Baz Luhrmann – Director Study

‘You can cut and paste the negative criticism of all my films, because it all says the same thing,’

My Ideas• My idea is to research the directional study of Australian film

director, producer and screen writer, Baz Luhrmann.• I aim to discover where his distinctive style came from and

how it developed throughout his films, and what impact he was hoping to have.

• My hypothesis is that I will find many similarities throughout four of Luhrmann’s films. I hope to find out that there are personal ideas and collaborations that are the reason behind these similarities.

Primary Sources – Focal Films

Baz Luhrmann has a rather small filmography, consisting of five feature films. Three of these are a part of the Red Curtain Trilogy, although I have also chosen to also study Gatsby for the similarities that it has with the trilogy.

Secondary Sources

Online secondary sources I will use include:• Wikipedia• YouTube• Articles

I will also be using books on Baz Luhrmann and some of the actors he has worked with for their opinions and their insights. Also I will look at magazines discussing the films and use films, including the ones I am studying for behind the scenes and the directors voice on them.

Strictly Ballroom (1992)PG | 94 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance | 12 February 1993 (USA)

“At a certain support you need to inject, within this construct that you've made, some humanity.”

• Adaption of his stage play• Strictly Ballroom is based on a critically acclaimed stage play

originally set up in 1984 by Luhrmann and fellow students while he was studying at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney.

• It drew on Luhrmann's own life experience—he had studied ballroom dancing as a child and his mother worked as a ballroom dance teacher in his teens

• Strictly Ballroom grossed AUD 21,760,400 at the box office in Australia, and a further USD 11,738,022 in the United States. Worldwide, it eventually took AUD 80 million at the box office, making it one of the most successful Australian films of all time.

• In 1993, the film was nominated for best picture (musical or comedy) at the Golden Globes.

Romeo + Juliet (1996)PG-13 | 120 min | Drama, Romance | 1 November 1996 (USA)

“Shakespeare had an amazing genius for capturing who we are and revealing it to us. My job is just to re-reveal it.”

• Adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet• Romeo + Juliet is a 1996 American romantic drama film adaptation

of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.• The film is an abridged modernization of Shakespeare's play. While

it retains the original Shakespearean dialogue, the Montagues and the Capulets are represented as warring mafia empires and swords are replaced with guns.

• The film premiered on November 1, 1996 in the United States and Canada in 1,276 theaters and grossed $11.1 million its opening weekend, ranking #1 at the box office. It went on to gross $46.3 million in the United States and Canada with a worldwide total of USD$147,554,998.

Moulin Rouge (2001)PG-13 | 127 min | Drama, Musical, Romance | 1 June 2001 (USA)

“I think it's about love above all things. A love of the theatre and a love of art.”

• Moulin Rouge! is a 2001 Australian–American pastiche-jukebox musical film directed, produced, and co-written by Baz.

• Luhrmann and his writing partner Craig Pearce began brainstorming Moulin Rouge! with the Greek myth of Orpheus in mind.

• Trying to mix comedy, music and tragedy.• The songs were used not simply as an adornment, but

integral to the story telling.• Domestic gross: $57,386,607 + Foreign gross:

$121,826,827 = Worldwide gross: $179,213,434

The Great Gatsby (2013)PG-13 | 143 min | Drama, Romance | 10 May 2013 (USA)

• The Great Gatsby is a 2013 3D epic romantic drama film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel of the same name.

• As of 2014, it is Baz Luhrmann's highest grossing film, having earned over $350 million worldwide.

• At the 86th Academy Awards, the film won in both of its nominated categories: Best Production Design and Best Costume Design.

• In the novel, one of Fitzgerald's characters says, "I like large parties -- they're so intimate." That pretty much sums up Luhrmann's overall approach: "It's generally a quiet, internal story about very loud, colorful, intense things. I wanted to make a film that was a large party -- that was extraordinarily intimate.“

"And all of my choices – right, wrong or indifferent; all the eyeball-rolling and easy swipes – which by the way I'm used to … well, he also suffered from that. Fitzgerald was, in quotation marks, a clown, just like I am."

