Performing Nation, Performing Difference: Luhrmann's Australia and the multicultural vision

Baz Luhrmann's Australia is simultaneously a film made for an Australian and an international audience. One of the interesting question this raises is how Luhrmann performs the nation for the national and the international audience. The film's juxtaposition of the national epic of pioneering, or nation building, on the one side and the stark historical realism of the stolen generations + the backdrop of the second world war bombing of Darwin by the Japanese collectively creates a number of interwoven narratives in the tapestry that forms Australian cultural history.