Faraway Downs
"It's so beautiful, this place... the woods just now... full of noises... everything so alive. I kept thinking of all the death I've seen. I've hardly lost a battle, and I don't know what I've won. 'The day is ours, Robin,' you used to say, and then it was tomorrow. But where did the day go?"
-- from Robin and Marian (1973)
"Australia" is a misfitting title for the film Australia.
There are Australian TV series (like Rain Shadow or SeaChange) which explore the characters and tensions of a community, and in doing so capture what things are like in many communities - even if the geography and the climate are different. There are books - well, the first ones which spring to mind are two of Neville Shute's, The Far Country and A Town Like Alice, because I read them both when I was travelling through the Northern Territory, where Australia is set, but I could come up with along list - which have a broader geographical focus and yet capture something more universal about what the country has meant to people at points in its history.
But Australia doesn't have that sense of universality... with one possible exception. It has a narrow focus. It is set in a very specific place (Darwin and the top end) during a very specific era (WWII). The top end has a climate of extremes, what with the wet and the dry, and how the landscape changes between the two, and Darwin had a fairly unique experience of WWII.
I will admit that I have a tendency to be uncomfortable with generalisations, particularly those I feel are narrow-minded or inaccurate. But most of my issue with the title is because I was expecting a film called Australia about a woman living on a cattle station to be serious exploration of the challenges faced by those living on remote cattle stations or of an English woman adjusting to life in a different country.
Instead Australia chooses to tell an extraordinary tale of conflict and competition between two cattle stations.
I said there was one exception. The stolen generation, which was a nation-wide phenomenon. From my perspective (as someone personally unaffected by the stolen generation and white Australian's treatment of the indigenous population in general), Australia presents a sensitive exploration of what it was like to be a mixed race child, caught between two cultures and not full accepted by either, at risk of being removed from one's parents by the authorities.
I thought the racial issues were handled reasonably sensitively, too. Attitudes of the times were challenged and critiqued by the main characters, especially by Drover.
It could it have been better. We could have seen Lady Ashley develop a friendship with some of the Aboriginal women (Then it could have passed the Bechdel test, too!). Drover had been an Aborigine - or his wife, an Aboriginal woman, could have still been alive! It would have ruled out the romance, but then his wife wouldn't have just been providing him with a Tragic Backstory. One or two of the other Aboriginal characters who died could have survived too... not because their deaths were problematic - they certainly weren't the only characters to die - but because their deaths meant they were then absent from the rest of the story.
And the use of "Nimrod" - a gorgeous piece of music - during the end was such an odd choice. It fitted the emotion of the moment, but it's so very British and hence didn't seem like the most appropriate choice. Not for that final shot.
A less colonial choice, please?
Anyway.
The first part of the film borders on the ridiculous, with nearly everything played for its comedic value... which I should have expected because, Baz Luhrman. He has a tendency towards being stagey and over-dramatic. The scenery is stunning, of course - it is the top end, a breathtaking and vast part of the country. Nullah's parts of the story are moving and beautifully told. The characters are interesting and well-acted, and if I hadn't known that Hugh Jackman was in the film, I wouldn't have easily recognised him as Drover.
We recognised Fletcher (David Wenham) easily, because he sounds like an evil version of Diver Dan and that was amusing. (We may have watched series one of SeaChange more than once.)
The interlude between the first part and the second involves a romance, and I have just had an argument with my mother about it; she thought there wasn't enough development and she thinks people kissing in public in historical films is historical inaccuracy.
Then, in the second part, Australia turns into a serious war movie. I was expecting it to end less happily than it did. (Again because Baz Luhrman. The first of his films I ever saw was Romeo + Juliet. "But that was Shakespeare's fault!" my mother pointed out.)
On the whole, I enjoyed it. I got caught up in the story and became invested in the characters; I wanted a happy ending for them.
(...I just wanted it to not be called Australia. Faraway Downs, the name of Lady Ashley's station, would have been a much better title. Drover, or The Drover, could have also worked. It would make more sense to call it after Nullah, since he narrates it, but I can see how that would be harder to market.)
*
Tor.com are rewatching Robin Hood movies. The 1976 film Robin and Marian isn't on the list but it was recommended in the comments.
I like medieval movies! I took a subject at uni where we watched lots of them, and so that gives me a somewhat different perspective on them. (We didn't watch Robin and Marian - our touch of Robin Hood was the Disney film - but we did look at First Knight, which is the only other thing I've seen Sean Connery in.) I also like retellings of things. And due to my love for the BBC's Robin Hood series and Robin McKinley's The Outlaws of Sherwood (and the soundtrack for Robin of Sherwood) I have a fondness for stories about Robin Hood.
Robin and Marian surprised me. It is set long after Robin has been an outlaw living in the forest - he has spent the past 18 or so years on Crusade. He returns home and, somewhat like Frodo, doesn't know how to pick up the strands of his old life. He and his friends aren't young; they're not the people they once were when they lived in the forest; Marian is now an abbess.
It is a melancholy film, bittersweet and sombre and quietly inevitable. It also seemed like the most believable version of Robin Hood I have seen: no convoluted plot, nor unconvincing acrobatics, nor glaring too-modern costumes.
I liked the characters. I loved the soundtrack and the melancholia. In regards to the sense of inevitability, I have an intellectual appreciation what the film does but I did not really enjoy it. Sir Ranulf: He'll never come.
