Between Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna, Clint Eastwood's Changeling, and now Baz Luhrmann's Australia, I am starting to worry that someone has issued a blanket death sentence upon top Hollywood directors. Really, it's as if they have been told they only have one movie left to make, and so into that one movie they have stuffed as many movies (and messages) as they possibly can. It's not that the movies are bad. Coming from respected directors, based on intriguing premises, and filled with talented actors, each movie contains captivating stories, compelling performances, and vivid artistry. But with so much going on, the beauty and value of their individual pieces are almost overwhelmed by the whole. And Austrialia, while full of passion and creativity, is no exception.

Baz Luhrmann's Australia begins in 1939 when British aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) journeys to Australia to check up on her absent husband. Initially driven by a plan to make her husband sell his ranch and return home, Lady Ashley arrives only to find her husband dead and his most trusted employee seemingly involved in underhanded dealings with their competitor. Cue a change in plans. After firing ranch manager Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), Lady Ashley takes it upon herself to fulfill her husband's plan to deliver 2,000 cattle to a waiting tanker docked in the port city of Darwin. And with their reluctant leader Drover (Hugh Jackman) at the head and the young half-aboriginal half-white Nullah (Brandon Walters) bringing up the rear, Lady Ashley and her ramshackle crew set off on a journey that will change all of their lives.

As you might guess, sparks between Lady Ashley and Drover begin to fly fairly early on. Since Lady Ashley and Drover are childless and Nullah is parentless, the connection that blossoms between Drover and Lady Ashley also reaches out to Nullah. Of course, with past character histories left to be revealed, present villains yet to be conquered, and the Japanese bombing of Darwin yet to be survived, the opening cattle drive and initial set up of Lady Ashey, Drover, and Nullah's romantic/family relationship are only the beginning of Australia. But although the movie that follows continues to add genre onto genre until the very last minute, at the center of Australia remains the theme of relationship—that which challenges it, that which holds it together, and the idea of an almost mystical web that connects us all to each other, to the earth, and to whatever greater universe may surround us.

At the beginning of the movie, Drover tells Lady Ashley that no one fires him, and no one hires him. His insinuation—he is and will always be a free agent. While he is happy to see Lady Ashley when he is back at the ranch, he seems just as happy to be away on cattle drives for six months or more. As Lady Ashley grows closer to Nullah, Drover pulls even further away from both, telling her he's not even their son. "I learned a long time ago not to fight other people's wars," he says. At times, you might call Drover selfish, but as a friend points out when a piece of his past comes to light, his refusal to fully give himself to the role of either husband or father may also have something to do with his fear that giving more fully of himself will set him up for the pain of loss of which has already known enough. Almost a larger part of the story than the romance between Drover and Lady Ashley, however, is Nullah's relationship with them and the world in which he lives. Half-aboriginal and half-white, Nullah is a child seemingly stuck between two worlds and unable to fully find a place in either. By the white world Nullah is seen as inferior and in need of "purification." As such, the continued "villain" in his story is the movement to capture so-called "half-breed" children and remove them to missions. Embracing him as their own child even though he is not, however, both Lady Ashley and Drover act against the racial divisions of their times and speak to their belief that "just because it is doesn't mean it should be." But although Lady Ashley does not demean Nullah and seek to turn him into a "white" child, Drover challenges her when she refuses to let Nullah join his aboriginal grandfather on a traditional walkabout. And in the end, as Nullah, Lady Ashley, and Drover face the greatest threat to their union yet, all three reveal that as much as love is about holding on, it is also about being willing to let go and knowing that true connection will endure.

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