Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008)

By Daniel Greenwood

This review contains Nicole Kidman.

As in many Australian period films, Australia employs an opening voice over, but this time with the childish pitch of young Nullah (Brandon Walters). The young Aboriginal boy’s plight is supposedly at the heart of the movie, and it’s with his identity: he’s neither ‘White-fella’ nor ‘Black-fella’. The youngster also has to continually hide in a water tower as the authorities come after him, trying to steal him away ala Rabbit Proof Fence (Phillip Noyce, 2002). Nullah’s voice-over steers Luhrmann’s camera around a CGI map that shows us the British Isles draped in a Union Jack. This is where ‘our story’ begins, where most of these colonial stories begin really – in England. However, they do not begin in the 1930s, as Australia’s does. Cynics might think that it’s an attempt to re-write history, the cynics.

Baz Luhrmann’s mondo-epic, aptly titled Australia, has been derided by Germaine Greer for its tourist board funding-schemes and Luhrmann’s exploitation of the Kimberley (a tourist trap if there ever was one). It’s true, at times, the film does will you to come-and-visit the actually not-so-savage Indigenous Australians and their not-so-terra-nullius homeland. Unlike Charles Chauvel’s peculiar and uncomfortable story of failed assimilation, Jedda (1955), there are no Nasty Blacks to disrupt the colonial goodtimes. Instead, it’s the whites that do all the bad things. Thus the obvious problem here is historical. Luhrmann was never one to show his audience the Real, and so Australia was always going to be a patched-up attempt at chronicling recent Australian history. The truth is out there.

England is home to Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), whose Christian name is a neat play on the Christian name of Jedda’s mother in Chauvel’s film, who is also called Sarah. Another neat name-play is that of Nullah’s dog, she’s called Jedda. She gets shot. But Lady Sarah Ashley herself is no textual cross-over, she’s a lady. Though, Kidman’s strangely haggard gait would suggest otherwise. Sarah travels over to Australia with a Titanic’s worth of garms and threads, only to be gradually reduced to the bare necessities as the story progresses. Sarah has come to meet her husband at the Faraway Downs Farm, but, upon closer inspection, he’s been murdered. And no one really minds. In fact, Sarah recovers pretty quickly, but then who wouldn’t with that hunk-a-spunk Drover (Hugh Jackman) riding around on horseback. Giddy-up. Sarah makes Drover’s life exceedingly difficult, messing with his cattle. But she has honourable intentions in mind because Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), the real killer of her husband, is messing with Drover’s cattle and thus his living. So, Drover, Sarah, Nullah and company embark on a cattle drive away from Faraway Downs.

As the protagonists move into the desert they’re followed by Fletcher’s motley bunch, making trouble for Drover and Sarah. Australia here rekindles the tragic-precipice of Jedda’s last stand, and also the brute CGI of The Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson). Fletcher’s gang frighten the gargantuan mass of cattle with a molotov-cocktail, sending them into a stampede towards the cliff face. It means the end of Kipling Flynn played by an otherwise expendable Jack Thompson who’s not the same sheep-shearing badass of Sunday Too Far Away (Ken Hannam, 1975). It’s this Darwinian trajectory that slogs towards Australia’s denouement, killing off all those with a smidgen or less of camera time and imagistic allure.

And that’s only an hour of this terse and over-egged story, what is swiftly followed by an inexplicable shift that pushes Australia from one movie into another. It’s as if Luhrmann was bashing you over the head with the epic-narrative stick so as not to take any notice of the hiccoughs and uneasy representations of Australian history. Germaine Greer has a point about Nullah’s characterisation, and the film itself does have the air of a fairytale. The death of Drover’s Aboriginal-Aussie pal Bull (Eddie Baroo) at the hands of invading Japanese Australians is disingenuous. If this was to cover any ground with an oversight of the murder, direct or otherwise, of Indigenous Australians it would be an Anglo-Australian who does it. Not invading Japanese fascists. That just makes it seem as if it’s a non-Australian problem. According to Greer the invasion didn’t even happen, so there’s that, too. Though, one could respond that it’s a recreation of the original colonial expedition, and then you have Luhrmann as a quiet genius. There’s nothing quiet about this film, however.

Australia is let down by its poor studio shoots, particularly in the final scene involving a shot-reverse-shot of Drover and Sarah and David Gulpilil as the Aboriginal witch doctor of sorts, King George. The outback is resplendent as Nullah joins his grandfather and they walk off into the wild. The Elgar piece that plays somewhat heavily is moving in and of itself. Perhaps this is the closest Luhrmann gets to the Real, with the image of two Aboriginal Australians walking away through the long grass. Though Australia the movie will be remembered for the concurrent shot reversal: the damp green-screening of two Australian actors who are now part of that other Great Colony: Hollywood.