Why I’ve Chosen These FilmsStrictly Ballroom (1992)Strictly Ballroom is the first film in the Red Curtain Trilogy. It is also the most basic in the sense of mise en scene, sound and lighting. It is obvious that this is Luhrmann’s first ever film in how his ideas and style has developed, in comparison to Moulin Rouge! and The Great Gatsby, this film was more personal and Baz focused more on the characters than the overall appearance. I also aim to find out why Baz Luhrmann’s films all contain love and romance.

Romeo + Juliet (1996)This is the second film in the trilogy, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play but modernised. I aim to find out why was the 20th century brought into a late 1500’s play, still including the original Shakespearean dialogue. His editing had also clearly developed from Strictly Ballroom, along with the idea of making this film bigger and better. I also aim to find out why he used to music that he chose along with the mise en scene, and how he started to achieve this style.

Moulin Rouge! (2001)Moulin Rouge is the final film of the Red Curtain Trilogy. I am going to research what influenced this trilogy and what he wanted to achieve as none of the films really link together other than Luhrmann’s use of style. Moulin Rouge also has strong performance elements along with the rest of the trilogy, hence the ‘Red Curtain’. His use of mise en scene still has similarities although you can see that it has developed and there are bigger scenes including more people, which relates to the party scene in The Great Gatsby, his most recent film.

The Great Gatsby (2013)I’ve chosen The Great Gatsby even though it isn’t a part of the Red Curtain Trilogy because of Luhrmann’s similar ideas and the development in his style. This is also his second time working with Leonardo DiCaprio (almost would have been the third), I would like to find out what it is about DiCaprio that Luhrmann is attracted to and why he feels that he is the right choice for his films. The Great Gatsby is also one of the most classic American novels, I aim to find out why Luhrmann likes to adapt other peoples work and what it was about The Great Gatsby that relates to his style, is he influenced by F. Scott Fitzgerald?

Luhrmann’s Background• Luhrmann was born in Sydney, Australia 1962. His mother, Barbara Carmel, was a ballroom dance teacher

and dress shop owner, and his father, Leonard Luhrmann, ran a petrol station and a movie theatre. • He was raised in Herons Creek, a tiny rural settlement in northern New South Wales. He attended St

Joseph's Hastings Regional School, Port Macquarie; St Paul's College, Manly, performing in the school's version of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1.

• Luhrmann received the nickname "Baz" from his father Leonard. He officially changed his given name from Mark to Baz sometime around 1979.

• In 1983, he commenced an acting course at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, he graduated in 1985.• Luhrmann has cited Italian grand opera as a major influence on his work and has also given a nod to other

theatrical styles, such as Bollywood films, as having had an impact on his style. Luhrmann was a ballroom dancer as a child, also his mother teaching ballroom dancing was an inspiration for Strictly Ballroom.

Luhrmann’s Love of Musicals, Novels and Plays• Strictly Ballroom was created while Luhrmann was at Drama school. He made it in response to feeling

artistically oppressed during the time of the cold war.“There was seemingly nothing we could do about the state of the world. It seems an odd thing, but when I did the play and we went to Czechoslovakia all those oppressed countries in the Eastern Bloc awarded it first prize. They were very emotional about the metaphorical message. It was interesting that when I went about to make the film and I wrote a naturalistic screenplay, the metaphorical message, or the second meaning was lost. That's why I reached back to my love of the musicals of the thirties and forties to create a sort of cinematic language that could contain both the clarity of the story and this second level of meaning as well.” – Luhrmann.• Of all the projects you could have made after the success of Strictly Ballroom, why did you adapt Romeo

& Juliet?“I was in a deal with Fox to make another film, and Romeo & Juliet was on a list of a hundred things I wanted to do in the cinema. I’d always thought about doing a kind of funky Shakespeare, telling a Shakespearean story the way Shakespeare would have presented the material when he was at the Globe Theatre. For all our love and our respect for the Shakespeare’s that have been done, the way we view Shakespeare, not just in cinema but also in the theatre, tends to be really informed by a whole tradition out of the nineteenth century. So it’s not an Elizabethan notion at all. I wanted to step away from that and back towards the way Shakespeare had originally presented his story.”

