If you’re like me, and vaguely remember 2008’s Australia, you might have been surprised to see Faraway Downs appear on Hulu in late November 2023. Would any director have the audacity to rerelease a film nearly two decades after its debut and pretend it wasn’t some bizarre cash grab?
Evidently yes, but the resulting miniseries is so much more than I could have anticipated.
Both renditions follow English rose Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) and the ruggedly handsome and surprisingly nameless Drover (Hugh Jackman) through the harrowing Outback of Australia. A sweeping love story that takes the viewer all across Australia Pre-World War II, the original film fell just shy of the Gone with the Winds-esque style it was shooting for. Now Hulu has given director Baz Luhrmann the chance to reup his would-be classic, but the resulting series has many viewers wondering if this is some sort of elaborate bamboozle.
Why did Baz Luhrmann make Faraway Downs?
Faraway Downs, which is now streaming on Hulu, might seem like a money grab, but the film turned miniseries was a long time coming. During the beginning stages of the COVID-19 pandemic director Baz Luhrmann, desperate to find something to stave off darkness brought on by the postponement of his Elvis Presley biopic, decided to revisit his 2008 epic, Australia. The original film was well received in Europe, but other places in the world weren’t as quick to heap praise on the nearly three hour long flick.
American critics of Australia complained that the story was overburdened and short on time. They said it was bloated, unsure of its direction, and woefully missed the point with its social commentary. Australian critics, on the other hand, honed in on the film’s representation of the “Stolen Generation,” — actually several generations of Australian Aboriginals who were stolen from their families and placed into institutions or adopted by white colonist families — saying that local films with Black themes or major Indigenous characters tended to do poorly, and if the film succeeded, it could signal a shift in the stories audiences were willing to hear. In Europe, however, the movie was seen as a critical darling, and it’s one of Luhrmann’s biggest hits in Spain.
While Australia might not have filled the cultural benchmark that critics or Luhrmann himself intended, its successor has the potential to. The decade following the film’s release opened a Pandora’s box of suppressed history detailing the abuse of Indigenous people across the globe. Both the American and Canadian governments have undergone renewed scrutiny, as more and more evidence paints a clear picture of the systemic abuse and genocide that Native populations have faced.
The way we consume media and the stories the general public is willing to ingest may have finally shifted enough for Luhrmann to tell the story he originally intended.
“There was this horror in our country’s history that few people were talking about at the time and is still very controversial. I make movie-movies. So I wanted to make something that was big and also got into what happened to the ‘Stolen Generation.’”
How is Faraway Downs different from Australia?
Sure, Australia and Faraway Downs are playing with the same instruments and notes, but it’s a very different composition. The Hulu miniseries delves into never-before-seen footage, and is more like a story rearranged. The director told Rolling Stone that
“A standard film is A-B-C-D. [Makes flat line gesture] With episodic, you can do that then go vertical [raises hand high], or go over here [moves hand far left] and then bring it back here in another episode. You can deviate from the main melody, and then you can come back to it.”
It means that the show emphasizes the moments in between and includes around 40-minutes of new footage. The journey across the Never Never (another name for the Outback, which represents the massive swathes of uninhabited land on the continent) takes nearly half an episode. Minor moments in the film become pivotal in the series. Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman both returned to voice new dialogue, nearly 20-years between shoots means there isn’t any new footage, but the unused scenes more than fill out the story. But Luhrmann, and many of Faraway Downs new – and returning— fans don’t see a problem. “The way that a D.J. or producer would take a sample of a song and turn it into something new — that’s very much what I’m trying to do.”
That remix means you’re going to see some minor changes alongside one massive story adjustment. By the end of Faraway Downs, one of the main cast finds their way across the rainbow bridge. So, if that cozy ending from Australia is the only thing keeping you warm at night, maybe steer away from this reimagined tale.
You can watch all 6 episodes of Faraway Downs on Hulu.