The Secret Garden (Agnieszka Holland, 1993)

By Jo Bowers

The lost simplicity of the children’s film.

It seems a long, long time ago since children’s films involved performances by living, breathing, human children. It also seems a long time since a children’s film really could be just that, a children’s film without some half hearted reference to boring classics like The Godfather aimed to go over the child’s head and give the parent something to snigger about. With Hollywood creating this current onslaught of fast paced animations that teach children absolutely nothing except how to be void of an attention span, it is surely time to have a renaissance for the little mites. Or is it too late?  I am sure the answer lies within Agnieszka Holland’s secret garden.

The Secret Garden begins in India in the 1800’s. Mary Lennox is a young girl who has been born into wealth but is neglected by her frivolous parents. When a major earthquake kills both of them, she is sent to Yorkshire into the care of her estranged reclusive Uncle, Lord Craven (John Lynch) and his odd staff in a bleakly situated mansion on the Moors. Forced by the sharp tongued head of house Ms Medlock (Maggie Smith) to spend time outside, Mary begins exploring. With the help of a friendly robin Mary soon discovers the door to a walled garden, locked up for ten years on the orders of her Uncle after his wife, Mary’s Aunt, died from falling off the garden’s swing.  Overgrown and long neglected, the garden becomes her proud secret and she attempts to find life among the dead branches. She befriends the local Moors boy Dickon (Andrew Knott) who’s following of foxes, lambs and rabbits enchant her and with his knowledge and love of nature they begin to restore the garden as best they can. Mary learns that giving time and care to the earth in the garden brings beautiful rewards.

Agnieskza Holland’s camera and direction also reaps beautiful rewards. The imagery is without doubt the winning feature of the film and the children give astounding performances. The garden becomes a lot more than a garden, for a start it is massive, the first discovery shot pans to reveal sky high branches, ruins of a church with an old swing swaying in the archway, a sudden swirling of leaves around a forlorn statue. Holland captures perfectly that enduring theme of time having stood completely still. Without taking away from Agnieskza’s camera work, the magic of the garden scenes is also made mesmerizing by Zbigniew Priesner’s score. The gentle choir melodies and haunting violins and flutes are a direct expression of the themes and images, complimenting them perfectly. Mary also discovers that the ghostly crying she has been hearing is actually her estranged cousin Colin, a frail sickly boy who has never left his bed. Mary and Dickon tell him about the garden that his mother loved so much and what they plan to do with it.

What continues to strike me about this film is the characterization. Remaining unfalteringly true to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book written in nineteen eleven, all the children have baggage; they are far from perfect, orphaned and undisciplined. Mary is bitter and lacks any empathetic tendency. Colin, as second master of the house, is self pitying and rude. It is the character of Dickon who seems to have the upper hand, surrounded by nature and a golden patience learnt through nurturing orphaned animals. It is he who I believe to be the quiet hero of both book and film. In the endearing scenes where he teaches Mary how to plant tulips and to trust animals, we see her face brighten and she smiles for the first time. It is a treat to be presented with real time shots of Mary and Dickon’s plants coming to life, the leaves turning from bleak winter colours to spring, the lilies popping and the lambs frolicking on the Moors. There is something wildly unique about the mystical Victorian imagery of the film, summed up in the beautiful simplicity of Dickon’s line ‘‘the rain will help our flowers grow’’. Nothing is rushed and there is not an abundance of sudden cuts, it is fluidly edited which emphasizes the message of the film; things take time so we must be patient.

When the garden is finally restored to glory, it flourishes with every kind of life but this vitality runs deeper and into the souls of all the characters. Mary and Dickon teach Colin how to walk, and he realizes he is not ill; he lies in the long meadow grasses with the sun on his face, surrounded by rabbits and lambs. ‘‘Yes, I imagined this’’, he says. They have bonded together as, what today we could call, a team of child eco warriors and the lessons they have learnt are incredibly valuable, especially today. The life they have nurtured into a neglected garden has revived and inspired new life in all the sadder and ailing parts of themselves. The sense of fulfillment and family they find has taken time, it has grown with every seed and animal they helped to grow and their rewards are great.

