Australia

Baz Luhrmann's Australia is a sincerely grand spectacle shot in the Gone with the Wind epic style minus about an hour and one intermission. Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) moves from Britain to Australia's Northern Territory with the intent of selling her husband's ranch, known as Faraway Downs. But upon her arrival she discovers he's dead and that there's been some seriously underhanded wheeling and dealing taking place on their land. Hence, she decides to drove (move cattle across a distance) her husband's cattle to Darwin in order to prevent his rival King Carney (Bryan Brown) from monopolizing the business. To drove she must find a drover and a tough-as-nails-plays-by-his-own-rules-no-one-hires-me-no-one-fires-me Drover (Hugh Jackman) surfaces and reluctantly agrees to assist. To stop them, Carney requires a villain, and weaselly-dead-beat-dad-environmentally-abusive Neil Fletcher (David Wenham) agrees to arrest their stride. Tying together and narrating the different multilayered threads is an Aboriginal child named Nullah (Brandon Walters) who desperately wants to avoid being taken away from his home and sent to a mission. And in the second half Japan invades, disrupting their insatiable antagonisms and turning both old and new worlds upside down.

A lot of what takes place in Australia is sappy, predictable, and highly melodramatic: but it's the best damned melodrama I've seen in years and every time I knew what was going to happen I happily sat back and soaked up the sentiments. Lady Ashley is one brazen, solid, tenacious, heroine who lives by a strict and passionate code which occasionally yields unfortunate yet necessary results. The Drover droves dynamically and thanks to Lady Ashley's inspiration overcomes many of his social phobias eventually maintaining that certain things simply shouldn't be. And it's simply great to watch them ferociously fall in love even though snobby socialites turn up their noses and utter banal witticisms at their expense. An epic tale complete with heartfelt harmonies and progressive social symphonies, Australia may be a bit hard to take at times, but the overall product is downright resilient, all down the line.