Australia was built up for months and months as an epic in the style of Old Hollywood, with a Sergio Leone-esque sweeping view of the titular country, its landscapes and its inhabitants. Rumours started circling about it fairly early on, and by the time it was released it seemed that almost everyone had a dim view of it (except Ben, of course).
So when Simone and I went to go see it, it was with fairly low expectations – and I think it’s safe to say we were both pleasantly surprised.
In short, it achieved everything it set out to. It was a grand love letter to a landscape often depicted as a nightmare, rather than as a dream. It was a rich mythologizing of a country and a culture that’s often written off as a punchline, and it was executed in a style that unmistakably brought to mind the kind of films that Hollywood doesn’t really make anymore.
Were people put off by the hyper-kinetic opening, where exposition was rattled off like machinegun fire, looking to breathlessly set up the entire story frame in the shortest amount of time (you know, like “Spaz” Luhrman does at the start of all his films)?
Were they put off by Nicole Kidman? I think that’s a big yes on that one, but I don’t see it personally. I’ve always found her off-putting. She’s always seemed much less an actual person and more like a porcelain shell, an image that gains ground with each passing year. But that was also what her character was meant to be, at least at the start, and when she began to thaw … hell, I bought it.
I understand that it’s not for everyone, but I have to admit I find it a bit mystifying that it’s as universally panned as it is. It reminds me of a film by the former Mr Kidman – Vanilla Sky – which was just as ridiculed and had just as much of an impact on me. But how much of that is a reflection of the film’s quality versus how my preconceptions have been shaped by the film’s negative reputation?
On the other end of the spectrum was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a film I’d been looking forward to ever since having first heard about it. With David Fincher directing and Brad Pitt starring, and with its incredibly intriguing premise, its pedigree was undeniable.
But in the end, I think one critic (whose name escapes me) summed it up best as “a movie that’s easy to admire but hard to love”. I don’t know if it had to do with Benjamin’s consistently calm demeanour, but I couldn’t help but feel detached from the entire story. I kept in step with it, but I never felt a part of it. I guess it didn’t help that we were seated directly behind some Chatty Bitches ™, but in the end the entire enterprise felt less like a movie and more like an exercise in technicalities.
Somewhere in the middle sits Slumdog Millionaire.
While there’s no denying it’s an excellent film, I think this one was the biggest victim of expectations versus reality. For months on end I’d heard nothing but incredible buzz about it, saying how uplifting it was, how it was one of the best movies of the year.
When we actually went to see it, I couldn’t help but feel a little let down. It got me in the end – goosebumps did make an appearance – but after all the hype I couldn’t help but feel that the story had been almost straightforward to a fault.
I think the final verdict will come when I get around to catching up with each of these films on DVD. There, removed from any speculation or expectation, I’ll be able to gauge each of them on their own terms, as they deserve.
Meanwhile, Micky Rourke as Crimson Dynamo in Iron Man 2?
Cooooool.
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