel by Charles F. Williams, which was the basis for the unreleased film The Deep and the later film Dead Calm .- Plot :...
in 1989; in my opinion, she has lost none of her luster in the 20 years since".
In his review for Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, Richard Schickel
Richard Schickel
Richard Warren Schickel is an American author, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He is a film critic for Time magazine, having also written for Life magazine and the Los Angeles Times Book Review....
wrote, "Have you seen everything Australia has on offer a dozen times before? Sure you have. It's a movie less created by director and co-writer Baz Luhrmann than assembled, Dr Frankenstein-style, from the leftover body parts of earlier movies. Which leaves us asking this question: How come it is so damnably entertaining?"
Ann Hornaday, in her review for the Washington Post, wrote, "A wildly ambitious, luridly indulgent spectacle of romance, action, melodrama and revisionism, Australia is windy, overblown, utterly preposterous and insanely entertaining".
Mark Naglazas of The West Australian
The West Australian
The West Australian is the only locally-edited daily newspaper published in Perth, Western Australia, and is owned by ASX-listed Seven West Media . The West is published in tabloid format, as is the state's other major newspaper, The Sunday Times, a News Limited publication...
accused positive reviews from News Ltd press outlets of being manipulated by 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
, calling Australia a film of "unrelenting awfulness" that "lurches drunkenly from crazy comedy to Mills and Boonish melodrama in the space of a couple of scenes".
Bonnie Malkin of The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
stated: "Local critics had worried that the much-anticipated film Australia would present to the world a series of time-honoured Antipodean
Antipodes
In geography, the antipodes of any place on Earth is the point on the Earth's surface which is diametrically opposite to it. Two points that are antipodal to one another are connected by a straight line running through the centre of the Earth....
clichés. Their fears were well founded".
In her review for Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
, Stephanie Zacharek wrote, "The second half of Australia, Luhrmann's attempt to pull off a wartime weeper, is so aggressively sentimental that it begins to feel more like punishment than pleasure. I left Australia feeling drained and weakened, as if I'd suffered a gradual poisoning at the hands of a mad scientist".
Box office and DVD sales
The film had better box office success in overseas markets and a disappointing gross in the U.S. — a pattern similar to Luhrmann's three previous films. As of November 2009, the film has grossed $211,342,221 in its worldwide releases.In Australia, the film grossed A$
Australian dollar
The Australian dollar is the currency of the Commonwealth of Australia, including Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island, as well as the independent Pacific Island states of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu...
6.37 million in its opening weekend, setting the record for the highest grossing opening weekend for an Australian film and bumping the latest James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
movie Quantum of Solace to second place.
Australia performed less well in the U.S., where it surprised box office analysts by opening only at #5, behind Quantum of Solace, Twilight
Twilight (2008 film)
Twilight is a 2008 American romantic vampire film based on Stephenie Meyer's popular novel of the same name. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, the film stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. It is the first film in The Twilight Saga film series...
, Bolt, and Four Christmases
Four Christmases
Four Christmases is a Christmas-themed romantic comedy film about a couple who go to see their divorced parents in one day...
, and grossed $20 million opening weekend. However, Fox officials were reportedly happy with the numbers, as they said they were expecting only an $18 million opening gross for the movie. They further pointed out that Baz Luhrmann's other films, like Moulin Rouge!
Moulin Rouge!
Moulin Rouge! is a 2001 romantic jukebox musical film directed, produced, and co-written by Baz Luhrmann. Following the Red Curtain Cinema principles, the film is based on the Orphean myth, La Traviata, and La Bohème...
, Strictly Ballroom
Strictly Ballroom
Strictly Ballroom is a 1992 Australian romantic comedy film directed and co-written by Baz Luhrmann and produced by M&A Productions. The film is the first installment in The Red Curtain Trilogy, Luhrmann's trilogy of theatre-motif-related films; the follow-ups were Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!...
, and Romeo + Juliet, started slowly and then built momentum. Australia eventually grossed $49,554,002 in the U.S., 23.4% of its total worldwide gross.
Australia's ticket sales outside of the U.S. are $161,788,219 from 51 countries. It opened at No. 1 in Spain, France, Australia, and Germany, and at No. 3 in Britain. Australia grossed $87,555,757 at the box office in Australia.
The DVD was released in the U.S. on 3 March 2009, opening at #2, and sold 728,000 units in the opening weekend, translating to revenue of $12.3 million. Australia sold almost two million DVDs in one month, 80% of what the studio predicted it would sell altogether. As of 15 November 2009, Australia has sold 1,739,700 units in the U.S., for a revenue of $27.9 million. Since being released in Australia, the DVD has sold double what the studio expected.
