My Brilliant Career

"Loneliness is a terrible price to pay for independence."

Gillian Armstrong's biggest hit remains My Brilliant Career (1979), a critical and box office smash which turned Judy Davis and Sam Neill into international stars. It seems a typically "tasteful" period melodrama, akin to something from Merchant-Ivory's snooze factory. But Armstrong's adaptation of Miles Franklin's novel proves deliciously complex.

Sybylla Melvin (Judy Davis) resents her life in turn-of-the-century Australia. Family difficulties drive her to live with her cold Grandmother (Aileen Britton), friendly Uncle Julius (Peter Whitford) and Aunt Helen (Wendy Hughes). Sybylla falls for Harry (Sam Neill), a dashing man of means, but rejects his advances. Then circumstances for Sybylla to become governess for a rural neighbor, a role she's neither suited for nor interested in. 

My Brilliant Career beautifully explores the contradictions of feminism. Everyone counsel Sybylla that marriage is the only route to happiness, something she instinctively rejects. She has Helen, ruined by an errant husband, as a counterexample. She's urged to marry for "friendship" or privilege rather than love, which means the doltish Frank (Robert Grubb). Her time as Governess opens another unappealing path: loveless, domineering spinster. Harboring artistic ambitions and self-admitted egotism, she has no desire to be ruled by Victorian patriarchy, caged up like Grandmother's parrots. 

Yet the very traits that make Sybylla admirable compromise her. It's understandable when she rejects Frank's advances and Grandmother's bad advice. But Harry seems a perfect match, sensitive and willing to accommodate Sybylla's desires. Being young we can excuse Sybylla's vague ambitions, but her single-mindedness is less admirable. She makes a nice contrast to Far from the Madding Crowd's Bathsheba and Jane Eyre, ostensibly "independent" women who wind up swooning romantics. Armstrong ends with wistful ambivalence; there's no easy road between independence and marriage.

Indeed, Armstrong and writer Eleanor Witcombe invest Career with subtlety - most obviously through their richly shaded characters. No domineering matriarch, Grandma is stuffy and old-fashioned, but not unsympathetic to Sybylla's plight. Harry is neither rotten bastard nor idealized lover, instead trying to understand his lover. This nuance prevents Career from devolving into feminist diatribe or soap opera.

Armstrong's direction is fairly restrained. Donald McAlpine provides stately photography: pastoral landscapes, hardscrabble farms, cultivated Victorian interiors. Armstrong stages few set pieces (Harry's dance late in the film an exception) with modest period costume and art direction. Yet her almost clinical detachment draws viewers in; Career needs craftsmanship rather than technical flash. Armstrong's refined femininity makes a nice contrast to the hyper-masculine concerns of other Aussie films.

Judy Davis (A Passage to India) ably handles a difficult character, whose admirable qualities make her nigh-insufferable. Behind Davis's endearingly frumpy exterior lies a ferocious will and intelligence: Sybylla pursues her ideal of independence, even if it leaves her broken and unhappy. Davis doesn't play for sympathy, confronting the character's contradictions head on with unsparing detachment.

Sam Neill exudes roguish charm in this early role, yet tempers it with sensitivity. Aileen Britton plays Grandmother to her strengths, a well-meaning reactionary who thinks Sybylla can learn nothing better than to "care for others." Wendy Hughes gets a heartbreaking monologue early in the film, providing an abject rebuke to marriage equaling happiness. Peter Whitford, Robert Grubb and Max Cullen play more archetypical characters. 

Above everything, My Beautiful Career impresses with its intelligence. There's no soap box oratory or bodice ripping, just a thoughtful character study. Can a woman find familial "happiness" without abandoning self-hood? Are independence and love antithetical? Gillian Armstrong provides no easy answers, and plenty of food for thought.

Wake in Fright

For years, Wake in Fright (1971) lingered in the pantheon of "lost films." One badly duped copy existed in Dublin; scattered VHS copies, retitled Outback, remained shut away in cinephiles' basements. Then in 2002, editor Anthony Buckley discovered the original materials in Pittsburgh. Years of painstaking restoration and legal wrangling followed, the film getting a limited art house release in 2009.

Wake in Fright helped usher in Australia's New Wave, transforming that country from cinematic also-ran to movie powerhouse. Like the same year's Walkabout, it's directed by a non-Australian: Ted Kotcheff was a Canadian director, later of North Dallas Forty and First Blood. That's not to take away from its Aussiness. This adaptation of Kenneth Cook's novel is palpably raw, finding a razor's edge beneath the Down Under stereotype.

John Grant (Gary Bond) is a vacationing school teacher who makes a one-night stop in Bundanyabba. John initially holds locals like policeman Jock (Chips Rafferty) and Tim Hynes (Al Thomas) in contempt as stupid, overfriendly hicks. When John loses his money in a game of two-up, he's forced to linger in the town, falling in with Tim and eccentric Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasance). A series of increasingly disturbing adventures occur, from a kangaroo hunt to a botched tryst with Tim's wife Jeanette (Sylvia Kay), with John wondering if he'll ever escape.

