Man, it’s been a long hot minute since we’ve heard from Baz Luhrmann (his last feature was 2001’s “Moulin Rouge”), but the idiosyncratic Aussie filmmaker is finally back with his outback epic/ romantic action-adventure, “Australia.”
The film stars Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman and the synopsis is thus:
Set in northern Australia prior to World War II, AUSTRALIA centers on an English aristocrat (Kidman) who inherits a ranch the size of Maryland. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle driver (Jackman) to drive 2000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country’s most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, Australia by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier.
Where’s the director been all your life (or at least the last seven-odd years?). Luhrmann got sidetracked for a couple years pursuing a project about Alexander The Great, he had hoped would star Leonardo DiCaprio and Kidman, but after Oliver Stone released his box-office turd on same subject in 2004 (the pitiful “Alexander”) it seems doubtful that the director will pick up that ball again (or at least, probably not any time soon). The unique Aussie director also spent time nurturing his critically acclaimed production of Puccini’s “La bohème” when the opera was brought to Broadway and New York in 2003 (he originally produced it for Opera Australia in 1993).
The “Australia” fansite (yes, there’s a fansite for the film, Luhrmann’s audience is niche, but devoted says of the trailer. “The teaser begins with Lady Sarah Ashley (Kidman) telling a story of a far away land to a young aboriginal boy, Nullah (Walters). What we see from there is a whirlwind ride of action, romance and epic scenery of grand proportions.” And they’re pretty much spot-on. It does look rather grandiloquent.
Australian actor Heath Ledger was once attached to the project as the lead, but evidently left the film to play the Joker in the “The Dark Knight,” Russell Crowe was also once set to star in the film, but left the long-gestating project too.
The script was co-written by the director and screenwriters Ronald Harwood (“The Pianist,” “The Diving Bell” and the Butterfly), Stuart Beattie (“Collateral”), and Richard Flanagan (“The Sound of One Hand Clapping) have all been involved with it at some point. The film is set for a November 14th release and has already generated a lot of premature Oscar talk from all the people that did extremely premature Oscar predictions for next year. Luhrmann has been working on the film since at least 2005 (and probably ’04) and it allegedly cost around $130 million to make.
The trailer borrows some of Patrick Doyle’s “Henry V” score and the beginning uses “The Ecstasy of Gold” from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” score by the estimable Ennio Morricone, but the trailer credits don’t say who’s composing the music.
The film’s official website.
Watch: “Australia” trailer