Awards and nominations
| Awards | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Award | Category | Recipient(s) | Outcome |
| Satellite Awards | |||
| Satellite Award for Best Art Direction and Production Design Satellite Award for Best Art Direction and Production Design The Satellite Award for Best Art Direction is one the annual awards given by the International Press Academy.- 1990s :Best Art Direction:*1996: Romeo + Juliet**The English Patient**Evita**Hamlet... |
Catherine Martin Catherine Martin Catherine Martin is an Australian costume designer, production designer, set designer, and film producer.-Biography:Catherine Martin went to school at North Sydney Girls High School... |
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| Satellite Award for Best Cinematography Satellite Award for Best Cinematography The Satellite Award for Best Cinematography is one of the annual Satellite Awards given by the International Press Academy.- 1990s :- 2000s :... |
Mandy Walker Mandy Walker Mandy Walker is an award-winning Australian cinematographer.Born and raised in Melbourne, Walker became interested in photography while a student in high school. After graduation she studied film criticism and cinema studies with John Flaus, who introduced her to several people working in the... |
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| Satellite Award for Best Visual Effects Satellite Award for Best Visual Effects The Satellite Award for Best Visual Effects is one of the annual Satellite Awards given by the International Press Academy.- 1990s :- 2000s :... |
Chris Godfrey Chris Godfrey Christopher James Godfrey is a former American football guard in the National Football League, primarily for the New York Giants. He started in Super Bowl XXI. Godfrey played college football at the University of Michigan. He also played with the Michigan Panthers of the USFL... |
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| Satellite Award for Best Original Screenplay Satellite Award for Best Original Screenplay The Satellite Award for Best Original Screenplay is an annual award given by the International Press Academy.- 1990s :*1996: Lone Star*1996: The People vs... |
Baz Luhrmann Baz Luhrmann Mark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann is an Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for The Red Curtain Trilogy, which includes his films Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!... |
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| Satellite Award for Best Original Score Satellite Award for Best Original Score The Satellite Award for Best Score is an annual award given by the International Press Academy.- 1990s :- 2000s :... |
David Hirschfelder David Hirschfelder David Hirschfelder is an Australian film score composer and performer.Hirschfelder was born and raised in Ballarat, Victoria.... |
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| Satellite Award for Best Original Song Satellite Award for Best Original Song The Satellite Award for Best Original Song is an annual award given by the International Press Academy.- 1990s :*1996: "You Must Love Me" performed by Madonna - Evita**"God Give Me Strength" - Grace of My Heart**"Kissing You" - Romeo + Juliet... |
'By the Boab Tree' | ||
| Satellite Award for Best Editing Satellite Award for Best Editing The Satellite Award for Best Editing is one of the annual Satellite Awards given by the International Press Academy.- Winners and nominees :The following listing is based on the web postings of the International Press Academy.- 1990s :- 2000s :... |
Dody Dorn Dody Dorn Dody Dorn born 20 April 1955 is an American film and sound editor best known for working with director Christopher Nolan on several films including Memento... |
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| Satellite Award for Best Sound Satellite Award for Best Sound - 1990s :- 2000s :... |
Wayne Pushley | ||
| Satellite Award for Best Costume Design Satellite Award for Best Costume Design The Satellite Award for Best Costume Design is one of the annual Satellite Awards given by the International Press Academy.- Winners and nominees :The following listing is based on the web postings of the International Press Academy.- 1990s :- 2000s :... |
Catherine Martin Catherine Martin Catherine Martin is an Australian costume designer, production designer, set designer, and film producer.-Biography:Catherine Martin went to school at North Sydney Girls High School... |
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| 81st Academy Awards 81st Academy Awards The 81st Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , honored the best films of 2008 and took place February 22, 2009, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST... |
Academy Award for Best Costume Design | Catherine Martin Catherine Martin Catherine Martin is an Australian costume designer, production designer, set designer, and film producer.-Biography:Catherine Martin went to school at North Sydney Girls High School... |
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| Film Critics Circle of Australia Film Critics Circle of Australia The Film Critics Circle of Australia is a group of cinema critics that judge Australian films.-External links:**... |
Best Cinematography | Mandy Walker Mandy Walker Mandy Walker is an award-winning Australian cinematographer.Born and raised in Melbourne, Walker became interested in photography while a student in high school. After graduation she studied film criticism and cinema studies with John Flaus, who introduced her to several people working in the... |
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| Best Supporting Actor | Brandon Walters Brandon Walters Brandon Walters is an Indigenous Australian child actor known for his performance as Nullah in the 2008 film Australia.-Life and career:... |
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| Best Film | Australia | ||
| Best Music Score | David Hirschfelder David Hirschfelder David Hirschfelder is an Australian film score composer and performer.Hirschfelder was born and raised in Ballarat, Victoria.... |
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| Young Artist Award Young Artist Award The Young Artist Award is an accolade bestowed by the Young Artist Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 1978 to recognize and award excellence of youth performers, and to provide scholarships for young artists who may be physically and/or financially challenged.The Young Artist... |
Best Performance in an International Feature Film – Leading Young Performers – | Brandon Walters Brandon Walters Brandon Walters is an Indigenous Australian child actor known for his performance as Nullah in the 2008 film Australia.-Life and career:... |
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| Critics' Choice Awards Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2008 The 14th Critics' Choice Awards were presented on Thursday, January 8, 2009 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium to honor the finest achievements in 2008 filmmaking.Nominees were announced on December 9, 2008.-Best Film:Slumdog Millionaire... |
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| Best Young Performer Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2008 The 14th Critics' Choice Awards were presented on Thursday, January 8, 2009 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium to honor the finest achievements in 2008 filmmaking.Nominees were announced on December 9, 2008.-Best Film:Slumdog Millionaire... |
Brandon Walters Brandon Walters Brandon Walters is an Indigenous Australian child actor known for his performance as Nullah in the 2008 film Australia.-Life and career:... |
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| Chicago Film Critics Chicago Film Critics Association Awards 2008 The 21st Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, given by the CFCA on December 18, 2008, honored the best in film for 2008. Disney/Pixar's WALL-E became the most successful film on this years' ceremony, won four awards, including Best Film, out of five nominations... |
Best Cinematography | Mandy Walker Mandy Walker Mandy Walker is an award-winning Australian cinematographer.Born and raised in Melbourne, Walker became interested in photography while a student in high school. After graduation she studied film criticism and cinema studies with John Flaus, who introduced her to several people working in the... |
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| Most Promising Performer | Brandon Walters Brandon Walters Brandon Walters is an Indigenous Australian child actor known for his performance as Nullah in the 2008 film Australia.-Life and career:... |
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