Why Baz Luhrmann Reinvented ‘Australia’—and Made It Even Longer

“Just because it is, doesn’t mean it should be,” state both aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) and cattle-herding Drover (Hugh Jackman) in Australia, thereby providing Baz Luhrmann’s 2008 romantic historical epic with its rallying cry for racial and social progress. Now, however, it also refers to the film itself, which the illustrious Moulin Rouge! and Elvis director has reimagined in grander terms as Faraway Downs, a six-part expansion that boasts approximately an hour of additional material that’s highlighted by a surprising new ending.

Premiering Nov. 26 on Hulu, it’s a revision crafted from preexisting footage and embellished with original indigenous music and animation, and it turns Luhrmann’s sweeping ode to classic Hollywood into a richer melodrama of Outback love, business rivalries, and the pain of his native country’s Stolen Generations legacy, in which mixed-race Aboriginal children were taken from their families and converted into members of white Christian society.

Though no one ever accused the 165-minute Australia of being too concise, the extended Faraway Downs (running close to 225 minutes) benefits from its more unhurried episodic pace. By taking extra time to develop its story, it places empathetic emphasis on its main characters, Lady Sarah and the Drover. They’re a from-different-worlds pair who are brought together through circumstance to save the former’s Faraway Downs estate from predatory cattle baron King Carney (Bryan Brown) and his traitorous right-hand man Fletcher (David Wenham), as well as to care for young indigenous boy Nullah (Brandon Walters), whose shaman grandfather King George (David Gulpilil) has been accused of killing Lady Sarah’s husband.

Read more at The Daily Beast.