Sheriff of Nottingham: I know him. He's a little bit in love with death. He flirts; he teases. I can wait.
*
Perhaps I should finally get around to watching Robin of Sherwood...
-- from Robin and Marian (1973)
"Australia" is a misfitting title for the film Australia.
There are Australian TV series (like Rain Shadow or SeaChange) which explore the characters and tensions of a community, and in doing so capture what things are like in many communities - even if the geography and the climate are different. There are books - well, the first ones which spring to mind are two of Neville Shute's, The Far Country and A Town Like Alice, because I read them both when I was travelling through the Northern Territory, where Australia is set, but I could come up with along list - which have a broader geographical focus and yet capture something more universal about what the country has meant to people at points in its history.
But Australia doesn't have that sense of universality... with one possible exception. It has a narrow focus. It is set in a very specific place (Darwin and the top end) during a very specific era (WWII). The top end has a climate of extremes, what with the wet and the dry, and how the landscape changes between the two, and Darwin had a fairly unique experience of WWII.
I will admit that I have a tendency to be uncomfortable with generalisations, particularly those I feel are narrow-minded or inaccurate. But most of my issue with the title is because I was expecting a film called Australia about a woman living on a cattle station to be serious exploration of the challenges faced by those living on remote cattle stations or of an English woman adjusting to life in a different country.
Instead Australia chooses to tell an extraordinary tale of conflict and competition between two cattle stations.
I said there was one exception. The stolen generation, which was a nation-wide phenomenon. From my perspective (as someone personally unaffected by the stolen generation and white Australian's treatment of the indigenous population in general), Australia presents a sensitive exploration of what it was like to be a mixed race child, caught between two cultures and not full accepted by either, at risk of being removed from one's parents by the authorities.
I thought the racial issues were handled reasonably sensitively, too. Attitudes of the times were challenged and critiqued by the main characters, especially by Drover.
It could it have been better. We could have seen Lady Ashley develop a friendship with some of the Aboriginal women (Then it could have passed the Bechdel test, too!). Drover had been an Aborigine - or his wife, an Aboriginal woman, could have still been alive! It would have ruled out the romance, but then his wife wouldn't have just been providing him with a Tragic Backstory. One or two of the other Aboriginal characters who died could have survived too... not because their deaths were problematic - they certainly weren't the only characters to die - but because their deaths meant they were then absent from the rest of the story.
And the use of "Nimrod" - a gorgeous piece of music - during the end was such an odd choice. It fitted the emotion of the moment, but it's so very British and hence didn't seem like the most appropriate choice. Not for that final shot.
A less colonial choice, please?
Anyway.
The first part of the film borders on the ridiculous, with nearly everything played for its comedic value... which I should have expected because, Baz Luhrman. He has a tendency towards being stagey and over-dramatic. The scenery is stunning, of course - it is the top end, a breathtaking and vast part of the country. Nullah's parts of the story are moving and beautifully told. The characters are interesting and well-acted, and if I hadn't known that Hugh Jackman was in the film, I wouldn't have easily recognised him as Drover.
We recognised Fletcher (David Wenham) easily, because he sounds like an evil version of Diver Dan and that was amusing. (We may have watched series one of SeaChange more than once.)
The interlude between the first part and the second involves a romance, and I have just had an argument with my mother about it; she thought there wasn't enough development and she thinks people kissing in public in historical films is historical inaccuracy.
Then, in the second part, Australia turns into a serious war movie. I was expecting it to end less happily than it did. (Again because Baz Luhrman. The first of his films I ever saw was Romeo + Juliet. "But that was Shakespeare's fault!" my mother pointed out.)
On the whole, I enjoyed it. I got caught up in the story and became invested in the characters; I wanted a happy ending for them.
(...I just wanted it to not be called Australia. Faraway Downs, the name of Lady Ashley's station, would have been a much better title. Drover, or The Drover, could have also worked. It would make more sense to call it after Nullah, since he narrates it, but I can see how that would be harder to market.)
*
Tor.com are rewatching Robin Hood movies. The 1976 film Robin and Marian isn't on the list but it was recommended in the comments.
I like medieval movies! I took a subject at uni where we watched lots of them, and so that gives me a somewhat different perspective on them. (We didn't watch Robin and Marian - our touch of Robin Hood was the Disney film - but we did look at First Knight, which is the only other thing I've seen Sean Connery in.) I also like retellings of things. And due to my love for the BBC's Robin Hood series and Robin McKinley's The Outlaws of Sherwood (and the soundtrack for Robin of Sherwood) I have a fondness for stories about Robin Hood.
Robin and Marian surprised me. It is set long after Robin has been an outlaw living in the forest - he has spent the past 18 or so years on Crusade. He returns home and, somewhat like Frodo, doesn't know how to pick up the strands of his old life. He and his friends aren't young; they're not the people they once were when they lived in the forest; Marian is now an abbess.
It is a melancholy film, bittersweet and sombre and quietly inevitable. It also seemed like the most believable version of Robin Hood I have seen: no convoluted plot, nor unconvincing acrobatics, nor glaring too-modern costumes.
I liked the characters. I loved the soundtrack and the melancholia. In regards to the sense of inevitability, I have an intellectual appreciation what the film does but I did not really enjoy it. Sir Ranulf: He'll never come.
Sheriff of Nottingham: I know him. He's a little bit in love with death. He flirts; he teases. I can wait.
*
Perhaps I should finally get around to watching Robin of Sherwood...