Australia

Baz Luhrmann is always a draw but the critical response to Australia has been mixed at best. In the end, a few clips enticed me. I have to be honest -it was the beardiness and yumminess of Hugh Jackman that did it for me but, in the end, the film transcended my crude libido and anyone who fancies a bit of escapism with Baz’s trademark quirks won’t be disappointed.




Set just before WW2, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) leaves England for Australia to her husband’s ranch and drive 1500 cattle across the outback to Darwin. Dressed in lace and pressed lined and carrying a parasol, it’s not long before she clashes with wild’n’dirty Australia.



The first part of the film is beautiful to look at but also uncomfortably camp; Baz is determined to pull you into ‘his’ world, abide by his rules and, as he said in one interview, have you “check your coat at the door.” The music is too loud, each movement has a touch of flamenco and the camera lunges from one scene to another in a way that doesn’t work as well as it did in Moulin Rouge. And people take prat falls while Nicole squeals in indignation every opportunity.

About half an hour in, there’s a very, very welcome shift and the story proper gets going.

Nicole Kidman gives her trademark to some eyes - ‘subtle’ and ‘nuanced’, to others - ‘wooden’ performance as the English toff who’s brought down a peg or two by the environment and transformed into a tough Sheila. Trust Australians to spin the Cinderella story so that she only becomes a princess when she gets rid of her finery and throws away the glass slipper. And what a prince she lands! One review I read had me in stitches with its snarky insistence on referring to Hugh Jackman as “Hugh Russell-Crowe-wasn’t-available Jackman” but this doesn’t do justice to his virile performance. Jackman is wonderful; he has the composure and silence about him of the young Clint Eastwood and…I’m going to stop there or you won’t take another word I say seriously…

Visually, the film is glorious from beginning to end. The breathtaking landscape is painted in super-real colour and everything that can gleam or shine does. We are given plenty of time to enjoy the almost Martian landscape and marvel at the boab trees.

There are many memorable scenes such as when a body falls into the river, the cattle drove, King George, the aborigine grandfather standing on one leg watching from high up which suffuse the movie with its unique and often plain Australian feel which must have the local tourist board rubbing its hands in glee.

At the same time, there’s much to recognise from regular westerns and Baz directs the exciting sequences of the cattle drove with panache giving many stuntmen the classic gig of their lives! The drove is unmistakably the highlight of the movie and I haven’t seen anything like this since Dances with Wolves. It brings the movie and the characters to earth and the story settles into that of little people with massive personalities leading out their intense lives against a brutal landscape and in a dangerous period in history.

The added Australian twist is the dark story of the mixed race Aboriginal children something which, I am ashamed to say, I knew very little about. It was the Australian government’s policy to forcibly remove children from their homes and ‘program the Aborigine out of them’. One of the main threads of the plot is Lady Ashley’s maternal attachment to young Nullah, played by Brandon Walters, whose performance is glowing.

I believe, that despite the self-righteous carping by some critics about the movie, where they say it’s too soft-focus, raising public awareness of these issues is of vital importance. David Gulpili who plays King George is the most famous actor of aboriginal descent; he starred in Walkabout all those years ago and his troubled circumstances to this day serve as a blot on the consciousness of white Europeans whose ancestors have neutered and almost obliterated so many indigenous races worldwide. It’s worth reading Germaine Greer’s article (preferably after you’ve seen the film) for an intellectual, pc, Australian perspective on this issue.

By twisting history, garbling geography and glossing over the appalling exploitation of Aboriginal workers, Baz Luhrmann's film Australia bears more relation to fairytale than fact, argues Germaine Greer


One reviewer said that Baz Luhrman knows very little about real history and more about film history – this is a fair point, the film is sprinkled with endless references to Gone with the Wind, the Wizard of Oz and probably Skippy too! I too know very little indeed about Australian history but I know a thing or two about watching movies; I assume, before the lights go down, that movies are there to entertain and I also expect any movie that has a ‘historical’ element will be twisted to fit the story. It’s not The Truth up there just because it’s bigger than life size and even if the director wants you to believe it is.

Yes, film-makers have enormous power to influence us as do advertising, the media and any political ranting you might be exposed to but we should all know better by now. Question everything – we have that freedom; use it. Baz makes damn clear that you know you’ve entered into the world of the unreal. I heard him talk about how nowadays we’re all too damn cynical and too damn clever for our own goods – there’s a time and a place, hang up your coat, put your feet up and munch on that popcorn and escape from the credit crunch and lack of daylight to chest hair, screen kisses, good guys and bad guys and shiny, shiny landscapes for a few hours. You can pop your cynical coat back on and google the plight of the aborigines once you get home.

blessings and all that

There are eight days until the winter solstice when the days become gradually longer. Thank goodness – I’m giving myself cheek strain and probably mild cirrhosis of the liver in an attempt to remain positive and happy in the drizzle and grey. It could be worse.





I’m reading an extraordinary book at the moment, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl . I can’t believe I’ve not come across this before but I’m thrilled that I have this opportunity to read it. Frankel was a psychotherapist, and this is the story of his time in Auschwitz and other camps and his subsequent development of logotherapy based on that which he learned about human nature in his three years before liberation by the Americans. He writes from the perspective of a psychiatrist observing human suffering and asking what is it that we do to retain our freedom and hope in order to survive, (or die with dignity) in such appalling circumstances?

This from the preface by GW Allport:

in the concentration camp every circumstance conspires to make the prisoner lose his hold. All the familiar goals in life are snatched away. What alone remains is, “the last of human ‘freedoms’” – the ability to “choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.”

