Faraway Downs Review: Uneven Down Under Drama Makes Brief Return

Fourteen years after Baz Luhrmann unleashed his epic romantic drama “Australia” upon the world, the ambitious director has returned to rework his labor of love into a new streaming series. In 2008, Luhrmann’s sweeping take on Australian myths and history stumbled at the box office and earned mixed reviews. Weighing in at nearly three hours, the film’s theatrical cut frustrated Luhrmann, who had shot alternate endings and additional footage that ultimately hit the cutting room floor.

Enter the six-part Hulu series “Faraway Downs,” which adds around 40 minutes of unseen material on top of the original cut. Structured into self-contained “chapters,” each episode runs from a brisk 25 minutes to an indulgent 50, lending the saga added breathing room. Whether the show’s more episodic flow can overcome criticisms of excessive length and simplify an overloaded narrative remains to be seen. But Luhrmann die-hards will surely revel in this sprawling director’s cut regardless.

For the uninitiated, “Faraway Downs” fundamentally preserves the film’s essence – a grandly romantic odyssey across the sweeping Australian Outback, equally sweeping in its cinematic style and checkered portrayal of national identity. Luhrmann clearly yearns to do right by the land he loves. Yet in attempting to capture Australia’s intricate soul, his messy passion project left many wanting more nuance and sensitivity. Returning to the scene of his heavily hyped triumph turned folly, can the maximalist director finally make his heartfelt statement hit its mark?

A Well-Intentioned Misfire

Unfortunately, the extra runtime and shifted format fail to rectify “Australia’s” core flaws. While “Faraway Downs” offers devoted fans minor enhancements, the series retains essentially the same shortcomings around narrative depth and problematic portrayals that plagued Luhrmann’s original vision.

The episodic structure carves out more space to accent supporting players and Indigenous perspectives. Additional scenes provide helpful connective tissue and momentum. An alternate conclusion strikes a more fittingly bittersweet note. Yet none of these changes get to the heart of why “Australia” felt like an overstuffed misfire in need of greater focus.

The story remains overplotted, ricocheting wildly in tone between rollicking adventure, swooning romance, light comedy, and wartime tragedy. Character development stays stubbornly superficial, relying on archetypes versus psychological realism. Racial depictions, despite good intentions, continue trafficking in insensitive exoticism and the mighty white savior motif. For all its grandiose style, the series lacks enough substance to justify its sprawling length.

In the end, “Faraway Downs” stands as an extended take on source material too fundamentally flawed to resuscitate through minor nips and tucks. This streaming makeover puts some extra polish on a beautiful disaster without rebuilding its precarious foundation. Luhrmann completists seeking another hit of the director’s signature excess may embrace this refashioned labor of love. For most viewers, the improvements only highlight the original’s inherent limitations.

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A Cattle Queen’s Quest Down Under

Set against the looming outbreak of World War II in 1939, “Faraway Downs” follows English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley as she travels to northern Australia to wrap up her late husband’s affairs. Upon arriving at Faraway Downs, her husband’s massive cattle station there in the Northern Territory, Sarah discovers the philandering nobleman has perished under mysterious circumstances. Determined to offload the failing property, she soon uncovers a scheme by her ranch manager Neil Fletcher and rival cattle tycoon King Carney to swindle Faraway Downs’ livestock right out from under her.

To fight back, the cosmopolitan fish out of water teams up with Drover, a rugged local jackaroo (cowboy) who begrudgingly agrees to help drive 1,500 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of rugged Outback terrain to reach the port of Darwin. There, Sarah hopes to land a must-needed government contract to solidify her claim over the station. As the mismatched pair undertakes their epic overland trek, battling each other as much as the punishing environment, a tentative bond slowly develops between the wealthy English noblewoman and Australian man of the land.

Complicating matters, Sarah also finds herself growing deeply attached to Nullah, a biracial Indigenous Australian boy living on Faraway Downs. She vows to protect the orphaned child, who has suffered under Australia’s racist assimilation policies targeting “half-caste” youths like himself. Over the course of their harrowing journey across the Outback’s mythic landscape, Sarah will discover as much about herself as the wonders of Australia’s natural and human richness.

