‘Faraway Downs’ Review: Baz Luhrmann Snydercuts His Epic ‘Australia’ Melodrama & Doubles Down On Excess & Length
Even in its original, nearly three-hour shape, Baz Luhrmann’s “Australia” was a lot of movie beyond just length. Sandwiched within that ambitious old school Hollywood undertaking—about an Englishwoman who inherits a sprawling ranch and the drover she teams up with herding cattle across an unforgiving land— was a broad screwball meet-cute romcom between Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman’s characters—at least at first, those rhythms are unmistakable—a fabulist fairy tale about dreamers, an idealistic ranching Western, a sweeping wild wilderness adventure, an immense historical epic (with elements of brassy, jazz-age chutzpah to add yet another flavor), a mystical fable about Indigenous people, and a grand, lush romance.