Movie Monday

I was watching an Italian movie - just the beginning. The protagonist was an efficiency expert at a factory. You knew that quickly because he was kindly explaining to a worker that’s he was going too fast (not good for the machines.) Then he’s getting ready to leave, reaches his car, hears his name called, goes back to the boss’ office, talks to the boss about his upcoming leave (that’s why he was leaving so fast) and where he’s going and is given a valuable present from the boss to deliver to someone in his hometown.

That’s all I saw. It probably took me longer to write it than watch it. But why did I watch it? I know I would have been half paying attention if the dialogue was in English.

And, that may be the allure of the foreign film. Film is a visual medium. It had to be one completely before sound. But with sound, you no longer have to watch the screen. Your eyes and your brain can be distracted from the picture. You can multi-task.

Except in foreign language films. There you must concentrate on the screen. And, if the subtitles fly by quickly as so many of them do, you must concentrate firmly.

I got hooked on CSI while doing a complicated lace project just because I didn’t want to watch the screen all the time and CSI is probably some of the best “I must look away” TV out there.

So maybe foreign films are not as great as I think. It’s just that I have to invest a lot more brain energy in them. My concentration makes them great.

Which brings me to my foreign film review today: Australia.

I know, it’s in English and I know all the words to Waltzing Mathilda, but it is foreign.

I’m looking at this film because I saw a short clip from it on a cable channel devoted to promoting new films. I don’t think there is one film they feature which they don’t like so this is usually a channel I pass. However, cruising by, I saw a shot of Nicole Kidman inside a tent, clutching the flaps around her so only her head was out, looking at a waist-up naked Hugh Jackman pouring a bucket of water over him (an Australian bath?)

It was not the scene which stopped me, but the look on Kidman’s face. It was an exact duplicate of the hammy pout she used in Moulin Rouge. Now that musical, which I liked, was over the top. Romantic farce with some tear-jerking songs. Hamminess (though there was too much of it on her part) fit into Moulin Rouge. What was she doing repeating it in Australia? I know this movie has been called a modern Gone With The Wind, and I know that Vivien Leigh did have a few pouts.

Was Kidman a one-note actress or was she trying to duplicate Leigh? I had to find out.

Movie Trailer Review of Australia

Wow! I just saw it and I want to enlist! In what, I have no idea but I’m so hopped up. Kidman just told me: We can’t let them win. (Well, actually she told Hugh Jackman) And he said: We won’t. and Kidman told the cute aboriginal girl: Whatever I takes, I’ll find you. So I feel really good and ready to enlist and get my head blown off.

Oh well, back to earth. But that’s what propaganda does to you as so beautifully portrayed in All’s Quiet on the Western Front when the professor fuels up all his students to enlist in glory only to have them return in caskets.

The trailer starts with a shot worthy of Vogue: an extremely well dressed Nicole Kidman. What a hat! It belongs in a museum. Then we see a rugged Hugh Jackman on a ship. Get it? Civilization meets barbarian. Mark my words, sex is coming.

An early shot has him fighting; she protesting (probably the fighting), still precisely coiffured, with palm outstretched and mouthing “No.”

He greets her sweating, breathless, gritty: Welcome to Australia. What, we thought this was Versailles?

Then both are riding a truck in the desert with a dog. She in face netting (she, Nicole, not the dog) and Jackman saying: You’d be more comfortable if you changed into something less constricting.

Shades of Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr in King Solomon’s Mine.

Then the tent scene. Not the hammy part this time, just she emerging from the tent, he naked from the waist up. Flash to screen: From the director of Romeo and Juliet....... Oh, thank you so much, I had been expecting a submarine movie.

Fast forward and we’re in the time warp of Grease where Olivia Newton John becomes a greaser at the end.

Kidman can ride. Jackman is impressed. Kidman looks gritty on the horse. And, she can belt down a few also.

Whoa! Now, they’re skinny dipping. That was fast.

Faster still is our introduction to waltzing in Australian high society; a cute aboriginal girl; and (I assume) good, old Australian prejudice. Kidman: Just because it is, doesn’t mean it should be. Are we going deep here?

We're told: Their love defied destiny. Good to know; I’ll stop looking for submarines.

And not a minute too soon because here come the planes. Kidman hears them sitting in a great looking bedroom. Bombs drop. We see reactions from Jackman and the cute, aboriginal girl.

We’re at war. Talk about a plot twist to keep this from being one long roll in the hay movie.

For the sake of truth in trailers, I should admit there looked like some sort of local Australian shooting trouble before this war starts involving Kidman, Jackman and others.

But war is like the eight card in Crazy Eights. It changes everything.

What Do I Expect From the Trailer:
I’m going to see this movie, though I’m not going to pay for it, except through my cable provider. It looks well-done, hokey, formulaic but there’s a place for that in life.

It can’t all be Aristotle’s Poetics. I bet there were times when Mrs. Aristotle would call out: Ari, enough with the thinking, get the chariot, we’re going to Bingo Night.