Wake in Fright's set-up resembles Straw Dogs and Deliverance, with an educated man destroyed by hicks. Yet Fright is more subtle than those shows, couching its story as psychological horror. Bundanyabba's denizens are just living the life they know; bored in a small town, they've little else but drink and sport. The only females about are Jeanette and a hotel clerk (Maggie Dence), both teasing strumpets. John gets little joy from his life or work, posted to a small town; he's all too readily drawn to dissolution.

Essentially, Kotcheff and writer Evan Jones craft a study in macho excess. Everything in Bundanyabba's taken to extremes, from friendship to aggression. Jock's friendly offer of beers becomes an all-night bender. John wins some money gambling, only to blow his entire wad on a return throw. The kangaroo hunt turns into a gory, degrading horror show (made worse by the fact that this is real footage). Challenged by his cohorts, John tries to prove his masculinity frolicking with Jeanette - then promptly vomits. He's ultimately smothered under the barrage of bonhomie; "the Yabba" becomes an inescapable hell.

Kotcheff's direction provides a surreal capper. Early scenes take in the Outback's harsh beauty, matched with John Scott's suitably playful score. But Kotcheff ratchets up the story with increased violence, elliptical flashbacks and terrifying montage work. As John wrestles with a kangaroo, we get terrifying close-ups of his pals' sadistic laughter, a scene recalling the cackling bandits of For a Few Dollars More. John's debauchery mashes memories into a freakish nightmare of sex, booze and gambling coins.

Gary Bond appeared in Zulu and Anne of the Thousand Days but never became a leading man. Resembling a brown-eyed Peter O'Toole, Bond depicts John's unraveling with smoldering intensity. Donald Pleasance gives a subtle edge to Doc's malignant weirdness; you never know just how villainous he is. Chips Rafferty, once Australia's leading film star, gets a fine sendoff. Jack Thompson makes his film debut as a roo hunter. Thompson became ubiquitous in Aussie cinema, from the classic Breaker Morant through Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby.

Wake in Fright is definitely strong stuff: the violence, baroque editing and crushing atmosphere will turn away many viewers. Those able to stomach its rougher edges will find a remarkably uncompromising work.

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978) makes for bleak viewing. Fred Schepsi's Outback epic achieved notoriety for its extreme violence, which is only part of its rich texture. It's a disquieting mediation on race and colonialism, trapping its protagonist between rebellion and self-destruction.

Jimmie Blacksmith (Tom E. Lewis) is a half-caste Aborigine raised by the Reverend Neville (Jack Thompson). Jimmie tries to fit in to Australian society, working as a laborer, farmhand and policeman and marrying the white Gilda (Angela Punch Macgregor). But he can't overcome engrained white prejudice and grows increasingly bitter. Then Gilda gives birth to a white child, whose parentage Jimmie doubts. His latest employer (Don Crosby) finally pushes Jimmie too far, triggering a bloody killing spree. 

Outwardly, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith seems a standard liberal outrage picture. Australia's had a long history of mistreating or exploiting its aboriginals, whether through extermination or intermarriage with whites. This subject's informed a number of recent films, notably Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) and Australia (2008). Some later scenes do espouse an overt message, as when schoolmaster McCreadie (Peter Carroll) enumerates the "benefits" (namely alcohol and measles!) that Europeans introduced to Australia. But Schepsi, adapting Thomas Keneally's novel, mostly makes his points through nuanced storytelling.

Jimmie starts out submissive and cheerful, wearing white clothes and smiling at insults. He's considered a hopeful prospect for civilizing: Neville encourages him to marry a white girl to produce quarter-black offspring (and hence dilute the native gene pool). But his efforts to act white only earn suspicion and condescension. McCreadie's friendliness unnerves Jimmie: a man who unblinkingly killed an infant can't bring himself to harm someone who genuinely respects him. Whether playing the "good native" or rapacious savage, Jimmie's lost his own sense of agency: he's defined and destroyed by the European mindset.

Yet Schepsi avoids making Jimmie Blacksmith a revenge fantasy, or its protagonist a Civil Rights martyr. Indeed, Jimmie's a morally compromised character from the start: he doesn't mind maiming Aboriginals as a policeman (though he draws the line at murder). He certainly forfeits our sympathy when he butchers whole families with rifles and axes. This rampage makes the Apache depredations of Ulzana's Raid seem chivalrous, yet points to the story's tragedy. Australian society, from callous officials to a ruthless posse, now has license to slam uppity "blacks" into place.

Schepsi skillfully evokes turn-of-the-century Australia, mixing period design with dialogue about the upcoming Federation and the Boer War. (One pointed aside has a character contrasting Britain's critique of Boer racism with their own treatment of native Australians.) As expected the violence is graphic, complete with axe murders, shootouts and brutal beatings. It's contrasted effectively with beautiful Australian scenery, bolstered by Ian Baker's gorgeous photography and Bruce Smeaton's suitably tragic score. It's a gritty, violent show that nonetheless achieves aesthetic grandeur.

Tom E. Lewis (The Proposition) gives a remarkable turn. He's effortlessly charming yet lets hints of Jimmie's frustration periodically slip through. His first murder impacts viewers like a carefully timed explosion. Steve Dodd and Freddy Reynolds play Jimmie's relatives drawn into his vendetta. Several up-and-coming Australian stars feature in supporting parts: Jack Thompson (Breaker Morant) as the Reverend, Angela Punch Macgregor as Jimmie's wife, Peter Carroll (The Last Wave) as the obsequious McCreadie and Brian Brown in a walk-on role.

