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It’s a frequent grumble among TV critics that some of the shows we’re made to watch might have been better off as movies — and surely an equally common one among film critics that some features might have worked better as shows. In that light, Hulu’s Faraway Downs makes for an intriguing experiment.
The miniseries isn’t a new drama, exactly, but rather Baz Luhrmann‘s expanded take on his own 2008 epic Australia. It includes roughly an hour’s worth of previously unused footage, up to and including a reworked ending. If the hope was that Faraway Downs would restore the reputation of a film that had received mixed reactions upon release, however, the series unfortunately comes up short. Mostly, it serves to demonstrate that a change in format can only accomplish so much.
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Faraway Downs
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Brandon Walters, David Wenham, Bryan Brown, David Gulpilil, Jack Thompson, David Ngoombujarra, Ben Mendelsohn, Essie Davis
Creator: Baz Lurhmann
Much of Faraway Downs’ six-episode season (with episodes running 25-50 minutes each, including credits) faithfully retraces Australia’s plot. In 1939, with World War II inching ever closer, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) flies from England to Australia intending to sell her husband’s ranch. When she arrives to learn that he’s recently died, she resolves instead to take over the reins of the business herself. Along the way, she inevitably falls in love with the gruff drover (Hugh Jackman) responsible for wrangling their cattle; with Nullah (Brandon Walters), the half-Aboriginal boy who lives on the property; with the unexpected family she and Drover and Nullah form together within it; and ultimately with the strange but beautiful land she’s coming to see as home.
What worked or didn’t work in the 165-minute film still mostly works or doesn’t work here; those who either adored or despised the feature are not likely to change their minds dramatically. Some of the added material goes toward smoothing over details in the original that were never totally explained: Remember when Sarah huffs, “I could show you a thing or two about horses,” and then Australia cuts straight to her having no idea how to herd cattle? No? Well, anyway, Faraway Downs inserts a few minutes of Sarah showing off some fancy equestrian tricks to prove she does know a lot about horses. It’s a smoother transition, but not exactly a revelatory change. Likewise, some of the supporting characters, like army captain Dutton (Ben Mendelsohn) or Sarah’s kindly friend Catherine (Essie Davis), get an extra beat or two to explain their motives or personalities — though not really enough to turn any of them into three-dimensional people.
The most significant deviation between the two storylines comes in the closing minutes. Luhrmann famously shot multiple endings for his epic, and Faraway Downs opts for a different, and better, one than Australia got. While both Australia and Faraway Downs are fundamentally and proudly sentimental stories, Australia’s sugary final beats rendered it a fairy tale. Faraway Downs reinforces the story as a melodrama, cutting the treacle with a welcome note of bitterness. Unfortunately, it also furnishes the Drover with a real name but still no explanation as to why he’s chosen to withhold it — which has the mildly insane effect of suggesting it’s simply never occurred to any of his nearest and dearest to ask what it is. Perhaps in another 15 years, Luhrmann can serve up yet another version to right that wrong.
Notably, Faraway Downs fails to address a criticism that’s dogged Australia since its release: that it relegates its characters of color, and particularly its Aboriginal characters, to one-dimensional archetypes. Nullah, endearingly performed though he is by Walters, spent much of the film as a vaguely magical victim to be saved by white heroes. His grandfather, King George (David Gulpilil), was flattened even further into a largely silent symbol, myth, landmark — but never an actual person with relatable thoughts or feelings or motives. Not much of that has changed in the new version. Likely not much could, since the project involves no new footage. But these racial politics feel, if anything, even queasier in 2023, when Faraway Downs is being released alongside the likes of, say, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon — which made such a strenuous (if still imperfect) effort to center the pain of the indigenous community and to refuse to let its white characters off the hook for their complicity and duplicity.
In the end, the biggest distinction between Australia and Faraway Downs might simply be the experience. I watched Australia for the first time at home on a TV, but even from my living room, it felt like a movie movie — a sprawling epic self-consciously modeled after cinematic classics like Gone With the Wind or Casablanca (or, yes, The Wizard of Oz, whose “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is not just a motif in Lurhmann’s story but an annoyingly persistent plot point). Both the film’s strengths and weaknesses were rooted in its cinematic nature. If there were details that didn’t entirely add up, it was easy enough to forget about them amid the dazzling vistas and the relentless plotting. If Jackman or Kidman’s line readings sometimes verged on cartoonish, they spoke to an affection for the screwball rhythms of yore.
Luhrmann’s extravagance can work on TV (consider his flawed but frequently exhilarating The Get Down), but the specific strain that Australia represented doesn’t translate well across media. Watching Faraway Downs in the late Peak TV era, it’s easier to notice how thin the characters are, and how lacking in intimacy and nuance their relationships are. The scope that had felt sprawling for a movie feels limited for a show; even at close to four hours, the new version has little room for curiosity about the everyday details of this work, and even less for the characters who linger at the margins. Australia was plenty ambitious, but it was ambitious in the way of an enormous film. Reworked as TV, it gains a few minutes and some extra details — but in the process, it also loses some of its grandeur.
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