My film is not just about Australia: Baz Luhrmann

Los Angeles, Dec 30: `Australia` director Baz Luhrmann says his film is just a metaphor in the romantic epic and the movie is not about the country. "It`s not about Australia. It`s a metaphor; like Casablanca or Brazil or Oklahoma. This `Australia` is a metaphor for the far away; to surrender, to experience and to be reborn through a relationship. Of course it`s my country, my own journey but it`s about humanity too," Luhrmann said.

The Hollywood flick, which stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, hits Indian theatres on January 1. Luhrmann, who has earlier directed Oscar winning musical `Moulin Rouge`, says he wanted to create an epic film set in his homeland Australia, like the classics that had influenced him in his childhood. "When watching these kinds of films, from `Gone with the Wind` and `Ben-Hur` to `Lawrence of Arabia` and `Titanic,` the audience was communing in one big motion picture experience. I wanted to create a cinematic work that would be similarly inclusive because I feel passionately about having more inclusiveness in our lives," he said in a statement here. Luhrmann believes that the characters of the film exemplify his personal and professional motto: `A life lived in fear is a life half lived`. "Every day on the sets I would look at the monitor and see Nicole Kidman in clothes that should never be worn in a desert, clumping through 100 degree heat being glamorous and funny. Or Hugh Jackman galloping into frame on a horse, nearly keeling over from dehydration. Sometimes I asked myself if we set the bar too high," he adds. `Australia` is the first feature film to be produced as part of Luhrmann`s new focus on a trilogy of epic works, after his project with Leonardo DiCaprio on the life of Alexander was shelved. Bureau Report