Baz puts national pride on the line

IN naming his much-hyped $180 million film Australia, director Baz Luhrmann has confidently taken ownership of a brand name so grand, so mighty, that if it bombs it will do so in spectacular fashion.

And if it soars, it will soar like the blackest of eagles against the bluest of Australian skies.

There can be no half-measures. Call something Australia and it has to be gigantic. It has to have a heart as big as Phar Lap's. It has to be a million times larger than Texas. It has to have the blood of Burke and Wills, Kennedy and Leichhardt thumping through its veins, and just like the Australia we all know it has to be as beautiful as a bay horse galloping across a Mitchell grass plain and as tender as the pink sky of a Kimberley dawn.
And it has to be rough and brutal in its telling of the stories of the spears dipped in blood and of the bullets that blew holes in black skin, man, woman and child, as the frontier inched its way across Northern Australia.

We don't want to be spared the death by shrapnel and fire that unfolded with terrible fury when the Japanese bombed Darwin on February 19, 1942. Darwin seems to forever fade in and out of our collective, wartime consciousness.

It's like a grainy dream we can never quite bring to clarity no matter how hard we try to focus.
The answers to the questions about what happened in Darwin are always just out of reach.

A film-maker might at last show us what the historians have so far failed to do and that is instil in us a sense of what happened in Darwin 66 years ago when the Japanese planes rained bombs and bullets on the city.

If Luhrmann is successful in telling the story of the bombing of Darwin it will no longer be a part of our history hidden behind some sort of weird conspiracy of denial, but will become as everyday as Gallipoli, Kokoda and Long Tan.

Mark David Ryan, lecturer in Australian Film at the Queensland University of Technology, describes Baz Luhrmann's decision to name his film Australia `a brave and bold move'. Naming it Australia proclaims that the film has captured the essence of who we are as Australians.

It says who we are, what we are, how we think and what we think of the world and it projects this mix of the Australian identity around the world.
If Australia takes off and becomes the international box office success Mr Ryan fervently hopes it will become, tens of millions of people around the world will see in us what they see in the characters Baz Luhrmann uses to move his story along.

Paul Hogan's 1986 blockbuster Crocodile Dundee has a lot to answer for in how Australians are viewed overseas.

Mr Ryan said that Australia, from an international perspective, was still very much a land where men walk around in vests made from crocodile skins and wear cheap felt hats, the bands of which are studded with imitation croc's teeth. This probably explains why we sometimes see tourist coaches disgorge small armies of Americans who otherwise are dressed normally except for the fact they are wearing badly made felt hats festooned with plastic crocodile teeth.

They think they look Australian. Sadly, no one ever seems to tell them the inconvenient truth.

In America, in particular, where Croc Dundee was a smash hit, it's still very much `throw another shrimp on the barbie, cobber'.

``International audiences still relate to Crocodile Dundee. Now, with (the film) Australia, there is the potential to reframe the way in which the world thinks of Australia as a country and how we see ourselves,'' Mr Ryan said.

He thinks the film will inevitably cop some criticism purely because Baz Luhrmann was bold enough to call it Australia.

He says the trailers for the film look `American' and he fears there could be a reaction to a perceived harkening back to the stereotype of the laconic, outback Aussie, a la Mick Dundee.
He said this could happen despite the film being a drama and being set in the Northern Territory and Kimberley in the 1920s to 1940s.

The fact it deals with epic droving trips, the bombing of Darwin and life on the frontier and that tough, outback character portrayals would be essential to the story line won't make any difference.

Mr Ryan believes some critics will savage it purely because it portrays an outback stereotype considered out of vogue in contemporary Australia.
``The critics may criticise it for projecting a stereotypical view of what it means to be an Australian,'' he said.

Mr Ryan says that if the movie does not do well at the box office it will `cop a lot of flak' based on its name, the premise being that if you have the audacity to call something Australia it has to win.
In effect you are taking ownership of the name Australia and you cannot abuse it, lose it, or demean it any way. Baz Luhrmann now has this responsibility on his shoulders.

An Australian cricket side or an Australian rugby union or rugby league side carries the same heavy load. Once they are an `Australian' side there is no going back.