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is a remarkably powerful film. Rarely listed among the highlights of the Australian New Wave, its violent pessimism earns comparison to that period's best American Westerns.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Something went fundamentally wrong with The Great Gatsby at the conceptual stage. Coming from Baz Luhrmann, it's no secret that the movie's loud, gaudy and overblown, a paean to self-indulgent excess. But Gatsby's a truly agonizing monstrosity, making Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet look like Separate Tables - or the '74 adaptation look like Citizen Kane. Imagine the worst music video ever stretched out to two-and-a-half hours, claiming to be an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.

Copy and paste plot summary: Stock broker Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) makes the acquaintance of Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), a mysterious millionaire who throws swanky parties on Long Island but never attends himself. Through Nick, Gatsby reunites with his old flame Daisy (Carey Mulligan), trapped in an unhappy marriage with snobbish, unfaithful Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton). Tom gets suspicious, digging into Gatsby's past, dredging up ties to organized crime. Tragedy strikes when Tom's affair with lower class Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher) results in an accident.

The Great Gatsby starts dialed up to 11 and somehow gets more obnoxious. Luhrmann demolishes our senses with every cheap cinematic trick imaginable. There's caffeinated editing, swooping faux-camera work and laughable CGI, rendered in eye-exploding 3-D. There's text superimposed on the screen, sped-up photography intercut with gratuitous slow motion, sloppily inserted stock footage and incongruous hip hop music. Gatsby's parties are indescribably tacky: he first appears with Rhapsody in Blue blaring on the soundtrack as fireworks explode behind him, and that's the most subtle image. If Federico Fellini saw Gatsby, he'd advise Luhrmann to tone it down a notch.

Sadly, Luhrmann offers little beyond this sensory assault. For two acts there's nothing but exorbitant costumes, gauche art direction, gaudy exotic dancers, orgies and Beyonce tunes. And it drags on for a painful 143 minutes. There's no effort to make the story or characters credible: Nick's re-envisioned as a budding novelist, relating his story in flashback to a shrink (Jack Thompson). Gatsby and Daisy's connection becomes a tragic romance rather than a desperate fling. Did Luhrmann even read Fitzgerald? Source fidelity extends to plot points, some cribbed dialogue and the obvious symbols delivered with ice mallet subtlety. That damned eyeglasses billboard appears at least a dozen times, always in extreme close up. We get it already!

In the third act Gatsby transitions to dark drama. Here we get the meatiest scenes: Gatsby outlining his true back story, Tom confronting Gatsby, a tragic accident and subsequent murder. Unfortunately, Luhrmann pitches the human element at the same hysterical level. If the imagery and music feel comparatively restrained, the acting goes into frothing overdrive. Characters foam, scream, throw things and chew scenery. Even quiet moments are punctuated with affected gestures and pantomime posturing. But what did you expect? This movie thinks so little of its audience that it stops to explain who Kaiser Wilhelm was.

Leonardo DiCaprio tries, God bless him, to make Gatsby credible. He fails miserably. DiCaprio is just too bland, the character too poorly written to register. Tobey Maguire provides Nick an insufferable faux-naivety; his line readings make him sound mentally challenged, surely not the intent. Carey Mulligan (Drive) is more likeable than Mia Farrow but Joel Edgerton provides cringe-worthy cartoon villainy. Jason Clarke (Zero Dark Thirty) and Isla Fisher see their roles reduced to nothing. Jack Thompson (Breaker Morant) turns up for no reason.

I don't unconditionally hate Baz Luhrmann: heck, I enjoyed the much-derided Australia. His style's no less overwrought there, but wedded to a swooning epic romance it's enjoyable as pastiche. The Great Gatsby is nothing but crass vulgarity disguised as dizzying art. However appropriate that seems for Fitzgerald, in practice it's a catastrophe of Billy Jack proportions.

The Last Wave

Peter Weir followed Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) with The Last Wave (1977). Another exploration of modern society's clash with the supernatural, it falls short of his previous effort.

Several Aborigines in Sydney kill another for violating tribal law. Lawyer David Burton (Richard Chamberlain) takes their case but is frustrated by their refusal to cooperate. Australia is wracked by unusual storms while David has repeated visions of Chris Lee (David Gulpilil), an Aborigine associate of the killers. After meeting Chris and his mysterious associate Charlie (Nandjiwarra Amagula), David grows convinced that the strange events portend apocalypse.

Where Hanging Rock was opaquely spiritual, The Last Wave provides overt mysticism. Weir inundates Australia with apocalyptic weather: hail from a cloudless sky, rains of frogs and oil. These phenomena will be familiar to Charles Fort fans but might have earthly explanations. Less explicable are David's fugue visions of watery death and mental bond with Chris Lee. David seems to have tapped into a primal super-conscious, the Aborigine Dreamtime that places humans on an entirely different spiritual level.

