‘Australia’ very nearly killed Baz Luhrmann: “By far the most fraught”
Baz Luhrmann is a storyteller with a very specific vision, and regardless of your feelings towards him, it would be impossible to mistake his films as made by anyone else.
At his best, the director can create vivacious works of popular culture that use music and visuals to paint unique portrayals of certain eras, but at his worst, he can mount productions so challenging that his stars come away regretting their experiences, and in his fairly minimal yet diverse filmography, Australia stands out like a sore thumb.
His excessive style was perfect for the charming love story of Strict Ballroom, the extravagant world of Moulin Rouge!, the indulgent approach to The Great Gatsby, and the larger-than-life iconography in Elvis, but making an old-fashioned historical epic, even if it was set in home country, seemed like an unusual swing, considering those types of films are more often associated with ‘epic’ directors like Wolfgang Peterson or Ridley Scott.
Starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, Australia is set during World War II, and despite being promoted as one of the most significant titles that 20th Century Fox had in their 2008 lineup, it didn’t quite meet commercial or critical expectations. However, its disappointment was certainly not a result of any wasted effort, as Luhrmann revealed that shooting it was one of his greatest challenges.
“I was really living it, living in north Australia and working with some of our country’s great writers, like Richard Flanagan, learning about the stolen generation,” he said, “As a filmmaking experience, it was by far the most fraught. We were hit by equine flu. I went to the desert to shoot, and it rained for the first time in 150 years, so I had a grass-covered desert”.
“It nearly killed me, but I wouldn’t give a day of it up at all.”
Baz Luhrmann
His decision to make such a self-important historical drama was noted as being a significant change of pace by pundits, and he seemed aware of what a different type of film it was for him to tackle, noting, “Looking at it now, it’s probably the only thing I’ve done where there’s no confetti or fireworks. Actually, there might be, but if there’s no fireworks, there’s definitely a big rainstorm.”
Despite the initially mixed reactions, Australia has aged well because of how unusual it would be now to see this type of exorbitant budget given to an old-fashioned drama that isn’t connected to an ongoing franchise or a piece of existing intellectual property.
It’s also not a project that the filmmaker seems content to leave alone, as he recently recut the film into a Hulu television series titled Faraway Downs, so perhaps, telling the story as a prestige streaming drama would have been a better option had services like Hulu and Netflix existed back in 2008.
Australia may have caused Luhrmann to retreat to something more beneficial, for The Great Gatsby and Elvis were both massive hits that earned serious awards recognition, yet he may not have entirely given up on the idea of making a historical drama, as his next project is set to be a film about Joan of Arc.