They are the custodians of the name, the sacred name, and they have to honour and protect it at all costs.

Aussie cricket captain Ricky is being publicly horsewhipped by cricket writers over decisions they say cost Australia the Test series in India.
His real crime is not that he might have made some bad bowling calls, but that Australia lost the series.

If Australia the film stumbles Baz Luhrmann will be in for a whole lot more than what Ponting is getting from the cricket scribes
who, by and large, don't hit below the belt.
Critics and the movie-viewing public are not so polite when it comes to sinking in the boot.
If the film fails and is seen as just another `aw, mate' ocker cliche dressed up in a felt hat and riding boots, Baz Luhrmann will be tied, figuratively, to a boab tree and thrashed with a stock whip by Aussie critics keen to move on from the Chips Rafferty/Paul Hogan stereotype.
But, most cinema-goers who have seen the trailers for Australia would most likely agree the the film looks good. No, it doesn't look good, it looks bloody fantastic.

Then again Twentieth Century Fox, a company owned by News Corporation which also owns the Townsville Bulletin, is not exactly going to run a dud trailer. The teasers so far look like the goods. Great skies, luscious landscapes and the people on the horses look as though they can ride like the wind, which is what we'd expect in a film dealing, in part, with the cattle industry on the northern frontier.

In the trailers aired so far Hugh Jackman looks like he was born to the saddle.
He sits well and has good hands on the reins. All of this will be important when the film is released on November 26. Things like poor horsemanship, the wrong clothing and saddlery not belonging to the era will be quickly pounced on by alert viewers.
Luhrmann is said to be meticulous about period detail. Let's hope so because one slip-up in costuming could bring the whole show undone.

From what Mr Ryan has seen so far he is impressed.
``It looks fantastic. It looks like a film of epic proportions. It looks like a quality film and to me it looks like a film that could be a blockbuster,'' he said.

The film, even from the shorts, has the feel of an epic. Luhrmann, who expects it to run for about 2 1/2, is not shying away from calling it an `epic'. Already it's being compared to Gone With The Wind, the 1939 blockbuster still regarded by many critics as the best movie ever made.

The pre-release heat being generated by Australia is intense.

On his website movie industry analyst Scott Feinberg quotes Oprah Winfrey who watched a rough cut of the movie with her audience. All were in raptures.

``I have never been this excited over a movie since I don't know when. It's the best movie I've seen in a long, long, long, long time. It literally swept me off my feet,'' she said. Feinberg yesterday had Australia listed as a top five Oscar chance for Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress (Nicole Kidman), Best Director (Baz Luhrmann). He had Hugh Jackman down as a `major threat' in the Best Actor category.

Australia will get the first taste of Australia when simultaneous world premieres are held in Sydney, Bowen and Darwin on Tuesday night. But this will just be a straw poll. The true poll will happen on November 26.

This is when Australia as a nation will vote with its feet when the movie opens in cinemas around the country.

By November 30 Australia will either have sunk like a stone or it will be soaring like the blackest eagle against the bluest Australian sky.
Veteran actor tips Oscar nominations
AUSTRALIAN screen legend Jack Thompson has predicted Baz Luhrmann's Australia will get at least two Academy Award nominations when the shortlist is announced in January.
Australia will be released nationally on November 26, and the all-star cast are not allowed to reveal any of its secrets.

But Thompson, who plays elder statesman Kipling Flynn, said he would bet on it being an Oscar contender.

``We've never made a picture like this before -- it's huge, it's wonderful,'' Thompson said.
``Mandy's (Mandy Walker) cinematography is fabulous, she's a wonderful cinematographer.
``I'd be very surprised if she's not nominated in the Oscars for cinematography, and of course CM's (Catherine Martin) art direction.''

Thompson will see the completed film for the first time at the world premiere on November 18 in Sydney.
He said such a big production would always have its knockers, but he believed Luhrmann had another hit on his hands.

``There's no doubt that when a film is highly anticipated, highly publicised, there's bound to be those who will criticise it for whatever fault they may find in it, but we've never made a film like this one,'' Thompson said.