Weir plays up this culture clash, carefully paralleling white and Aboriginal cultures. Where Aborigines see the strange weather as otherworldly portents, a radio weatherman provides meteorological rationales. Both Aborigine and white culture place reverential emphasis on their legal systems and religions. Still, the film ultimately sides with the former: most pointedly, David envisions his radio leaking water during a forecast. The ending in Sydney's sewers removes all doubt.

Why isn't The Last Wave as effective as Hanging Rock? Partly because of its certainty: placing undeniable anomalies in a realistic setting seems a cheat. But there are several story flaws too. Weir unceremoniously drops the killers' fate after a quick trial. He also complicates David's quest with a nagging family; what hoarier device exists than a wife (Olivia Hamnett) who doesn't understand our noble hero? David's showdown with an underground shaman proves laughable. And after earlier visions the last scene isn't as striking as it should be.

Richard Chamberlain channels his limited range into studied, anguished intensity. David Gulpilli seems the ubiquitous screen Aborigine, from Walkabout through The Proposition and Australia. He's thoroughly charming here. More striking still is Nandjiwarra Amagula, a real-life tribal elder who provides mystical menace. Supporting roles go to Olivia Hamnett, Vivean Gray, Frederick Parslow, and Peter Carroll.

The Last Wave is an interesting but flawed film. Despite its intriguing premise and striking imagery, it never comes together like it should.

Picnic at Hanging Rock

"Waiting a million years, just for us."

Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) is a truly strange movie. Maddeningly opaque by design, this adaptation of Joan Lindsey's novel frustrates all efforts at categorization. Weir employs sumptuous artistry at the service of an unsolvable riddle.

On Valentine's Day 1900, the girls of Appleyard College in Woodend, Australia lunch at Hanging Rock. Three girls vanish without trace, along with teacher Ms. McCraw (Vivean Gray). The mystery turns Woodend upside down: Police Sergeant Bumpher (Wyn Roberts) fends off frenzied reporters and irate townspeople. Visiting Englishman Michael (Dominic Hubert) and valet Bertie (John Jarratt) obsessively comb the Rock for evidence. Headmistress Ms. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) seems most concerned with Sara (Margaret Nelson), a foundling obsessed with missing Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert). One girl's reappearance only complicates things.

Australian films seem preoccupied with contrasting the country's Western culture and primeval landscape. Confronting white Australians with Aborigines is a common device, establishing clear racial and spiritual conflicts. Weir himself explored these themes in The Last Wave (1977), but provides a more abstract opposition in Hanging Rock. Civilization isn't opposed by fellow humans but Australia itself: a land of physical beauty and dark secrets.

Weir nails both aspects. Australia's never looked lovelier, with Russell Boyd's photography striking a pantheist tone. He mixes gorgeous scenery with copious fauna: hungry ants, curious koalas, croaking birds and frilled lizards crowd the frame, even a "moving" plant. The Rock itself seems alive, with face-like cliffs peering intently at the girls. Bruce Smeaton's score mixes Gheorghe Zamfir's dreamy panpipes with Mozart and Men of Harlech, musically highlighting the culture clash.

These aesthetics conceal an unsettling edge. Weir and writer Cliff Green sprinkle portents throughout early scenes: Miranda casually tells Sara she "won't be here much longer." Ms. McCraw muses over Hanging Rock's formation a million years ago, "quite young geologically speaking." Every character's watch stops upon arrival at the Rock. The girls utter profundities as they near the peak, seemingly entranced. Natural portents grow more sinister: Edith (Chrstine Schuler) reports an ominous "red cloud," flies engulf a police bloodhound, Michael repeatedly encounters a telltale swan.

This invests the show with supernatural qualities, its story existing on an abnormal temporal plane. Weir doesn't completely rule out conventional explanations (abduction? murder? accident?) but without hard evidence they seem unconvincing. The girls apparently stumble on some primal secret: perhaps a higher consciousness like Aborigine Dreamtime? Lindsey later published an explanatory epilogue, The Secret of Hanging Rock, which only makes things stranger.

The story's key event resembles A Passage to India, another colonial tale focusing on a cliff-side mystery. Like Adela Quested, the Appleyard girls explosively mix nature with repressed sexuality. Dressed in virginal white, they recite love sonnets and dance joyfully about the rock. Even Ms. McCraw removes her corset before disappearing. Loveless Sara worships Miranda, a mystical girl who similarly enraptures Michael. Mrs. Appleyard goes mad from her own repression (shades of Black Narcissus?). The only healthy sexuality comes from Appleyard's servants (Tony Llewelyn-Jones and Jacki Weaver).

Frankly, Hanging Rock's central mystery isn't so alienating as its structure. Weir touches on many themes (the media circus surrounding Bumpher's investigation, Appleyard's school falling into disrepute) but leaves them as brief sketches, details in a mosaic. The plot is elliptical at best, the characters enigmatic. Rock lacks a figure like Forster's Mrs. Moore, observing "passing figures in a Godless universe" with studied objectivity. Everyone grows absorbed in the mystery, their psyches warped by sheer incomprehension.

Rachel Roberts plays against type as a frighteningly repressed, tormented governess. At first she seems merely cruel, but later scenes reveal her insecurity and anguish. Anne-Louise Lambert makes a striking Miranda: with Boyd's angelic lighting she truly is a "Botticelli Angel." Margaret Nelson's Sara is mostly meaningful glances and tragic gestures. John Jarratt's earthy Bertie ("I say the crude things; you just think them") proves the most likeable character next to Helen Morse's French nanny.