Of course, no epic romance would be complete without obstacles to surmount. And “Faraway Downs” throws plenty in Sarah and Drover’s way, from Fletcher and Carney’s continued sabotage to the growing threat of Japan entering the global conflict. As war finally reaches Australia’s shores, Sarah and all who call Faraway Downs home will face losing much more than cattle or personal fortunes. They’ll be fighting to preserve something far more precious – their makeshift family, their ancestral land, and the dream of peaceful coexistence on Australia’s timeless earth.

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Moments of Magic Among the Flaws

While the series fails to fully come together, “Faraway Downs” nonetheless retains flashes of the talent, craftsmanship, and wonder that have defined Luhrmann’s oeuvre. Central among the show’s saving graces lie the magnetic performances of leads Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. Reprising their roles from 2008 film, the duo bring plenty of Hollywood wattage as well as crackling chemistry, elegantly walking the line between screwball comedy and simmering passion. Whether sparring sharply or stealing tentative glances of admiration, their thorny courtship proves the beating heart that animates this whole unwieldy affair. And they both convey the innate dignity of their characters – Sarah’s iron-willed grace under literal and existential fire, Drover’s rugged exterior shielding profound care and wisdom.

Of course, any Luhrmann production must be eye-catching above all, and “Faraway Downs” delivers on visual splendor. Cinematographer Mandy Walker lenses the Outback’s lonely beauty as an entity both wondrous and forbidding, at times dwarfing the characters traversing its vast expanses. The iconic landscapes possess mythic weight, dormant wonders awaiting revelation. Luhrmann’s camera movements glide and sweep majestically across flaming red plains, framing his stars against land and sky with reverence. Fittingly for this old-fashioned epic, the images unfold with a nostalgic grandeur absent in glossier modern blockbusters, harkening back to the dramatic 70mm vistas of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

That throwback sensibility also permeates the central storyline, which retains a certain crackling, swashbuckling charm -5000 head of cattle racing through the wilderness, villains descending, romance kindling against the odds. A refreshingly straightforward good vs. evil dynamism compared to today’s overwritten antihero dramas. Drover’s climactic cavalry charge may strain credulity, but conjures the innocent, uncynical allure of movie magic somewhat lost nowadays. And the new episode structure lends sufficiently placed pauses in the bombastic proceedings.

Of course, little Nullah’s soulful presence furnishes the show with its true magic. Brandon Walters imbues the youthful Aboriginal innocent with luminous charm and gravitas far beyond his years. Through Nullah’s eyes, we are reminded of Australia’s still-unhealed scars even amidst Luhrmann’s exultant spectacle. This radiant boy epitomizes the land’s painful yet transcendent beauty.

Failures of Vision & Insight

Unfortunately, “Faraway Downs” falls short of justifying its sprawling narrative real estate. The added runtime may allow more room for Luhrmann’s signature maximalist flourishes. But for the most part, it simply provides space for thinly conceived characters, underdeveloped relationships, and racially backwards tropes to further spread their wings.

At the story’s swollen heart lies the weak romance between Lady Sarah and Drover. Despite Kidman and Jackman’s best efforts, this central affair of opposites attracting retains a juvenile simplicity, relying on cliches versus psychological depth. Their dynamic harkens back to Hollywood’s earliest days, all screwball squabbling and simmering innuendo lacking meaningful connection beyond the physical. Drover ultimately remains a caricature – the strong silent type who needs an aristocratic English rose to unleash his inner nobility. The longer runtime might afford a steamier love scene but does nothing to render these archetypes more convincing or complex.

Most supporting players receive similar surface-level treatment, less fully realized people than props to move the plot. Fletcher and Carney as the principal villains play greedy, mustache-twirling stock types without deeper motivations or dimensions. Sarah’s posh friend Cath provides the odd witty one-liner but barely registers as an individual. The extra minutes thrown their way only reiterate how thin the writing is across the board.

Perhaps most disappointingly, the Indigenous characters see pitiful development, still narrowly portrayed through racist optics. Young Nullah receives greater screentime but his expanded presence mostly involves more wide-eyed awe, goofy comments and mystical talents. Kindhearted yet painfully one-note, his role remains an outdated Magical Negro trope merely there to guide the white protagonists on their journey with folksy wisdom. And David Gulpilil’s tribal elder King George fares even worse – a stoic, speechless cipher not even human enough to defend himself against unjust accusations. For all its grand gestures of uplift and reconciliation, the show’s regression to reductive stereotypes proves severely limiting and increasingly hard to stomach.

