I wandered down Fitzroy Street on Thursday night and guiltily chose to see Australia - the movie over the story of the boy in Mumbia. Yet the movie Australia has more cultural linkages for me and living in a small flat in St Kilda, I felt like a little bit of light entertainment and a glimpse of the Australian outback that I miss so much. I also wanted to see the real story behind the hollywood epic title. How would Baz Luhrmann introduce the topic of the stolen generation? Why was the aboriginal woman crying at the premier saying it was not the real story? I got my choc top and wandered into Cinema 3 of the George Cinema. Its not the plushest cinema, but its local and comfortable. Settled down on the far right aisle and waited whilst the usual previews ran. Unsure of what to expect from another Baz Luhrmann movie, it became immediately apparent that his signature larger than life caricatures were there up on scene. In the opening scenes, I was made fully aware of the sparseness of Australian station country. The dry and the hard to endure life that can exist during harder times. Mixed with reality was the larger than life characters of Lady Sarah Ashley and the drover... This touch of magnification serves the story well. Nicole Kidman does a good job of Lady Sarah Ashley, as Hugh Jackman plays a much better drover than expected. I can see why he has been getting the sexiest man alive label..... He scrubs up OK for an Aussie bloke. The movie is filled with Australian stars. David Wehnam, Brian Brown, Jack Thompson and Ben Mendelson just to mention a few well known faces. The young aboriginal boy, Brandon Walters plays Nullah and is a natural star, along with David Gulipilli as his grandfather King George. You may get a glimpse of the true aboriginal spirit from these two amazing characters - It is as magical as the stars on a clear outback night. I have a friend in Perth, whom I tell people about. I say I met God on a park bench in the City Mall. God is short for Godfrey. A local aboriginal man with a smile bigger than any white fella every gave me. The story is one interwoven with adventure, fiction and smidgens of reality. The scene where Nullah hides with his mother from the police so he cannot be taken away from her, is to me the central scene of the movie. All else is filling. There are small shots of the Wizard of Oz inserted intermittently in the movie. (I have to see it again to understand where exactly they are and what/why exactly they might be placed where they are.) I thus translate this into a clever fabrication of the separation of aboriginal children from their families and culture with this illusionary or fairytale like description as a way of introducing a part of our countries history in a manner palatable to all. The true stories of the outback and the stolen generation are too difficult for us to truly face at present and maybe this film would not have received funding if the truth had been told. With loss of the aboriginal mother, many historical and politically confronting issues have been avoided. Yet, the topic of the stolen generation has been introduced to the global community in a abet in a very watered down manner - if you refer to this particular scene, you could almost say its been drowned out by propaganda. Is the movie worth seeing - yes. Is the outback anything like what was in the movie - yes There are a great number of cross cultural and religious topics that you can expand upon here. From the class structure of the British homeland, to the overlaying of one culture upon another. Our ignorance and denial is celebrated. If you know the stories of aboriginals who say their hands and arms cut from being caned and then the wounds filled with salt by nuns of the Catholic homes they were sent to. Or of Aboriginal women fed alcohol by mining men and left in creek beds after being raped. The film, a fiction, as identified by the insertion of the Wizard of Oz fantasy scenes... is a fantasy. It is how we would on some levels like to think our outback was. And that is the message I got ... We I believe were meant to understand the movie is a fictional portrayal of a beautiful rugged land, its people and our occupation of it.