Luhrmann: Idiosyncratic Goofball or Hardened Conformist? Either Way: Blechh.

Baz Luhrmann

During the brief clip screened in class of Moulin Rouge, a favorite back in 8th grade, I wondered how I could have once taken such grotesquely heightened drama seriously. I wondered that too, a bit, during Australia, but the feeling had settled from bafflement into inquiry. Baz Luhrmann isn’t my cup of tea, but he’s not pompous, either: the new film has a tonally jarring, anything-goes approach that is fascinating, if not satisfying.

Anyone eager to fill out a perfunctory checklist of Australian themes should be satisfied: David Gulpilil is back, now taking his grandson on a Walkabout of his own, and as for Landscape, a character says, “this land has a strange power,” followed by the usual ominous pan across the outback. (It has always seemed obvious to me that there’s nothing more inherently mysterious or deep about the Australian landscape than, oh, the streets of Cambridge, and the former has only been enshrouded so because of formal techniques—a customary didgeridoo here, a swooping crane shot there—used to frame it. Any place in the world—the Commons, the Taj Mahal, any old bathroom—can be associated with mystery or banality, depending on context.) Any “foreignness” with which the land is perceived, however, is emphatically reversed: Nicole Kidman, scowling, trampling, and sulking, is not inaccurately called “the strangest woman I’ve ever seen” by the film’s half-caste narrator.

In some respects, Luhrmann retains a cartoonish sensibility, which one imagines he is to some extent incapable of resisting: this is the sort of movie where men anxiously gulp upon seeing an attractive woman, and the score gracelessly flails about, trying to find a suitable refrain for each moment. Luhrmann is indifferent to moral perspective: he’s equally likely to beautify kangaroos one moment and cackle at their murder the next. And even if one can’t find a coherent sensibility amidst the muck, there’s a rule of adjustment that works for films like this, even if it doesn’t make them any more tolerable: that if it seems bizarre that minds of adult intelligence felt inclined to inflate the sensitivities of adult characters far past the point of plausibility, then Drover and Sarah’s behavior might make more sense were both characters about 12 years old. Were this Luhrmann’s goal, I’d be impressed, but my guess is that this is the effect of adherence to convention.