Australia: A Film Review

I have been hearing about the film Australia for a while now – but I was unable to watch it until this week.

In a nutshell, it is a great flick.

It is a little long – so be ready to pause it for bathroom breaks. But it is well worth the time commitment.

For those who have not heard of the movie, Australia is about an upper-class British lady who goes to Australia to try to liquate some land holdings. Similar to life, things did not go as planned as her husband is murdered and War World 2 starts.

I will warn you that the film is really not an "epic romance film" – it is commonly billed. Yeah – there is a love story plot line in the movie…but it is secondary.

The REAL point of the movie is the little Aborigine boy who is telling the story. The movie is about him and the screwed-up culture ethnocentric idiots who tried to train the "black" out of the Aboriginal children. [@more@]

This dumb idea lead to the real life Australian Stolen Generation in which thousands of Aboriginal children where taken from their families and raised "white". The good old folks in the USA tried the same thing, only to fail crash and burn as well. Real genius.

The film Australia does a great job showing the value of race equality, family, love, loyalty, faith and knowing one's culture. On the negative side, the film did spend a lot of time highlighting the Aboriginal folk religion (which the movie refers to as "magic").

All and all, I really enjoyed the movie as it is not often I get to see a romantic culture enhancing and eye open movie at the same time.