Style

Red Curtain Cinema – Luhrmann’s own genreRed Curtain Cinema is certainly a genre that is opposed to classic Hollywood style and breaks with traditions and rules. The colourful sets, the modern music and the fast-paced cutting are exaggerated and do not comply with reality as we know it. In Red Curtain Cinema, the form, structure and presentation of the story are more important than the narrative itself , which is the reason why the ending is always already revealed at the very start of the film. By giving away the tragic outcome in the beginning, the focus of the film moves away from the ‘what’ to the ‘how’. What is of interest is not so much what happens in the film but how it is presented.

Therefore, Red Curtain Cinema makes use of an elaborate framing structure that encloses each film in three or more layers of frame. One of these frames is the name-giving red curtain itself – it literally opens and closes the film Moulin Rouge! – which appears in different forms – as a TV set in Romeo + Juliet and as a golden frame in The Great Gatsby.

Pam Cook mentions that “Luhrmann exploits the exhibitionist nature of cinema, putting all the elements of the medium on display” and thus drawing viewers to call his style “flashy”. It is not an inappropriate description of Luhrmann’s style, which crosses boundaries not only on a filmic level but also in his personal life. Having worked in “theatre, opera, fashion and music production as well as film-making there is something of the agent provocateur in Luhrmann’s approach to his artistic endeavours”. Cook describes him as a “new kind of showman-auteur, a mixture of entrepreneur, performer and artist”, he is not afraid of crossing boundaries and polarizing his audience and critics.

Strictly Ballroom Romeo + Juliet Moulin Rouge! The Great Gatsby

Moreover, branding is not only of relevance in establishing an identity for his oeuvre, but also in reinforcing his status as an auteur who is in complete control of the production and the final product.

‘A life lived in fear, is a life half lived’from his logo is from Strictly Ballroom.

Plot GiveawayBaz is known for giving away the plot/the ending at the beginning of the film.Strictly Ballroom: The opening sequence is a montage giving away the plot of how the equilibrium is disrupted before we’ve even established the equilibrium.Romeo + Juliet: The prologue is spoken by a news reporter which says that ‘a pair of star-crossed lovers take their lives’, which is the death of Romeo and Juliet.Moulin Rouge!: Christian narrates the film by writing the story on his typewriter, he tells the audience that Satine, his love interest, had died.The Great Gatsby: Nick Carraway narrates the film. It starts with Nick talking to a doctor at the sanatorium about his mental health and what caused it (Gatsby’s death) which is when he starts to typewrite the story of ‘The Great Gatsby’.

Graham Fuller: You let us know from the beginning that Satine is doomed. Doesn’t that sacrifice dramatic tension?No, it’s completely the opposite. It’s a very old device. Shakespeare is probably the master of it. We constantly remind the audience that Satine is dying so that when she and Christian are having their love scenes, this clanging bell intensifies the experience of being with her while she’s alive. As for letting the audience know how something is going to end, there’s no pretence that we’re doing a social or psychological examination of Paris. What we’re doing is telling a myth, and the resonance comes from the way the story is revealed.

