Sarah White
Filmmaker Essay – Baz Luhrmann
Baz Luhrmann is a Australian film director, screenwriter and producer. Luhrmann was born on the 17th September 1963 in Sydney, Australia. He has directed many films such as Australia and Strictly Ballroom, and directed and screen-written The Great Gatsby, Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet. His most distinguished works to date are the three films that make up his Red Curtain Trilogy, where each film contains a theatre motif that resurfaces throughout the film. The Red Curtain style of filmmaking was created by Luhrmann to actively promote audience participation, and the third movie in the trilogy, Moulin Rouge, has been his most successful film. He is well known for boldly tackling tired genres and reviving them with his trademark.
Baz Luhrmann has many styles of editing that is seen in the majority of his films. One of the most obvious styles is the use of voiceovers, most knowingly shown in Mulin Rouge and his film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby.
In The Great Gatsby, Luhrmann uses the voice over effect to enhance the situation/scenario that the characters are in. He uses the narrator’s voice of the main character to show his thoughts and feelings to the situation at hand. It is successful in how it entices the audience to the personal element of the scene. Luhrmann shows how the situation is important within building the character, using the voice over to enhance his personality in the thought process.
When talking about the voice over Luhrmann said in an interview that; “here comes the big problem, how do you reveal the inner poetic narrative of Nick Carraway?… We wanted to see Nick Carraway write that book, see him speak some of Fitzgerald’s poetry, we didn’t want to just disembody the voice over, because that runs out of steam.” With this, he emphasises the importance of the inner thoughts of the narrator and how the voice over mirrors the written word in The Great Gatsby novel. Tobey Maguire (who plays Nick Carraway) said in an interview that Luhrmann gave him the chance to “explore, experiment with the voice over, for instance, reading straight from the book.” Although critics have said that the voiceover can at times be too much to hear, Luhrmann brilliantly uses the voice over to explain the inner thoughts of the narrator without changing the scenes that Fitzgerald wrote in his novel, to which normally happens when making a book into a film.
Leonardo DiCaprio, who played Gatsby, has said that; "Baz is attracted to classic pieces of powerful dramatic literature, and he's not afraid to take them on. He's also not afraid to infuse them with his own ability to transport you to another world. I love those types of risk takers. His enthusiasm about doing this story [The Great Gatsby] and Romeo +Juliet is infectious and propels you to believe." One of the ways that Luhrmann Sarah White
adapting classic’s, which are set in influential decades, such as the 1920’s with The Great Gatsby, he completely transports his audience to those decades through the costumes, props, locations, sets, etc. For example, Luhrmann recreates the alluring setting of the Montmartre Quarter of Paris, France in1899-1900, where the style reflects the character's universe revolving around the cabaret scene of the Moulin Rouge. The costumes are elaborate and dazzling, making the audience wonderstruck as to what the decade would have been like.
One of Baz Luhrmann’s other trademarks in his films is the frequent use of bright distinctive colours and fast paced editing. The use of bright colours is memorable in Moulin Rouge where he uses a bold red throughout the film (mostly in every shot), showing the glamour and danger of the time in which it was set. The combination of light and color and movement has been known to “grab your eyes and not let go.” As for the editing, this is true in Moulin Rouge, The Great Gatsby and Romeo and Juliet, where he uses fast paced editing in a sequence to show how disorientated the scenes and the characters within them are, subsequently making the audience feel the same.
Luhrmann also uses contemporary music in films set in the pre 20th/21st century. Commenting this technique, Luhrmann has said that he wanted to, (talking about The Great Gatsby), “elicit from our audience the same level of excitement and pop cultural immediacy toward the world that Fitzgerald did for his audience.” This shows he wanted the audience to relate to the pop culture of the 1920’s through the pop culture we have now, while also mixing the music up with the Jazz sound from the 1920’s to reflect the time in which the film is set in.
Baz Luhrmann also has a unique style when it comes to the romance genre. In almost all of his films he appears to celebrate the romance while at the same time mocking it. This is shown in his adaptation of Romeo + Juliet where he shows the bizarre idea that children know what love is and will give up everything for it, while also showing the pureness of their bond and the genuineness of their emotions. This is also shown in Moulin Rouge in how the idea of love at first sight is heartbreaking sweet and romantic, but then reinforcing the idea that it is not meant to long lasting or even real at all reinforced by the tragic ending of the lover’s romance.
Luhrmann received Directors Guild of America and Golden Globe nominations for Best Director – Motion Picture for his work on Moulin Rouge! Luhrmann's 2008 romantic epic Australia, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, achieved the modest box office in the United States. The film was very successful in Europe, maintaining the number one slot at the box office.