Monday, December 01, 2008

Australia revisited

History in the Making: The Current Cinema: The New Yorker

Damn. The New Yorker had David Denby review "Australia" instead of Anthony Lane. Still, Denby took quite a strong and witty dislike to it, so the result is not too bad.

The previous post here said it was a "spoiler" for the movie, yet it didn't actually deal with how the movie ends. (Oddly enough, over the weekend many people were coming to the post via searches for the movie spoiler.)

For those still interested, the real movie ending appears to be explained here, but David Denby also appears to give it away to a significant degree (and with a killer final line):
At the end, King George summons Nullah to a rite of passage, a walkabout. Nullah’s disappearance into the desert, leaving the whites behind, is framed as a triumphant anti-colonial moment, but Luhrmann confuses the issue by accompanying the scene with, of all things, the stirring “Nimrod” passage from “Enigma Variations,” by Edward Elgar, the composer perhaps most closely associated with the glories of empire. With the same degree of appropriateness, Luhrmann might celebrate Barack Obama’s Inauguration with a thundering rendition of “Dixie.”
If it weren't 3 hours long, I would be tempted to see to confirm my suspicion as to how bad I would find it. But life is too short for that. And in any event, it can almost certainly be written off as a box office flop, and will be making an appearance in the DVD rental shop sooner than they expected.

2 comments:

TimT said...

Worldwide: $25,004,456

Production Budget: $130 million


What do you mean, Box Office Flop? He's only got $110 million to go to break even!

Luhrmann may have a subtle point in ending the film with Elgar's Nimrod variations. The composer's close association with empire, King and country is probably a mistaken interpretation after the fact, based on Elgar's crowd-pleasing song 'Land of Hope and Glory'. For most of his life I believe Elgar felt alienated from the establishment, certainly as a Catholic in an Anglican country, though also as a 'groundbreaking' artist. And his Nimrod variations were a personal work, nothing to do with empire. Presumably Luhrmann knew about this stuff (since he's directed opera before.)

I do still want to see this film. Even if it's a flop!

Anonymous said...

Meh.It will be on free-to-air in record time. My only fear is that it will be so trashy, it becomes a cult film. Even the previews and reviews are enough to convince me it doesn't even deserve that honour.