Faraway Downs Review: A Winning Recut with a Botched Ending

Baz Luhrmann’s Experimental Australia Recut Faraway Downs Is a Winner—Until Its Final Chapter

In June of 2022, when I received the least expected press release in entertainment history that director Baz Luhrmann was turning his 2008 film, Australia, into a six-part limited television series for Hulu, I looked around my office like I had been target-pranked by one of the world’s largest media companies. Who was asking for this outside of me? Full disclosure: I really like Australia. To me, Luhrmann made one of my favorite, three-hanky, swoony, throwback modern era Hollywood epics. And that opinion is not held in the majority.

As it turns out, Australia is pretty beloved in its home country and those COVID lockdowns gave the director ample time to dig around in his Australia outtakes and come up with a miniseries pitch to 20th Television. And thus Faraway Downs was born. I guess we can blame the last 15 years of Luhrmann’s critical successes with The Great Gatsby, The Get Down, and Elvis for this passion project getting greenlit because there’s no question that Australia was labeled a box office dud. Also the double dip star power of Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman still holds a lot of water. And so, the once two-hour forty-five minute film is now a three-hour and forty-four minute miniseries, broken into six chapters featuring about an hour of excised material from the theatrical cut.

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As much as I was giddy to get a gander at exactly what Luhrmann could possibly have in mind with this Faraway Downs remix, let me be honest in admitting that I don’t think Australia is a perfect movie. Luhrmann tends to be excessively broad in tone, especially in introducing Kidman’s Lady Sarah Ashley, framing her with his signature extreme camera angles that make for some cringey “fish out of water” scenes in the first hour. But then he, and the movie, settle into its groove and proceed to stage the stellar chemistry between Kidman and Jackman against Mandy Walker’s glorious cinematography that showcases the stunning beauty of the country. From the lush period piece-production design to the sumptuous costumes of Catherine Martin, Australia is never-ending eye candy. Plus, Luhrmann’s co-written screenplay features an Aboriginal-centric story that doesn’t shy away from the bleak colonialism and racism that tried to wipe out the indigenous tribes of the land.

What I was hoping Faraway Downs would do for the overall Australia narrative is weave in more context about the period setting and the individual character stories without spiraling into excessive bloat. Thankfully, Luhrmann does just that. Obviously a student of great ’80s period miniseries, like The Winds of War and The Thorn Birds, Luhrmann’s Faraway Downs remix spiritually follows in their footsteps using a six-chapter format with runtimes that are economical and feature arcs that build more evenly towards a climax that felt rushed in the theatrical cut.

“Chapter 1” in particular does a much better job in framing the historical and social dynamics of 1939 Darwin, utilizing new animated visuals to explain the main players and where they sat next to one another in the territory. Outside of the small city’s significance in relation to major Pacific war campaigns and the booming economy of cattle ranching, the primary voice of the film belongs to the incandescent young Aboriginal boy, Nullah (Brandon Walters). Luhrmann retains his first-person voice throughout as the innocent observer of the story, a mixed-blood child who is stuck between two cultures. He lives with his mother on the Faraway Downs cattle ranch owned by Lord Maitland and Lady Sarah Ashley of England.

Luhrmann does some of his best restoration work in this opening chapter by stitching in necessary backstory between the estranged couple. It’s made much more clear that Sarah is very aware that her husband is living a bachelor’s life at Faraway Downs, which is a humiliating situation she aims to remedy by traveling to the ranch to sell it and divorce him. In the film, she blustered about like a naive prude that was hard to like. But the miniseries is far more generous in making her an independent woman, with a much more savvy and sympathetic portrayal as she travels to confront her philandering husband. This cut also makes Sarah less cartoonish in her interactions with the men sent to pick her up, Drover (Jackman) and ranch hand Magarri (David Ngoombujarra), which always clanged badly in the film version.

Upon arrival at the rural, rundown property, she finds her husband dead with the oily property station manager, Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), intent to get her to sell it to nearby land baron, King Carney (Bryan Brown). Overwhelmed and adrift, Nullah becomes her unexpected anchor. It’s only through his candor in telling her what’s really up at the property that she’s able to suss out that Maitland was likely murdered and Fletcher has been an unholy terror to all of the Aboriginal workers on the property. The revelations spur her to fire Fletcher, and ultimately fight back against the misogyny by choosing to make the cattle run to Darwin with the help of Drover, Nullah, and the misfits who run her property.

Aside from the fleshing out of many sequences and the breaking up of the film’s major set pieces into their own episodes, like placing the cinematic cattle drive across the vast desert in “Chapter 3” or Sarah and Drover’s navigation of Darwin’s “polite society” within “Chapter 4,” Luhrmann’s other tinkerings are mostly cosmetic. He threads The Wizard of Oz motifs better throughout. Musically, there’s a rousing new theme song performed by indigenous artists played over indigenous animated art to open every episode. There are also new indigenous artist needle drops that play in the credits, or in tandem with Kara Talve’s solid replacement score. However, I did miss some of David Hirschfelder’s more expansive film cues.

And then there’s “Chapter 6” which is essentially the film’s wartime third act that features the Japanese attacking Darwin for its importance as a communications outpost for the allies during WWII. After their relationship implosion, Sarah and Drover reconnect to save Nullah, who has been taken by the church along with other mixed-race children to Mission Island where they are meant to be religiously converted. In general, the converging events of aerial bombings, an undercover recovery mission and the resulting sob-worthy reunions work much better in a spacious, self-contained episode. However, that success shatters in the wake of Luhrmann’s significant changes to the ending of Australia. I’m not sure I can adequately convey my horror watching a once familiar—and satisfying—third act resolution now unfold like some distorted carnival mirror version that no one is going to expect, or want.

It was reported when Australia was released in 2008 that Luhrmann shot multiple endings, but test audiences rejected the one he initially presented so wholeheartedly that it brought about the cut audiences now know. Whether it was creative obstinacy, or plain ol’ hubris that compelled Luhrmann to change this ending to align it more with his “tragic” brand, it’s a cynical call that irrevocably mars everything that comes before it. In fact, it’s so jarring and discordant with the original bittersweet ending of Australia that it actually plays like a deleted scene that was crow-barred into the miniseries. It’s a decision that sucks the hope out of the narrative; undermines everything Sarah and Drover do to get back Nullah in the third act; takes away a deeply satisfying moment of karma for the indigenous character of King George (David Gulpilil); negates Sarah’s choice of place in her adopted country and weirdly obliterates the one example of a respectful white male in the whole story. When I say it’s a maddening choice, I mean that with the underscoring of two flipped tables and a primal scream.

What a waste of an excellent reframing of Australia into an improved Faraway Downs. So to salvage this misbegotten adventure into absurdity, I suggest you watch Faraway Downs only until the midpoint of “Chapter 6” and then press stop. Also on Hulu, boot up the last 15 minutes of Australia and live without pain. There, now I really fixed it.

All episodes of Faraway Downs premiere November 26th on Hulu.

Tara Bennett is a Los Angeles-based writer covering film, television and pop culture for publications such as SFX Magazine, Total Film, SYFY Wire and more. She’s also written books on Sons of Anarchy, Outlander, Fringe, The Story of Marvel Studios and The Art of Avatar: The Way of Water. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraDBennett or Instagram @TaraDBen

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Baz Luhrmann’s Experimental Australia Recut Faraway Downs Is a Winner—Until Its Final Chapter