Allan Bloom, in his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, argued that listening to rock music destroyed a young person’s ability to appreciate high culture. Could it also be true that an appreciation of high culture destroys a person’s ability to appreciate popular culture?

I raise this question because, last week, I encountered critiques of Baz Luhrmann’s Australia by two of my favourite intellectuals, Germaine Greer and Bryan Appleyard. Ha, I thought, that’s just so typical of intellectuals! Their overeducated minds and over-refined sensibilities have left them incapable of appreciating a good weepie.

Then I started to talk to non-intellectuals about Australia, and they also had a sneery and snooty view of the film, which left me wondering: have we all become too cynical, too damn sophisticated, to enjoy a film like this?

I concede that Australia has many flaws — sentimentality, silliness, bad dialogue, two-dimensional characters — and that it goes on for ever. And no, despite Luhrmann’s best efforts, it doesn’t belong up there with the great historical epics and blub-busters such as Gone with the Wind, The Way We Were and Titanic. Yet it doesn’t deserve knee-jerk derision, for, despite its flaws, it’s an enjoyable and fun film to watch. You just have to relax, lighten up and check your cynicism and preconceptions at the door.

I’ve got news for Greer and those who complain that the film whitewashes Australia’s past: Luhrmann is not John Pilger. To argue that his movie lacks historical accuracy is like complaining that there were no bars in Casablanca called Rick’s during the second world war.

Australia is an audacious film. Luhrmann has attempted to drag the historical epic into the 21st century. To this end, he playfully plunders our cinematic past and movie memories — in particular, The Wizard of Oz — mixing genres and myths in such a way that he subverts the epic’s high-mindedness and stylistic solemnity. He tackles the themes of history, race and multiculturalism with campy relish. Luhrmann is David Lean with laughs, the Spielberg of kitsch.

The first 40 minutes of Australia are startling, with their cartoonish characters and comic evocation of adventure stories of the 1930s and 1940s. The film soon settles down, though, and never allows its ironic intent or cinematic homage to interfere with the stirrings of the heart.

The action is set in northern Australia in 1939. War is on the horizon. Into this hot, harsh landscape comes the pale, imperious Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman). She has travelled from England to confront her philandering husband, who lives on Faraway Downs, their rundown cattle ranch. She meets the Drover (Hugh Jackman), a handsome, rugged cattle driver, and they have the kind of initial friction that is the foreplay of true love.

Arriving at the ranch, she finds that her husband has been killed — allegedly — by an Aboriginal shaman called King George (David Gulpilil), the grandfather of the narrator of the story, Nullah (Brandon Walters), a young Aboriginal half-caste who lives on the estate. Instead of selling her place to the corrupt local cattle baron, King Carney (Bryan Brown), Lady Sarah decides that she, along with a merry band of misfits, including the Drover and Nullah, will drive her huge herd of cattle across the desert to market in Darwin.

Naturally, the Drover and Sarah fall in love, but their happy family life together is destroyed when war with Japan breaks out and Nullah becomes a victim of the government’s policy of taking half-caste children into care.

The film is a beauty, full of great sweeping shots of the landscape and skies crowded with enemy planes. This may seem like a great Australian epic, but it plays like a great American epic, too — complete with cows, greedy cattle barons and the unjust treatment of the natives. And when did you last see a director try to create drama out of a herd of stampeding cattle? Luhrmann does it brilliantly, with a little help from the CGI.

We haven’t seen Kidman give a great performance in a long while, but she’s terrific as Lady Sarah. What begins as a caricature of an English toff develops into a portrayal of a real person who longs for love. The most touching thing about the film, however, is not the romance between Sarah and the Drover, but that between her and the boy. There’s a scene, both funny and moving, where she reluctantly sings Somewhere over the Rainbow to the child. Her relationship with him is Douglas Sirk at his best, and if Luhrmann doesn’t have you blubbing, check to see if you still have a pulse. Jackman, meanwhile, is perfect as the bearded hunk with the soft heart. There’s a scene where he takes off his shirt and reveals a torso that says: “Eat your heart out, Daniel Craig.”

Ultimately, Australia is about a group of outsiders and misfits, looking for a home somewhere over the rainbow. They find it — in each other’s hearts. If that sounds too gooey for you, you shouldn’t go to see Australia. For everyone else, it offers enough treats to make it worth the trip.

12A, 165 mins

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