Social-elite Sarah Ashley departs from her lavish mansion in England for a struggling cattle ranch in the Australian outback. The plot of land, which is named Faraway Downs, is co-owned by she and her husband, and she would like nothing more than to sell the lame investment, and bring her husband back with her to England. Upon arrival she is greeted with her escort to Faraway Downs, a man everyone in the town of Darwin refers to as “The Drover” (played by Hugh Jackman), a cattle herder by trade. As you might expect, they couldn’t be more different from one another, and as far as romance films are concerned, that makes for the perfect chemistry. When they finally reach the ranch we learn that Mrs. Ashley’s husband has been murdered by a local Aborigine, named King George, or so they are told by the ranch hand, Neil Fletcher. It isn’t until a young Aboriginal boy visits Mrs. Ashley in the night, that she becomes suspicious of Neil Fletcher. It would seem that he has been smuggling cattle from the Faraway Downs ranch, onto a local cattle tycoon’s property, who is in direct competition with Faraway Downs for a military beef contract, one of the country’s most profitable exports.
After a tense confrontation with Fletcher, Sarah fires him, and decides that she will compete with the Carney Cattle Company (Fletcher’s true employer) for the military beef contract that Carney and company are hellbent on getting. With help from Drover, and the other ranch hands — including the young boy, Nullah — Sarah blazes a trail across the outback in order to beat her saboteurs to the wharf, and their much anticipated paycheck.
This is only a fraction of the film’s story, so you needn’t worry about us spoiling it for you. As you might have guessed, the film, which spans 165 minutes, is nothing short of epic, with each of the principal characters, Sarah, Drover and Nullah getting ample screen time. With long-winded films, there is always the chance that they will fail miserably, but thankfully that’s not the case here. In all honesty, I can’t imagine the film being much shorter than it is now. Surely there are a couple minutes that could be axed, particularly from the somewhat hokey first 45 minutes (which struck me as being very City Slicker-ish). However, its easy to see that great care went into balancing the love story between the two leads, and the story about their adopted Aboriginal “half-blood” son, Nullah.
The film is built upon a patchwork of themes — racism, love, war, greed — and in order to accommodate all of these, it’s scope is justifiably epic. Naturally, because the film covers so much ground, in a relatively short amount of time — yes, even with nearly three hours at its disposal — its easy to understand why many people lost interest, or left the theater liking bits and pieces, but not the sum total of all the parts. In a way, I can align with both the critics and the fans. There are parts, mainly in the beginning, where I wasn’t as invested in the story, as I felt I should be. Like I said earlier, the beginning feels very much like City Slickers, which is a strange film to reference, but there are most definitely undeniable parallels. It’s not exactly comedic in the same way, but its more about the inexperienced riders having to rise to the challenge of herding, long before they’re ready — and they are very much the rag-tag group.
It wasn’t until I got to the stampede sequence that the movie commanded my full attention, and from then on, I was glued to the screen. That scene, and many others throughout are supremely magical and poignant, and I think that is ultimately what makes this film both unique and compelling. I imagine that it was Luhrmann’s intent to capture everything he found to be beautiful and disturbing about his homeland, and to use these three distinct characters and their perspectives to tell the story. For all intents and purposes, he does so with ease, so long as you are willing to give in to the story.
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