“Australia” is a beautiful epic

By ANDY CARROLL
UNLEASHED STAFF

Leave it to Baz Lurhmann to direct a movie as outside today’s Hollywood mold as “Australia.”
After unleashing the 1996 re-imagining of “Romeo and Juliet” and the 2001 anachronistic musical “Moulin Rouge,” Lurhmann delivers a large-scale epic with a $100 million price tag and a length of nearly three hours.
Like “Romeo and Juliet” and “Moulin Rouge” before it, “Australia” is a financial and creative gamble, particularly since historical epics haven’t fully been in vogue on screen since “Gladiator” dominated the box office charts and Academy Awards eight years ago. But Lurhmann rises to the challenge by making a movie that both hearkens back to the grand epics of decades past and stands on its own as a captivating new vision.
Lurhmann, a native of the title country, uses the World War II era as the backdrop for the movie’s sprawling story. Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) is a British aristocrat overseeing Faraway Downs, the vast expanse of land in the Outback she owned with her late husband. The land is worked by Aboriginal servants and a mixed-blood rugged adventurer called The Drover (Hugh Jackman). Among the Aboriginals is the child Nullah (Brandon Walters), with whom Lady Ashley begins to share a close bond, particularly after the tragic death of his mother.
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