I do not know what the reaction would be if the film were released today with its complete un-reliance on any type of CGI and graceful editing style. I only hope that this fable of nature and nurture, of the important in taking time with the earth and the creatures around you may still resonate for children today.

The Toronto International Film Festival: Chloe (Atom Egoyan, 2009)

By Jo Bowers

Sex but no spoilers.

Sorting through the four hundred or more films in the Toronto International Film Festival’s catalogue is no mean feat. For any film lover the index alone is mind blowing, categorized not only by film title but by film origin and director. The daunting task of whittling my choices down took a week or so and resulted in Chloe, My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done (Werner Herzog, 2009) and Glorious 39 (Stephen Poliakoff,2009). Today was Chloe’s second world screening and Egoyan was humbled to be showing it in his favourite theatre, The Elgin and Winter Garden in downtown Toronto.

The run up to Chloe has been very exciting for Torontonians as finally the city features in a major picture as itself, filmed and set here rather than ‘filmed’ as stand in for New York or Chicago. Egoyan gave a gracious introduction, joking that the film is ‘‘queasily familiar’, the film having used many local neighbourhood bars and cafés. However, wherever the film plays out, Chloe succeeds far and beyond its location.

In the midst of a snowy winter, Catherine (Julianne Moore) a successful doctor watches from her window as a young prostitute leaves a hotel, she is put into a taxi by an older man in a suit, he caresses her leg and plays with her hair and then she’s gone. The young girl is Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) and soon their lives will be irreversibly intertwined. Catherine’s life is consumed with paranoia and the feeling of invisibility as she ages, and Chloe’s with the fleeting intimacies of strangers and a desire for affection. When Catherine’s flirtatious husband David (Liam Neeson) misses a long planned birthday party to stay over night in New York, he comes under extreme suspicion. After a chance run- in in a hotel washroom, Chloe and Catherine meet. Chloe is clearly taken by something in Catherine, and insists Catherine take her ornate hair pin. Catherine refuses, but the simple object will take on a heavy significance.

Loosely based on Nathalie (Anne Fontaine, 2003) Egoyan and screen-writer Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, 2002) are quick to state this is not a re-make but a major reworking. Egoyan takes this originally simple premise and explodes it into the darkest corners of human relationships, suspicion and sexual manipulation. The casting of Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried is extremely effective; their relationship is beautifully crafted between two very real performances. It becomes clear, as David becomes increasingly distant (Neeson’s role is small) that Chloe is the only contact and bond that Catherine has with him. Inevitably, she pays Chloe to seduce David, to tempt and test him.  As the two women spend more time together, Chloe recounting the details of her seduction, the drama shifts to a disturbing angle and this disturbance is the heart of Chloe. Both characters are in a state of fear and their closeness, as Egoyan explains, is dangerous.  ‘‘they are attracted to each other for reasons they don’t understand. They’re soothing each other but also torturing each other’’ and this is the essence of Egoyan’s film, the dangers and complexities of sexual politics.

The style is slick and accentuates the subtlety of the performances and the simple premise of the film and Egoyan utilizes the bleak winter city with sleek b movie-esque coolness. The season is as much a character as the actors, forcing Chloe and Catherine into the glowing warm interiors with the semblance of safeness and calm. Seemingly, when they leave these cocoons, their miseries and chaos are revealed amid the barren trees. For me, certain scenes recalled Far from Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002) with its sweeping exterior shots and highly stylized orchestral score, and the recurring theme of suspicion and betrayal. The bleakly clinical and ordered home life of Catherine also recalls Hayne’s Safe (1995); suggesting that he has had a lasting effect on Julianne Moore’s on-screen persona.

I couldn’t help but smile as she sinks into yet another perfectly portrayed woman in crisis. She is asked at the press conference ‘‘don’t you get bored of playing women in crisis?’’, ‘‘Are there any other kind?’’ she answers. Her performance is played largely in close up and it seems this shot was made for her alone, her eyes always conveying more than any words could. Amanda Seyfried however, gives a startling break through dramatic performance which could not throw her further from Mamma Mia.

Whilst there is a certain ‘guilty pleasure’ element to the film I do not feel, as some misguided reviewers have put it, that it is another Fatal Attraction. The film operates within a darker art house style and features disturbingly true performances. The beautiful part of Egoyan’s thriller is that there is no villainy, only vulnerability, women who, in their different states of despair look for answers . If you think I have summed up even half of the film then you are in for a shock, a delightful yet very unsettling shock. The film will be premiering in the UK at the BFI London Film Festival in October. Enjoy.