'Australia'

www.latimes.com - 26th Nov 2008

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Baz Luhrmann: "Australia" is a double feature all by itself, a film that comes with its own built-in sequel. At 2 hours, 35 minutes, it has room for both a cattle drive movie and a war movie, with a romantic drama thrown into the mix to tie both parts together. With a story this expansive, it's no wonder they named it after a continent. ¶ Yes, this is filmmaking in the old-fashioned epic style but only up to a point. When director and co-writer Baz Luhrmann says, "This film's DNA comes from the same stock as 'Gone With the Wind,' 'Lawrence of Arabia' and 'Giant,' but it has its own point of view," he's putting it mildly. ¶ For, more than anything, "Australia" is a postmodern blockbuster filtered through the very particular sensibility of Luhrmann, whose last film was the dizzying "Moulin Rouge!" A lover of artifice and excess who has little use for the old-school naturalism of previous epics, Luhrmann brings an unapologetically over-the-top and operatic aesthetic to the table. ¶ The director also wanted to make a deeply and self-consciously Australian film, to bend the norms of Hollywood filmmaking to the task of telling the story of his own country, his own way.

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