Frankl’s depiction of events centres on the psychological experience, the dreams, the meaning that he developed within and observed in others. It is sobering for me living in a gluttonous society, grumbling about the credit crunch and the difficulty of finding time to exercise when I have nothing but plenty and security from harm. How is it that we manage to lose touch with these inner resources. This passage sums up a typical day for Frankl:

I shall never forget how I was roused one night by a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare…I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand that was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.

This in the week after I watched Louis Theroux’s, Law and Disorder in Johannesburg, an examination into the private security firms hired by individuals in a city where the police can’t keep on top of the brutal crime.

Watching Louis in his flak jacket like a kid with his hand always a moment from the flames, it was hard to feel anything but relief that it was all a million miles away. The townships foul and disgusting as disgusting and dangerous a habit as you can imagine, are filled with people trying to lead a normal life just like I am. The nightmarish reality for them is that life is cheap as chips.

Constant victims of crime and with absolutely no faith in the police’s abilities or willingness to help them, they routinely take the law into their own hands. Louis was there shortly after a mob had captured and executed a suspect by burning him to death. The private security firms here, small affairs run by brutal ‘realists’ who thrashed petty criminals to deter them were in as much danger from retribution from the rage of ‘the community’ as a criminal. Meanwhile, rich whites paid firms that rode around in SUVs – “An African solution to an African problem.” One happy customer declared.

The level of crime and its brutality was terrifying. Whole apartment blocks were hijacked and the poor tenants forced to pay their rent to pirates until the security firms could ‘save’ them. No doubt aware of the marvellous viewer tension he would create, Louis snuck into what seemed like an abandoned building, the place stinking of shit and god knows what, not a light flickering within. It was classic horror; no lights and no idea what might be round the corner waiting to pounce. Inside he found normal people who considered this a ‘good place’ and had lived there with no utilities for four years. Outisde he watched as security guards doled out beatings on one street corner while turning a blind eye on another where a drug dealer plied his wares. Better the devil you know, they reasoned for if they had arrested him, another would have take his place instantly so what would have been the point?

The most haunting image was the grimace of an unspeakable monster who happily mimed what he would do and has done to people when he breaks into their homes to force money out of them. He was brilliant at his job and had found his calling.

The parts of Johannesburg we saw were bedlam, a world full of despair. Everywhere there was blank eyed acceptance - this is what things are like here. no one could save them.

I couldn’t help myself; a few days later one of my baby yoga mums, a white South African living and working here, nodded when I asked if she’d seen this programme.

“I wish I hadn’t.” she said, her baby lying across her outstretched legs. She has plans to visit her parents in Johannesburg after Christmas. “It’s nice where they live but I couldn’t live there. I couldn’t just come out with the baby like you do here and even driving around, what if someone pulled me over and asked me to give up the car, what would I do with her?” She nodded at her sleeping daughter.

Later, I took the dog out. It was a bright, golden afternoon. The park was pretty much deserted. I thought about the space I had. I thought about how far from desperate my life was. For once I didn’t take it for granted that I felt safe in my bed at night, felt safe in the streets. It just doesn’t cross my mind that anything will happen to me.

“You know what, Twiggy?” I said to her, “We live in bloody paradise.”

If she could have spoken, I know she would have said, “But I knew that all along.”

Stephen Fry at the V&A

What a treat! Last Wednesday evening I joined about a hundred other book fans in the V&A’s lecture theatre to hear Stephen Fry talk about his TV series and book, America.





The TV series has recently completed its Sunday night run and while I tuned in for every episode, it didn’t really hit the spot for me; much as I love Stephen Fry and would happily watch him paint a wall as long as he provided a running commentary, I found the seat of your pants tour of the all the states left me hungry for more; with so many snippets and no depth – it was teasing rather than informative. And I couldn’t help remarking Fry was ridiculously even tempered and uncritical of all he saw and everyone he met. There’s no doubt he’s a charming individual but where was the snark and snip he can also deliver? I wanted to know what he really thought.

In the domed room at the V&A, surrounded by portraits of Holbein and Leonardo da Vinci, I was inspired to consider lofty questions. In the TV series, Fry’s stubbornly wore a blazer and slacks pretty much whatever the weather and whatever the activity – in one scene it was a relief to see him in a cowboy hat. Would he still be wearing the same outfit or would he be in a more formal costume given the literary air of the occasion? He didn’t disappoint, blue blazer, tan trousers and Oscar Wilde’s ‘bad-hair-day’ hair.



Much of Fry’s gentle humour centres around observations on language; he was amused at the American pronunciation of ‘docile’ so that it rhymed with ‘fossil’.

He talked with a wry smile of how he’s not considered, “a man of action,” but swam with sharks, flew in a micro light on a day when even the pilot was terrified, he remarked on the “beauty and grace” of the North Carolina mountains and spoke nothing but well of his charming hosts and on a couple of occasions he had to ally fears for they were half excepting a ‘Borat’ treatment. In fact that it reflected badly on the English should they want to mock Americans and that this was nothing but an expression of an inferiority complex.

The one time he was unable to contain sarcasm was when recalling his long, long night listening to matter-of-fact rubbish from the Big Foot spotter where,

“I was so clenched, if I’d stood up I would have taken the chair up with me.”

He summed up the popular world view on Obama and expressed relief at change and how everyone wants to love our “handsome, roguish younger cousin,” again.

He revealed that while he was quite well known among younger people, (V for Vendetta and Bones) he was as anonymous as his black London cab. When asked what they thought of his personality vehicle, he replied his hosts, “had no conception whatsoever!”


“I hope he’s funny.” Someone behind me had said. I’d felt a little crass expecting it; how annoying to earn your living being amusing and have this enormous pressure to perform all the time and lighten everyone else’s moods. Of course, Fry rose to the occasion, effortless in his delivery, instantly at ease and charmingly self-deprecating. He’s a hard guy not to like.