Signs and SymbolsStrictly Ballroom Romeo + Juliet

Moulin Rouge! The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby Romeo + Juliet

The Red Curtain Trilogy

Signs and Symbols (2)There are a lot scenes of water in this film, what are the ideas behind that? Luhrmann - In truth, with Romeo and Juliet I've dealt with their world as if their parents are like a Busby Berkley musical on acid and it's coming at them all the time and it won't shut up. When you get to Paul Sorvino in a dress you just think please - no more. Next thing, Romeo is under water - click - silence. It's not a big symbolic thing, but Romeo and Juliet escape into water. They use water for silence and peace and their 'There's a place for us' moments. That final image when they kiss under water - it's just silence. It comes from a personal experience of mine. My father used to talk a lot and we'd be in the pool and I'd just go underwater to hide from him. It was always so peaceful. That's where that comes from. It's a theatrical device. Everything is about telling the story. The alchemy or the power or the magic is something the audience has and there is a gap or a distance between the experience that audience has, which can be profound, and the act of making it, which is ultimately mechanical. It's motivated by a heartfelt spirit, and obviously you tap things within your own mind, but ultimately it's mechanical.

Water in Romeo + Juliet

As flowers are an aesthetic representation of transitory beauty, F. Scott Fitzgerald employs their meanings in his narrative, especially in the names of two of his main characters, Daisy Buchanan and Mrytle Wilson.

Daisy BuchananA fragile flower, the daisy represents innocence, purity, and beauty. To Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan's name is an appropriate one; however, her innocence and appearance of purity are ephemeral, and at her center is the yellow of her cupidity and moral corruption. For, at the core of Daisy Buchanan, whose voice "sounded like money," is the desire for wealth and it accompanying social position. Like the ephemeral flower, then, Daisy's love for Gatsby soon withers and dies. Her name, then, is symbolic of the impermanence of the empty values of the Jazz Age.

Flowers in The Great Gatsby Myrtle WilsonAn ancient flower, the myrtle became associated in Greek mythology with Aphrodite, the goddess of Love. Roman gardens often contained myrtle as it is a hardy plant. So, the myrtle has come to represent joy, love, and immortality.

Ironically, then, it seems that Fitzgerald used the name of his character to demonstrate, as Daisy's name does, the impermanence and falsity of the Jazz Age. Whatever, joy and love that all associated with Myrtle Wilson have had--George, her husband, Tom, her lover, and Jay Gatsby who is with her on that fatal day--is destroyed along with her. Therefore, her name symbolizes the impermanence of love and the reality of mortality.

In addition to the names of Daisy and Myrtle, Fitzgerald employs flowers in the characterization of others. For instance, at one of Gatsby's parties attended by frivolous and dissolute guests representative of the era, one actress stands in great contrast to the other guests. In her refinement and rarity, she is described as a flower symbolic of her character:Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white plum tree.

Flowers, like Gatsby's great American Dream, symbolize the illusionary and transitory values of his life and the era in which he lives. Nick reflects upon this duplicity of flowers that only briefly create the illusion of beauty, then decay and die:He [Gatsby] must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered when he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how the raw sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass.For, even the rose, symbolic of great passion and love, decays, an ugliness concealed by beauty and appeal.

Looking and the Male Gaze/Reflections in Photographs and Mirrors

• Mirror imagery is abundant in the three films discussed: In Romeo + Juliet, for instance, Juliet’s mother Gloria Capulet is admiring herself in the mirror as she praises Paris’ beauty, thus, referring to her own appearance which she recognizes as ideal in the mirror. Romeo, too, is seen standing in front of the mirror: In the bathroom scene at the Capulet ball he takes off his mask and looks in the mirror, but only briefly, for he is distracted by the aquarium behind him. It can be said that Romeo is not interested in discovering his ideal ego in the mirror, because he is more fascinated with Juliet’s looks and sees himself mirrored in her eyes. In Romeo + Juliet, mirrors are not the only reflecting surface of importance: Juliet and Romeo are often seen in water and Romeo even hides in it after escaping the Capulet mansion. Juliet looks back at Romeo, who has fallen into the pool, and exclaims “O god, I have an ill-divining soul, me thinks I see thee now as one dead in the bottom of a tomb”. What she believes she sees while Romeo submerges, is both a mirror of her emotions and worries and a foreboding of Romeo’s impending death. In this sense, water can be regarded as a mirror as well – after all, it only shows a reflection and not reality.