Picnic at Hanging Rock proves uniquely absorbing. Through its sumptuous visuals and eerie conceit, it ultimately depicts human fear of the unknown. Given the evidence presented though, maybe it's better that we don't know what happened.

The Proposition (2005)

John Hillcoat's The Proposition (2005) is a strange, heavily stylized Aussie Western. Its elliptical storytelling both fascinates and frustrates, sublimating thin story and characters to beautiful scenery and violence. Whatever its sins, it's certainly a unique experience.

English lawman Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) captures bushranger Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) after a violent shootout. Using Charlie's brother Mickey (Richard Wilson) as persuasion, Stanley offers Charlie a pardon if he'll track down homicidal brother Arthur (Danny Huston), hiding in the Outback. Charlie accepts, disgusted by Arthur's murder of an innocent family, but becomes ambivalent upon rejoining Arthur. Meanwhile, Stanley feels pressure from landowner Fletcher (David Wenham) and his wife (Emily Watson) to punish Mickey for Arthur's crime. The two sides lurch towards a confrontation, with Charlie's loyalty the wildcard.

The Proposition is certainly seductive. Hillcoat and photographer Benoit Delhomme successfully craft a mystical, otherworldly atmosphere. The glowing sunsets, sun-baked desert and forbidding mountains are breathtakingly unreal, more Picnic at Hanging Rock than The Searchers. This contrasts well with the muddy, ramshackle frontier towns, with Stanley and wife holding a Christmas dinner amidst the Outback. He mixes this scenic beauty with grisly violence, including a stomping death, machete decapitations and a bloody flogging. Throw a haunting Nick Cave/Warren Ellis score and you have a peculiarly resonant film.

While many Aussie Westerns play off American archetypes, The Proposition heavily deconstructs them. Captain Stanley is established as a tough lawman but folds under pressure, be it the callow Fletcher, a lynch mob or his vengeful wife. He doesn't even get the dignity of a showdown with Arthur. Charlie has several run-ins with Jellon Lamb (John Hurt), a wily bounty hunter who's a drunken racist. Hillcoat shows tension between "civilized" and "renegade" Aborigines, caught in a brutal "police action" with atrocities on both sides. Compared with this lot the conflicted Charlie and poetic Arthur seem almost heroic.

But The Proposition's mythic craftsmanship ultimately feels hollow. The characters act like Greek tragedians, each driving towards inexorable fates. They don't seem real or fully realized; they're too knowingly mythic, lacking in motivation or sympathetic qualities. Nick Cave's script lingers on gruesome set pieces more than story coherence, with interesting threads lost in the shuffle. For all his opaqueness Hillcoat falls back on cliche when convenient. The awkwardly contrived finale (not unlike 3:10 to Yuma) proves especially unsatisfactory.

Guy Pearce broods excessively well, all worried scowls and rangy physicality. Danny Huston (John Adams) steals the show as a chillingly philosophical psychopath. Emily Watson (War Horse) registers strongly in a thankless role while Aborigine actors David Gulpilli (Australia) and Tom E. Lewis shine. On the negative ledger, Ray Winstone is too passive to earn much sympathy, while David Wenham (Public Enemies) never rises above Snidley Whiplash levels. John Hurt (A Man for All Seasons) contributes a strange cameo.

If The Proposition isn't fully satisfying, it's still an intriguing movie. Certainly its combination of mystical atmosphere and savage violence leaves an impression.

Ned Kelly (2003)

The last decade saw a spate of Australia-set Westerns. John Hillcoat's The Proposition (2005) transfers Peckinpah-esque brutality to the Outback, while Baz Luhrman's Australia (2008) grafts Red River's cattle drive plot onto a wartime romance. With its colorful outlaws, Aborigines, forbidding deserts and class warfare, the Land of Aus sports its own unique frontier mythology. 


Ned Kelly (2003) follows a traditional path. Australia's most famous bushranger has been the subject of several films. The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) was purportedly the first feature-length movie ever made (opinions vary). Tony Richardson's abysmal Ned Kelly (1970) cast Mick Jagger in a counterculture version. Gregor Jordan's take casts Kelly as an Australian Jesse James fighting crooked cops. The result's entertaining if uninspired.

Ned Kelly (Heath Ledger) is arrested in 1870s Victoria, falsely accused of stealing a horse. Trouble keeps finding Ned, especially when a trouble-making policeman (Kiri Paramore) harasses his gal pal (Naomi Watts). After killing three policemen in self-defense, Ned goes on the lamb with cocky friend Joe Byrne (Orlando Bloom) and brother David (Laurence Kinlan). The trio embark on an outlaw career and become folk heroes, while being pursued by ruthless Superintendent Hare (Geoffrey Rush).

Ned Kelly's drama proves extremely familiar. Jordan and every mine Robin Hood cliche, stacking the deck to make Kelly an hero. One cringe-inducing bit has Kelly begging forgiveness from a dying policeman a la Kevin Costner in The Untouchables. The protagonists are likeable but the villains colorless. Unlike Hillcoat's recent Lawless, which plays on similar cops-and-robbers cliches, Ned's drama is often slack even as the body count rises. Jordan salvages this with excellent action scenes, especially the final showdown: Kelly's armor-clad gang blasting away in a rainstorm makes an arresting image.