While the new conclusion strikes a fitting elegiac note, it arrives too late, accompanying too few substantive changes beyond enhanced backstories and a steamier tryst scene that add little. Without meaningful plot or character surgery, the show remains merely an extended remix of well-trod material lacking fresh perspective or insight. Overlong yet still superficial, “Faraway Downs” offers more of what never fully worked in the first place.

Unresolved Reckonings

Ever the ambitious filmmaker, Luhrmann clearly aspired for “Faraway Downs” to also work as thoughtful commentary on Australia’s unfinished national reckoning with its racist history and ongoing impacts. Through expanded scenes of Nullah’s harrowing experiences, the series makes admirable overtures regarding the nation’s oppression of its native First Peoples. Opening title cards educate viewers on the real-life Stolen Generations scandal where Indigenous youth were forcibly separated from communities and families. The alternate ending emphasizes how policies ripped apart the makeshift family central to this tale. And episodes pointedly commence by acknowledging Indigenous sovereignty over Australia’s rightful ancestral lands.

Yet these well-intentioned gestures feel superficial given the actual substance of Luhrmann’s storytelling. While scenes of Nullah witnessing state authorities tear wailing children from parental arms prove undoubtedly impactful, Indigenous perspectives remain largely sidelined throughout the show at large. Promoting Nullah to ostensible narrator rarely grants him greater authority or interiority. And when spotlighted, Indigenous characters seem less agents of their own destiny than props supporting Lady Sarah’s evolution from self-involved aristocrat to benevolent champion of the oppressed.

Her white-savior storyline intersects most problematically with race – the cultured English rose touches down in a benighted colony and immediately starts fixing misguided natives, ushering them toward civilization by campaigning against deeply embedded horrors she just learned existed yesterday. From suspicious law enforcement prejudiced against Drover to institutional abuse inflicting lasting trauma upon Stolen Generations youth, the script gestures superficially toward Australia’s festering social inequities while centering the globally dominant demographic represented by Kidman’s crusading do-gooder.

Especially amidst the recent political context around Indigenous rights and proposals for empowerment, the show’s persistent frame of white characters as relatable heroes and ethnic minorities as exotic supporting players seems increasingly oblivious. Once more, the length allows Luhrmann’s racially blinkered perspective to sprawl rather than drilling down to expose Australia’s open wounds with nuance. However well-intended, “Faraway Downs” ultimately perpetuates the paternalistic status quo under the guise of reconciliation.

Technical Brilliance, Thematic Deficiencies

Whatever its dramatic shortcomings, “Faraway Downs” delivers expected excellence technically. Production design and costuming offer sumptuous period detail, contrasting Sarah’s aristocratic finery against Drover’s rugged outback gear. Location shooting in the Outback’s Northern Territory unfurls truly cinematic vistas, fiery red plains and jagged peaks possessing nearly Biblical grandeur. Mandy Walker’s expansive 70mm lensing accentuates the setting’s lonely majesty. Sweeping camerawork carries a nostalgic dramatic weight, positioning the tiny players against land and sky to visually convey each player’s relative significance (or lack thereof).

The extended runtime allows editing more lyrical flow between sequences versus the choppier original cut. Scenes breathe a bit more, transitions proceed more organically. Luhrmann’s longtime collaborator Elliott Wheeler provides a soaring orchestral score underlining each emotional beat with maximal bravado.

Yet for all its formidable craft, the series often employs outstanding technical elements for limited ends. Stunning aerial photography may reinforce Indigenous connections to ancestral lands…while characters in the foreground lean on offensive magical stereotypes. Sumptuous lighting lovingly caresses lead actors whose romance lacks complexity. The heightened score swells to accent unearned emotional moments in a superficial script.

In the hands of visionaries like Terrence Malick, such virtuosic cinematic capabilities might deepen and progress narrative meaning. Under Luhrmann’s guidance, such dazzling style seems primarily decorative, more interested in upholding a self-mythologizing grandeur. For once, perhaps less would mean more.

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