You'll miss the point if you miss the fact that director & co-writer Baz Luhrmann has taken another controversial leap into personal film interpretations (note his wildly eccentric "Moulin Rouge" and hip, up-to-date "Romeo & Juliet") and sent this romantic, Western-like, political, wartime saga into the past - creating down to the last cliché, a movie as if it were made in that wonderfully productive year in Hollywood - 1939.

Think "Gone With the Wind," "Wizard of Oz," "Beau Geste," "Jessie James," "Stagecoach," "Drums Along the Mohawk," "Goodbye, Mr. Chips,"Wuthering Heights," "Suez," and even, with some stretch, "Tarzan," and you have some idea of the cleverness with which Luhrmann concocted this lengthy and expensively mounted extravaganza. He even reaches into adjoining years to borrow from "Out of Africa," "The African Queen," and "Red River."

Set in the late 30s in the gradually developing country surrounding Australia's city of Darwin, we follow an upper-class Englishwoman (Nicole Kidman), with a supercilious air, to her inherited chunk of land in the sweeping plains. It is surrounded entirely by a greedy gentleman's property, watched over possessively by his evil-eyed foreman. Both ranches send cattle to Darwin for profit. The plan: cut her off, eliminate her herds, make her life miserable enough to sell out in desperation. Ah, but he doesn't count on her small staff, a motley mix of races, a stalwart man's man cowboy (Hugh Jackman) - and a mysterious Aboriginal old man (David Gulpilil, from the 1971 "Walkabout") - who, combined, manage, in this sprawling saga, to survive murder, treachery, thirst, fire, the singing of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and even the beginnings of war with Japan.

The film is narrated by an 11-year-old mixed-race boy (Brandon Walter) - a faithful guide for the Duchess into Aussie life.

Meanwhile, the boy-meets-girl, boy-hates-girl relationship between the lead woman and man develops just as it would have in 1939; the boy is saved from a fate worse than the plot, as he would have been in 1939, and the villain loses out while our heroic group wins - as in 1939. In other words, despite the exotic characters and locations, the predictable nature of earlier movies, like it or not, reigns. The dialog, the set pieces (some right out of "GWTW"), the recognizable character types, and the action - all borrowed, without exception.

Luhrmann, once again, with the aid of Mandy Walker's startlingly beautiful camera work, has done it again - and as with his earlier "interpretations," you either like it or reject it categorically. I liked it. I never once glanced at my watch during the entire 165 minutes.