What saves Ned Kelly is its intriguing class dynamic. Kelly and his gang are Irish immigrants, and their proletarian appeal is contrasted sharply with Anglo-Australian society. Despite Hare's proclamation that Kelly isn't an "animal" but a very clever man, he's marked as a villain before he commits a crime. Jordan throws in odd visual cues to enforce this: animal imagery is frequently invoked (vultures picking at dead cattle, a circus lion caught in a shootout), along with a brief encounter with a native. The allegory's unsubtle but gives Ned an edge missing from most Westerns.

Heath Ledger sublimates his heartthrob persona to an intense, brooding protagonist. Orlando Bloom shows an off-hand charisma lacking in later star turns (Kingdom of Heaven anyone?). Geoffrey Rush is wasted in a role that requires little more than a baleful glower, while Naomi Watts (J. Edgar) plays a colorless love interest.

Ned Kelly makes a fine entry in the Outback Western genre. With the Hollywood Western largely moribund it's nice to see Australians picking up the slack.

Gallipoli

Gallipoli (1981) is a superlative war film. Director Peter Weir moves from the bizarre atmospherics of Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) to a moving tale of World War I's most disastrous campaign - the Anglo-French invasion of Gallipoli, Turkey.

Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee) is an aspiring runner trapped on a farm in the wilds of West Australia. World War I breaks out and Archy feels compelled to enlist, despite the protests of his Uncle (Bill Kerr), who feels the war doesn't concern Australia. At an athletic event, Archy meets Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson), a ne'er-do-well fellow sprinter, and the two trek to Perth to join the Lighthorse Regiment. After training in Egypt, they're sent to join the Allied landing at Gallipoli, aimed at knocking the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Archy and Frank find themselves front and center for a desperate attack against well-entrenched Turkish troops at Anzac Cove.

Gallipoli stands at the forefront of Australian heritage films from the '80s, emphasizing their heroic role in Britain's imperial conflicts. It lacks the anger of the previous year's Breaker Morant but has the same message: Australian lives are wasted by callous British generals. A mixture of miscommunication (a telephone line with the Lighthorse Colonel (John Morris) fails during the battle) and pig-headedness causes of the carnage, killing thousands for no appreciable gain. The battles are brief but extremely harrowing: the first two waves in the final attack are mowed down literally in seconds by Turkish machine gun fire. The gut-wrenching finale rivals All Quiet on the Western Front as a potent anti-war statement.

However, Gallipoli keeps sermonizing in the background and focuses on its characters. Both protagonists are strongly sketched: Archy idealistically serving his country and naively trusting imperial propaganda ("We fight them there so they won't come over here!"), Frank a likeable scoundrel more interested in chasing girls than war. Their early scenes in Australia are endearing, their reunion in Egypt poignant and their fate in Turkey shocking. As a representation of a generation of Aussies, forging a national identity through wartime sacrifice, they're compelling and believable.

Weir manages an impressive production on a relatively tight budget. The film transitions from character drama to war film with ease, matching the scenic beauty of the South Australian desert and Egyptian pyramids with an impressive recreation of the Dardanelles trenches. The battle scenes are horrifying, but the most creative sequence involves soldiers dodging shrapnel while swimming nude at the beach. A synth-heavy score by Brian May and Jean-Michel Jarre strikes a false note, however.

Mel Gibson had already made a splash in Mad Max two years prior, but this film catapulted him to superstardom. Gibson's full of raw charisma, perfectly suited for his roguish character, but never hogs the spotlight. Mark Lee gives a fine performance, likeable and believably idealistic. Bill Kerr (as Archy's Uncle) and Bill Hunter (as a sympathetic Major) give strong supporting turns.

A seminal work in Australian cinema, Gallipoli is an excellent take on World War I, Australia's emerging national identity and wartime friendship and loss. Other Aussie films (The Light Horsemen, Anzacs) touch on these themes, but never to such strong effect.

Breaker Morant

In tribute to the recently departed Edward Woodward, I rewatched Bruce Bereford's Breaker Morant (1980) today. As an examination of the cruelty and moral ambiguities of modern warfare, the ephemeral nature of military justice, and the injustice of empire, it's scarcely been topped, thanks to fine direction and a phenomenal cast. Above all else, though, it's a damned entertaining and believable film, a stirring mixture of war picture and courtroom drama.

In the waning days of the Boer War, a trio of British soldiers - ne'er-do-well Englishmen Harry "Breaker" Morant (Edward Woodward) and Australians Handcock (Bryan Brown) and Witton (Lewis Fitz-Gerald) - of the Bushveldt Carbineers (a crack special forces unit assigned to hunt down Boer commandos) are charged with murdering a group of Boer prisoners and, more importantly, a German missionary (Bruno Kenz). With the war winding to a close, and Germany looking for an excuse to intervene, the British government is hoping for a speedy conviction to avoid a political mess. But the soldiers' determined attorney, Major Thomas (Jack Thompson), proves a tough nut to crack, and he attempts to show that in killing the Boers, Morant and his men were merely following the directives of British war policy issued by Lord Horatio Kitchener (Alan Cassell).

