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Beatrix Gerke
In this article, I want to share my thoughts about Australia, which I recently saw and greatly enjoyed, as well as discuss what I believe Faraway Downs will do to improve on the theatrical release. In particular, I want to talk about why Faraway Downs is likely to end with the tragic death of the Drover character, which in my mind is how the theatrical cut should have ended and was indeed meant to end.
*Such an approach that is not uncommon for European productions. Examples include Das Boot (dir. Wolfgang Petersen), Carlos (dir. Oliver Essayas), and Mysteries of Lisbon (dir. Raul Ruiz), all of which had both a theatrical feature version and a TV miniseries version created around the same time.
Typically, this happens if the picture is already long and has a large amount of unused deleted footage. Reincorporating deleted scenes to expand the feature to multiple hours then allows it to be broken up into distinct television chapters or episodes and aired over several nights.* In this case though, the miniseries is set to follow the binge-release model popular with streaming platforms, meaning all six episodes will premiere at once on November 26. In effect, though broken up into episodes, the new version can be consumed all at once, similarly to a feature film.
*There is, for instance, The Godfather Saga, a 1977 recut of the first two Godfather films by Francis Ford Coppolla that reincorporated previously deleted footage from both movies into a 7.5 hour chronological broadcast version.
Luhrmann subsequently played down the negative buzz from the reports in an interview with Scott Feinberg for the LA Times. Following the claims about the ending being changed due to test audience reactions, he stated:
From these comments, it would seem that the theatrical cut of Australia was one Luhrmann was happy with, that it represented his vision and that its ending was not forced upon him but was a deliberate creative choice.
Furthermore, it has been confirmed that the new cut would have a different ending, indicating that Luhrmann had chosen to reinstate one of the two unused endings he had shot before he arrived at the theatrical ending that found itself.3
It aims to provide an insightful look at the history of the horrifying treatment of the aboriginal Australian population by European settlers, yet simultaneously participates in revisionism by featuring more modern progressive white main characters. It positions itself as a historical film set in real-life Australia yet also relies on mythic and romantic archetypes in its depiction of the country.
It is postmodern, ironic and self-aware, a work that builds itself up initially as a familiar, lighthearted romantic comedy in a period setting that abides by conventions of the genre before subverting them with dark, shocking turns that change its emphasis. Thus, what the film is really doing becomes all the more powerful because it initially lulls audiences into a false sense of complacency.
Thus, the invocation of the fictional land of Oz and its film adaptation calls attention to the very status of Australia as similarly a film and a textual construct. The desire for Oz, a beautiful happy magic land where skies are blue and dreams are possible can be seen as a desire for a magic, dreamy version of the country of Australia itself.
The meta-textual aspects of the story and the sharp contrast between reality and fantasy come to the foreground when Nullah later goes to a racially segregated movie theater in Darwin to see The Wizard of Oz on the big screen.
The image of a disguised Nullah sitting enraptured by the picture is an ironic shock to the system that uses the status of The Wizard of Oz as classic, escapist, feel-good entertainment with the power to comfort the viewer with an illusory immersive reality against itself. In the context of everyday racism and class divide in 1930s Australia, its presence only serves to foreground the horrors of real life, making it impossible for the viewer to escape them.
Part 2, which encompasses the final hour of the movie, then picks up around 1942, skipping over multiple events, to arrive at a point where WW2 catches up with the main characters, with the historical bombing of Darwin becoming a key event.
Despite having instances of subversion, the first half of the movie seemingly brings the main plot to a crowd-pleasing, happy ending, with Lady Ashley and the Drover admitting their love and basically taking in Nullah as a foster son.
Rather than shock viewers with a tragic, subversive death, the ending goes in for wish fulfillment, with everyone surviving and going home. But the way the sequence is shot and cut together, you can see that it could be easily changed to have a different outcome. Thus, I suspect that the original ending used alternate footage, which revealed that Fletcher did get a shot off, but hit the Drover, mortally wounding him.*
To put it another way, an ending where the Drover dies would make a lot more sense thematically and stylistically for the type of movie Luhrmann is making than the one we get in the theatrical release. It would also fit with the early reports about Lurhmann being forced to change the ending due to test screenings.
How long exactly Faraway Downs is at the moment is not entirely clear. Luhrmann himself claimed in 2022 that it would contain an hour of extra footage and more recent reports are stating that the new miniseries will amount to 4 hours, suggesting an extra 75 minutes.
To add to that, I think the opening act is far more in line with what we normally expect from a Baz Luhrmann film. His movies tend to move a mile per minute and overwhelm the senses with detail. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised when Australia slowed down somewhat and allowed its plot to unfold more gradually.
Upon its November 2008 release in US movie theaters, Baz Lurhmann\u2019s big budget historical epic romance Australia became a critical and commercial flop. 15 years to the day later, Faraway Downs - an extended 6-episode television revision of the film - is set to premiere as an original series for the Hulu streaming service.*
Plot Summary: Opening in 1939, the story follows the lives of three major characters: the British aristocrat Lady Ashley (Nicole Kidman), who seeks to sell her late husband\u2019s Australian cattle ranch Faraway Downs, Nullah (Brandon Walters), an Indigenous child working at the ranch, and the Drover (Hugh Jackman), a mysterious stockman previously employed by Ashley\u2019s husband.
Faraway Downs isn\u2019t something that was at all planned back when Australia came out in 2008. That is to say, it wasn\u2019t designed to have both a theatrical cut and an extended broadcast version from the outset.* No, this is a case of a film being retroactively extended and restructured.
The idea to revisit the picture came to Luhrmann during the COVID lockdown when the production of Elvis was put on pause. This allowed him to have a new look at the \u201C2 million feet of film\u201D he still had and reconceive the picture for episodic streaming.1 The result was for him \u201Ca different variation on the themes\u201D of Australia.2
Though the technology helped motivate the production of the new version, the decision primarily stemmed from the fact that Luhrmann wasn\u2019t very happy with the theatrical release. And while he hasn\u2019t exactly admitted it outright as of yet, there is plenty of evidence that one of his key issues was with the ending of the film.
Let\u2019s go back to November 2008. Just a few weeks before the theatrical premiere of the film, information around the web begins to spread about Luhrmann changing the ending of Australia in response to studio pressure.
One of the key reports was from the Herald Sun, which stated that Luhrmann \u201Cbowed to studio pressure for a happy ending.\u201D This occurred following \u2018disastrous reviews\u2019 from a test screening where participants wanted the ending changed due to them loving High Jackman\u2019s character, who died in the screened version. It states:
\u201CLuhrmann's initial cut - which ran for more than three hours - ended with Hugh Jackman's character, The Drover, dying in the final scenes\u2026 After intense discussions with studio executives, Luhrmann was persuaded last week to go for a more uplifting ending.\u201D
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