Vastly Inferior to Australia, the Country

What else can you say about the film? It was what I like to call "a bit much" with a pace, running time, and excess to make Michael Bay look like Werner Herzog this was definitely not my kind of thing. Granted, I was not expecting it to be.

First, what did not work for me: The fact that everything was so big and flashy - could anything have been shot, or at least remained at twenty four fps in the beginning? I felt all of this was just to mask the thin plot line. Speaking of which, the opening was just too long, with everything needing to be so significant throughout the whole thing I can understand the need for development, but really wasn't everything just significant for the purpose of significance? Then there was the end... I cannot even remember what it was but at one point it was grossly apparent that the film was ending, or at least the "end" was beginning, something did not feel right so I looked at my watch and saw that I had only been sitting in the theater for about an hour and forty minutes. Okay, so bottom line: didn't like it.

Anyway, as far as how this relates to class: I felt that this film could have been tailor-made to by analyzed from the perspective of this course. Of course there was the obvious allusion to Walkabout in the opening, but at a slightly deeper level, it was clear that Luhrman's intent was to capture nothing more than the country itself. I just don't feel that should take three hours. We've got the landscape, everything that makes "Oz" (that was a bit much too, right?) so otherworldly was there, and in my opinion this was by far the best part of the film. One example being the thought that crossed my mind of the stampeding cattle reminiscent of America's great planes. These animals are not indigenous and could a continet so unfertile support such life? Just a thought. Then of course, there's the aborigines. We've got the stolen generation - the presentation of which was practically stolen out of Rabbit Proof Fence. Oh and the British - what is there to even say about the way the British are interpreted? The same stuck up pricks they are always portrayed as in every Australian film, though understandably.

Then of course, there's the big buzz word we have been discussing since the beginning that was pounding us over the head constantly in this film - "Man's Country". In future classes a 30 second clip of this film would be enough for everyone to get that trademark.

So yeah, not my kind of thing, but very, very, Australian.