• A character that is repeatedly seen looking at herself in the mirror, is Daisy Buchanan. The first thing she does upon entering Nick’s house is check her appearance in the mirror, and whenever a reflective surface is near, she is quick to sit in front of it and admire herself. Daisy’s many reflections illustrate her flippancy and indecisiveness and are best visualized in the triple mirror in Gatsby’s bedroom. She is mostly interested in herself and enjoys being the centre of attention. Therefore, Daisy is the ideal target audience for visual media in all its forms.

• The use of technical gadgets like photography and the camera is a recurring theme in The Great Gatsby: Set in the Golden Age and at the heyday of new inventions, the film illustrates the growing influence of visual media on the characters. Myrtle’s neighbour McKee takes pictures of the party guests in Myrtle and Tom’s apartment and Nick is seen filming and photographing Gatsby and Daisy. Most notably however, photography is illustrated as influential enough to be accepted at face value: To prove his stories and adventures, Gatsby shows Nick a medal from Montenegro and “something I always carry with me, a souvenir of Oxford days”, he says and pulls out a photograph from his time in England. He explains that it “was taken in Trinity quad. The man on my left is now the Earl of Doncaster”, in the knowledge that a picture tells more than words and that Nick needs photographic evidence if he is to be persuaded.

Themes

Love/Romance

All of Baz Luhrmann’s films have been a romance genre. He says that he has always been drawn to “tragic romance.”

What is your idea of love? Is love not possible?“I believe in love. Sounds like a song, but I do. All my works have essentially been about some degree of love. It may be a word, but in truth it’s a profound emotion that is, in your body and your veins, chemical. Do I believe in the extraordinary, passionate mad things people will do for love? Yes. Is young love a lethal and dangerous drug, in a world of learned hate, where you are being told to hate someone because of their name or skin colour? Do I believe in that primary myth? Absolutely I do. Am I telling it in an offhanded way to disarm people? Yes. But I do ultimately hope that you are moved by that tragedy.”

Do you think love is the same now as it was at the time that Romeo and Juliet was written? “I think everything human is the same at all times. I don’t think the human condition changes. The conditions around us change, but what makes us human beings does not change. You see it in Shakespeare’s other plays. Hamlet. The genius of Shakespeare is not his stories. He did not write Romeo and Juliet, he stole it, a long poem that was based on an Italian novella. He stole it, but his genius is his understanding of the human condition and his ability with words.”

Note:Theme of love not meant to be as all of the films I am studying apart from Strictly Ballroom have love stories that don’t succeed.

Drama/Performance ( including Tragedy)In the Red Curtain Trilogy, Luhrmann employs a theatre motif to forward the narrative and engage the audience. In Strictly Ballroom, the protagonists illustrate their emotions through dancing, in Romeo + Juliet, the characters speak in iambic pentameter to communicate the drama and tragedy of Shakespeare’s play, and in Moulin Rouge!, the characters express their thoughts and feelings by spontaneously breaking out into song.Although Luhrmann’s newest film – an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby – comprises all important narrative and stylistic devices that mark it as a successor of the Red Curtain Trilogy. The Great Gatsby illustrates how the excessive visuality and symbolism that are an integral part of Red Curtain Cinema and a trademark of Luhrmann, have returned twelve years after the completion of the Red Curtain Trilogy.

Bringing the Old into the New (Use of Anachronism)The myth or simple narrative, which provides the basis for the plot, is easy enough to detect in Romeo + Juliet and The Great Gatsby, which are both based on well-known literary works. While Shakespeare’s drama and Fitzgerald’s novel are familiar to most viewers, the underlying myths of Moulin Rouge! are not quite as obvious. Luhrmann points out that Moulin Rouge! includes elements of the Orpheus myth, La Bohème and La Traviata. Most notably, Orpheus’ descent into the underworld to bring back his wife Eurydice is the narrative on which the figure of Christian and the love story between Christian and Satine are based. Furthermore, these myths are then set in a heightened and modernized world viewers can relate to: Romeo + Juliet is set in modern day Verona Beach, Moulin Rouge! takes place in an idealized 19th century Paris and The Great Gatsby is set in New York City in the 1920s, with the focus on how the characters must have experienced life in the Roaring Twenties. The aim of Red Curtain films is to create the same sense of wonder in film spectators today, as the characters have experienced in the face of new inventions at the time.