Breaker Morant bears more than a passing resemblance to Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957), but is far more subtle and nuanced than that film. Kubrick's film stacked the deck against the military establishment: the three soldiers to executed were unquestionably innocent of anything, and are callously sacrificed to the whims of politically-ambitious officers. Although a good enough film to an extent, Glory is often stilted, theatrical and heavy-handed in making its points, particularly its dud ending. The issue here isn't so much a critique of military justice, as a cry against the cruelty and waste of war in general, made with the broadest strokes possible.

Breaker Morant is no less angry but it makes its points more believably. A key point that the film makes is that Morant and his men are unquestionably guilty; the question, rather, is whether or not they are responsible for their actions. The film is replete in moral ambiguity; it does not condone what Morant and his men do, but makes it understandable. After all, they lost their beloved Captain (Terence Donovan) in a Boer ambush, and Morant's men are far from the first or last soldiers to take out anger on enemy combatants. As Thomas says in his closing summary, it's not that these are abnormal, violent men, but normal men in abnormal conditions.

In any war, especially a guerilla war with no frontline or uniformed combatants (as we see on the Boer raid against the town where Morant and Co. are being held), atrocities like the Carbineers' are a daily occurence. When they're made official policy, they are even more likely to occur, and Morant and his men are put on trial, in effect, for obeying orders. In a war which (along with the Spanish in Cuba and America in the Philippines) saw the first use of concentration camps and frequent summary executions of commandos, killing Morant and his men for their fairly minor infraction is the height of hypocrisy. (Ironically, they are acquitted of killing the missionary - the one crime they are unquestionably guilty of.) The reasons are purely political; with Germany threatening to enter the war and the Boers nearing the point of capitulation, sacrificing some rogue colonials and an outcast officer is a small price to pay.

The characters are believably drawn. Morant is a complex mixture of war-weariness, romanticism and anger throughout the film. Handcock is a vulgar yet charming rogue with little remorse for his crime; Witton seems a typically naive shavetail at first but becomes more complex as the film goes on. The only major flaw in the major characters is that Major Thomas, believably portrayed as a bumbling novice in his early scenes, quickly turns into an accomplished lawyer able to chew through. The supporting cast of Brits are mostly self-righteous, bloody-minded fools of the sort all too common in this type of film (see also Gallipoli).

The film excells in its modest courtroom dynamics due to strong writing and acting; the trial scenes provide real drama and tension even if the verdict is pre-ordained. Beresford handles the relatively modest action scenes with aplomb, and the film has some genuinely gorgeous Australian landscapes subbing for South Africa. The movie has some genuinely striking scenes, most notably the oddly touching execution which lacks the theatrical pomposity of the aforementioned Kubrick film; it does loudly make a point, but it also works as a scene in itself.

Edward Woodward gives a fine performance, masterfully underplaying his tricky, morally ambiguous character. Jack Thompson (Australia) gets the showiest role, pulling off his impromptu defense attorney with the appropriate amount of righteous indignation. Bryan Brown and Lewis Fitz-Gerald are equally strong as the irreverent Handcock and the naive Witton. Though the British higher-ups are portrayed in as one-dimensional brutes, John Waters gives a nuanced portrayal of Captain Taylor, the prosecuting attorney, not necessarily conflicted but able to recognize Thomas (and his defendant's) predicament.

Breaker Morant is an excellent film, doing some of the best work in examining the moral ambiguities of war and justice. With guerilla conflicts continuing in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, the issue of morality in an immoral war is more pertinent than ever. Hopefully it won't take a Breaker Morant or William Calley to bring these incongruities to light.

Australia

It's very rare that a newly-released movie has much effect on me. For the most part, despite my best efforts to the contrary, I have a decidedly cynical view about the current state of cinema; I'm willing to watch it, but I find very little to be truly memorable. I might have a fun time with something like Pirates of the Caribbean or Charlie Wilson's War, but only on extremely rare occasions do I encounter a film that has any bearing beyond the two hours I spend in my seat. Where's our Stanley Kubrick, our David Lean, our Alfred Hitchcock? Stuff like The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford - examples of old-fashioned film-making, avoiding for the most parts the quick-cutting, overlit and washed-out, obviously fake wowzer special effects for the sake of style and tertiary, profunctory story telling method of most modern films - are exceedingly rare, and when one comes along, it's like a puddle of water in Death Valley. Even many of the most acclaimed movies of recent years seemed curiously empty and lacking compared to the work of the masters.

Then comes a movie like Australia. Which is the kind of movie that comes along maybe once in a decade. When they say they don't make them like they used to - usually us crotchety grandpa types - this is the kind of movie they tend to be referring to. You don't see movies like this any more, because. But with Australia, Baz Luhrman has given us an invaluable cinematic gift.

I found it amusing to perview the extraordinarily mixed critical reviews of the movie; many people love it, others despise it, seemingly for the same reason. Indeed, whoever wrote up the IMDB review summary shrewdly notes that critics have been "twist(ing) similar words around" to describe the movie, to alternately praise and damn it. What this points to says more about the viewer: you either like this kind of movie or you don't. As audiences didn't give a shit when Pauline Kael lambasted Doctor Zhivago and Richard Corliss (and a million lifeless Internet geeks and bitter teenaged boys) roasted Titanic, so will those susceptible to this kind of film making disregard the utterances of some overpaid navel-gazing snobs (but look who's talking).

