Australia

Didgeridoo or didgeridon’t?

AUSTRALIA

Cert. 12A

Director Baz Luhrmann

2 hrs. 30 mins. approx.

The plot of this film begins in 1939 on the brink of the Second World War as English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) travels to the faraway continent of Australia.

There she meets the rough-and-ready Drover (Hugh Jackman) and Nullah, a half white, half Aborigine boy with telepathic gifts who acts as the heart of the story. They all join forces to save the land Lady Ashley has inherited from her recently murdered husband.

It is a long tale which takes in dangerous cattle drives, greedy landowners, the plight of the Aborigines and orphans, the attack on Australia’s Northern Territories by the Japanese and much more. Whether the plot works is an open question, but it is worth seeing for the marvellous panoramic photography of the Australian outback, if nothing else.

Identity crisis?

The main theme of the film is the link between identity and story. ‘Without a story you are nothing’, says Nullah wisely. Yet the identity the movie seeks to establish is not so much that of the individual characters as that of the land of Australia itself in which both European and Aboriginal roots entwine.

This theme of national identity is actually a critical topic for us all. It challenges the political correctness and globalisation which in recent years have tended to suppress our national sovereignty and island history, and has left many ordinary Brits feeling like foreigners in their own land. On the other hand, it ought to encourage Christians to recognise that our true identity (and therefore satisfaction and security) is found in the much bigger story of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, his death, resurrection, enthronement and coming kingdom.