“Luhrmann’s Red Curtain films have a lot more in common than just their borrowings from the world of theatre: As will be explained in this master thesis, Luhrmann’s films can easily be recognized as such through a series of narrative structures and aesthetic devices that are especially noticeable on a visual level. Moreover, these structures and devices are not limited to the three movies Luhrmann constitutes as a trilogy; rather, they are a common thread running through his entire oeuvre. Luhrmann’s newest film – an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby – comprises all important narrative and stylistic devices that mark it as a successor of the Red Curtain Trilogy.” - Anett Koch.

http://www.grin.com/en/e-book/275231/the-visual-aesthetics-of-baz-luhrmann-s-red-curtain-cinema

Conflict/Feud (fighting over the female)

Vladimir Propps theory:Princess/Prize

Collaborations

Baz Luhrmann does not see himself as an auteur, but rather as “part of a team that makes things”. That team consists of Catherine Martin, the film’s production designer, and Bill Marron, the associate production designer, both of whom share a house with Baz in Sydney.

Costume/Production designBaz Luhrmann’s wife, Catherine Martin, has taken part in the costume and production design of all of Luhrmann’s films.Catherine Martin (born 26 January 1965) is an Australian costume designer, production designer, set designer, and film producer. She won two Academy Awards for Moulin Rouge! in 2002 and another two for The Great Gatsby in 2014. Having won four Oscars, she is the most awarded Australian in Oscar history.She recreated her designs for screen-version of Strictly Ballroom (1992), for which she won two Australian Film Institute Awards (Best Production design and Best Costume design). She won an Oscar nomination (as a production designer) for Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996). She also made her debut as an associate producer for the same film. She married Luhrmann on her 32nd birthday, 26 January 1997.She designed Nicole Kidman's vintage wardrobe for Baz’s 2008 film Australia. In 2009, she received a fourth Oscar nomination for Best Achievement in Costume Design for Australia, but lost the award to Michael O'Connor for The Duchess.She has also launched a range of home wares, featuring paints, wallpaper and rugs.

Production Design

Costume Design

Moulin Rouge

Strictly Ballroom

The Great Gatsby

Catherine Martin: "There’s a very famous illustration from the mid ’30s by J. C. Leyendecker of a man in a pink striped suit. But Baz always likes to know that there’s a precedent. In 1925 when the story is set, did anyone wear a pink suit? We researched and researched, and after working with Brooks Brothers’s archivist, we found they’d been making seersucker suits from the late 19th century, so tick! We worked really hard on the silhouettes. In the late teens, all the suits were very body conscious and really tight. But by 1925 to the late ’20s, it was a baggier silhouette. We made the call to go with the more flattering, tailored look to get that feeling of Dandyism that really needed to be clear with Gatsby. But the details were very 1920’s—folded-back cuffs, fantastic seaming down the front, and pocket detailing."

Romeo and Juliet

"You need to justify each piece of clothing, in serving the story."

The "Red Curtain" style was instrumental in creating this world. Luhrmann: "One of the characteristics of the 'Red Curtain' films is the use of classic cinema references. In MOULIN ROUGE we have utilized this mechanism both in making reference to classic hair styles and costume silhouettes of the great divas of the '40s and '50s. Marlene Dietrich, with a sprinkle of CABARET (1972) and a nod to Rita Hayworth in GILDA (1946). It is this constant referencing and re-referencing that we hope allows a modern audience to decode the historical setting. The ease with which the audience understands the story is crucial. In this musical we are not revealing the characters or plot slowly and invisibly, but quickly and overtly. "