The film's plot takes place in World War II-era Belize - no, wait, Australia. Japan is threatening to enter the war and bring it home to Aussies, while Australia soldiers are shipping off to Europe and Africa to die for England. Much of Australia is uncharted, wild territory, ruled by crooked politicians and cattle barons like King Carney (Bryan Brown). And of course, it's home to an oppressive caste system, where aborigines are treated as subhuman outsiders and half-breeds - "creamies" - are even worse. Nullah (Brandon Walters) is one such boy; the son of an aboriginal woman and Fletcher (David Wenham) a vicious, ruthlessly ambitious cattle herder, he witnesses the murder of Carney's chief rival and tries to flee from arrest. The wife of said cattle baron, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), arrives in Australia to negotiate the sale of her cattle, only to find her husband dead and her land in desperate need of repair. With the help of a handsome, tough-guy cattle drover (Hugh Jackman), Nullah and the usual assorted sidekicks, she struggles to drive her herd to Darwin, finding Fletcher trying to stop her every step of the way. Afterwards, Drover and Sarah marry but find themselves seemingly incompatible, while Fletcher claws his way to the top and is in a position to topple Sarah's empire. However, World War II interferes, leading to a denouement in the streets of a bombed-out Darwin.

Australia is a sweeping epic; as one of the world's biggest Leaniacs, it's of immense complements for me to say that it bears actual comparison to the works of that master. Not since The English Patient has a movie captured such a wonderful sense of timelessness, a feeling of romance swept up by the tides of history. Some might call it cliched, but I'd opt for the term old-fashioned; it feels like Gone With the Wind or Doctor Zhivago. And it comes pretty close to looking like them too.

The movie seems a bit schizophrenic at first - the first half's cattle drive and civilized girl out "West" (or East, in this instance) story definitely seems like a Western (Drover even gets a tough guy, Clint Eastwood-ian intro scene, and the cattle drive scenes certain recall Howard Hawks' Red River), while the second half, with its romance and personal conflicts with a historical turmoil, is a much more conventional genre picture. But in my view, this is all for the better. It follows the two-act structure of many an epic film of old, and though different at first glance, the two halves complement each other perfectly.

The early scenes are a bit jarring; Nulla's narration is a mite annoying at first, the animated title display seems out of place, and some of Sarah's early scenes are a bit too parodic and overwrought. The angle of the "mystical aborigine" - personified by Nulla's grandfather, the omni-present King George (David Gulpilil) - is a mite overdone as well, although it's satisfactorily dealt with in the conclusion. Still, most of this awkardness is sorted out by the third reel or so.

Technically, the film is a marvel; if nothing else, it's one of the most beautiful, ravishing movies of the last ten years. Luhrman, a director not usually known for subtlety, manages to keep his usual excess in check (with only a few excusable moments of unnecessary flair and wow moments) and delivers us a handsomely mounted, beautiful film. The Outback scenery is ravishing, Mandy Walker's cinematography brilliantly capturing the stark beauty of Australia, both forbidding and gorgeous at the same time. CGI is used quite often, but would you expect otherwise? In the movie's big set-pieces - the Japanese bombing, and more notably the breath-taking cattle stampede - they're gob-smackingly brilliant. If you need convincing that these modern cinematic tools can be put to good use, then look no further.

The cast is flawless. Hugh Jackman gives an excellent performance as Drover, tough, believable, with a romantic side that seems perfectly natural. It's a shame he's not a bigger star, because he's just perfectly for this type of role. Nicole Kidman isn't far behind Jackman here, her frosty beauty perfectly suited for her character. At first her character is rather grating, seeming like an implausibly ditzy and posh refugee from a Merchant-Ivory film, but as her character develops she becomes more and more likeable, and her annoying and awkward early scenes serve to help character development. The two make a dynamite couple, attractive and believable, their conflicts and differences seeming real rather than a plot device.

While Geoffrey Rush and Cate Blanchett are inexplicably absent, the cast is populated with a plethora of brilliant Aussie actors. Old pros like Breaker Morant vets Jack Thompson and Bryan Brown have solid supporting roles; David Wenham handles his gleefully evil rotter with aplomb, and Ben Mendelsohn gives a strong background performance as a dignified Army Captain. Brandon Walters gives an excellent performance as Nulla, occasionally irritating but always convincing as the boy who is really the focus of the story.

I will concede that Australia isn't for everyone; the current generation of movie-goers may or may not appreciate it (I won't issue a blanket condemnation for the moment), and the usual cranky critics who abhor this sort of film. Let them write what they will, sneer as they like. Those of us who love these movies and can appreciate their beauty and craft will be more than satisfied. During the credits, I found myself on the verge of tears, utterly enthralled, unable to leave until the last frame had spooled off the screen. Now that is a cinematic experience. All that's left to say is: Thank you, Baz Luhrman. And readers: go see this movie right this second.

Rating: 9/10 - Highest Recommendation