Baz Luhrmann Saves Australia, Provides Tourists With Meta-narrative

The Australian tourist board can hardly contain their excitement. Baz Luhrmann’s much anticipated US $130 million epic Australia, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, the most expensive “Australian film” ever (translation: it was funded by 20th Century Fox), had its premiere in Sydney last night. Facing domestic excitement bordering on rapture, the director and cast were keen to downplay the hopes of the attending crowd, lest they be disappointed. 

“This movie is bigger than Superman and Indiana Jones,” actor David Gulpilil told the Australian newspaper, “it’s a true Australian movie.” Nicole Kidman concurred. “This is a once in a lifetime thing,” she said, before reluctantly acknowledging that “It’s not the second coming.” Meanwhile, Hugh Jackman was a gibbering wreck; “As my old acting teacher said, nerves just mean you care.”

Baz Luhrmann told the press he wanted to create a Gone With the Wind or Casablanca for the 21st century, “One of those old fashioned movies… everyone can come to the meal,” and then repeated his joke that Australia is only two and a half hours long because everyone in the country is in it. 

The film is set between 1939 and 1941 in northern Australia, and tells the story of a frigid English aristocrat Sarah Ashley (Kidman) who has her cockles warmed by a roughneck cattleman called “the Drover” (Jackman). They travel together across the outback to Darwin, where they fall in love, and and help an indigenous aboriginal child (Brandon Walters) en route. Beautiful.

Fearing a patriotic backlash, the critical reception to the film amongst the Australian press has been respectful. The Australian’s film critic David Stratton complained the film has “a lot of cliches in the script” and was obviously aimed at an American audience because it offers “a simplistic view” of Australian history at best, but despite numerous objections stated it was “an impressive and important film.”

Commenters on his article post saw it slightly differently:

– Jamie of Brisbane: “If only Nicole Kidman wasn’t in it! She’s so beige and unremarkable – I just couldn’t sit through 3 hours of her.”

– Thaddeus of Sydney – “What? No poker machines at all?”

– Sean of Concord – “Baz’s schtick has always been commercial banalities and cliches masquerading as kitschy art. Its why he’s been able to develop a tourism commercial out of the movie… Having to sit though 3 hours of this ’sweeping’ guff for me would be the equivalent of going to the dentist for a similiar amount of time. And on top of all that its called Australia. Somebody tap baz on the shoulder for gods sake!”

Regardless, as the Telegraph reports today, the film has been pounced on by Tourism Australia, who capitalised by spending £17 million on a global television advertising campaign directed by Luhrmann, which launched earlier this month. Like Australia, the TV spots star Brandon Walker, who tells metropolitan office rats around the world to “Go walkabout.”

Although set in the Northern Territory, Australia was primarily filmed and shot in the town of Kununurra in Western Australia, which is now relentlessly plugging the association in the hope of pulling in tourism dollars. Meanwhile, the Northern Territory has launched its own six figure media assault, plugging itself as “the real outback” and generally bigging up its connection to Luhrmann’s film. 

Cheesy? Maybe. But never before have the economic hopes of a nation been so dependent on a one film; tourism accounts for approximately 4% of Australia’s GDP, so a Baz-bounce would be a welcome fillip.

Whatever happens though, Tourism Australia has certainly improved on its previous ham fisted TV marketing efforts, which have included Delta Goodrem singing ‘I Can Sing a Rainbow’ over Uluru porn, and weird pronouncements about “having the camels shampooed” and “getting the sharks out of the pool,” backed by a ‘Journey to Arnhemland’ style background music.

Posted by Jack Roberts in Other | November 19, 2008 12:46PM |