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25 Mar 26
In the mid-1990s, Australian cinema was ready for a reinvention. The harsh grit and unforgiving violence of the New Wave was giving way to eccentric, colourful comedies like Muriel's Wedding (1994) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), a movement often called the 'glitter cycle'. It was during this time that one of the country's most distinctive creative voices would emerge in director Baz Luhrmann – a master of glitter if there ever was one.
Luhrmann's distinctive style is exemplified by his self-termed 'Red Curtain Trilogy' - Strictly Ballroom (1992), Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge! (2001) - where the familiar theatrical narratives of fairytale, Shakespeare, opera and Greek myth get a bombastic postmodern makeover. Each is a breakneck blend of artifice, beauty, pastiche, intertextuality and anachronism, with a heaping helping of camp. In the filmmaker's own words, it's 'Disco Brecht': cinema that, with warmth, fun and pleasure, self-consciously demands your participation.
It bears mentioning that the visual excess of Luhrmann's work is the result of a career-long partnership with four-time Oscar-winning production designer, costume designer, and wife Catherine Martin, the most awarded Australian in Oscar history. The pair met at Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Art and have been working together ever since; Martin is an inextricable creative presence across Luhrmann's filmography.
Across April, join us at your local Picturehouse as we revisit four of Baz Luhrmann's best, boldest hits.
And now that the weather's getting better, remember: Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen). 
Lucy Fenwick Elliott
F. Scott Fitzgerald's great American novel is set to screen in a glitzy, shot-for-3D, dreamlike flurry, starring Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio and a luminous Carey Mulligan. As you can imagine, there's plenty of decadence to gaze across the bay at - particularly Catherine Martin's standout 1920s stylings, which borrow extensively from the Prada and Miu Miu archives.
Luhrmann's anachronistic, contemporary soundtrack, a collaboration with producer Jay-Z, transfuses the youthful excitement of the jazz age into a broad-spanning, hip-hop-heavy 21st century oeuvre: party music for a new, but perhaps not-too-different time. Standout tracks, like Lana del Rey's hit 'Young and Beautiful', co-penned by Luhrmann for the film, soar.
The film was met with a mellow response by critics, many of whom deemed Lurhmann's maximalist stylings a poor fit for Fitzgerald's layered tale of emptiness - is a $100 million production the best match for a story so wary of wealth? It's worth considering that the novel, too, was met with plenty of derision at its time, and The Great Gatsby was a hit with audiences nonetheless - DiCaprio, backed by fireworks, raising his glass, is an image burned into the online memory forever. Maybe a little party never killed nobody.
Sun 5 April | Book Now
In fair Verona Beach, literature's most famous star-crossed lovers are wearing tropical shirts and listening to Radiohead. Luhrmann's take on Shakespeare's tale of feuding families invited the modern teenager into centuries-old adolescent angst in an earnest, heavily stylised adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.
For all its modernisations, Romeo + Juliet is a close adaptation of its source material, retaining much of the play's original dialogue - Lurhmann's key pitch, laid out in the DVD special features, was to make the movie that Shakespeare himself would make. Nonetheless, many of the film's delights lie in its allusions and updates. The prologue is delivered by a news anchor, guns are branded with names like 'Dagger' and 'Rapier', and 'PostHaste' is a FedEx style courier service.
Luhrmann populated his tragedy with an impressive cast of young actors on the path to superstardom. A young, relatively unknown DiCaprio flew to Sydney on his own dime to shoot a video workshop, and by the director's account, much like the couple's instantly legendary first glimpse through a fishtank, it was love at first sight.
Sun 12 April | Book Now
Paris, 1899. The camera somersaults through the bohemian neighbourhood of Montmartre and into the new, world-famous Moulin Rouge. A blinding montage of can-can skirts in lurid colours gives way to the iconic riff of Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', as a dancing fleet of suited gentlemen cry out to the ladies of the club - "Here we are now, entertain us!". So goes but one single minute of the jukebox musical to end all jukebox musicals: a film so big, it needs an exclamation mark.
Starring Ewan McGregor as lovestruck writer Christian and Nicole Kidman as doomed courtesan Satine, Moulin Rouge! may borrow heavily from the myth of Orpheus and the opera La boheme, but its points of reference are limitless. With homages to Marilyn Monroe, Bollywood, Fellini, and everything in between, Luhrmann's is an ode to bohemian ideals, and to the art of storytelling itself. Drama for the love of drama.
The film's legacy is all the more impressive considering its arrival during a decades-long dry spell for the Hollywood musical. Luhrmann's MTV-style aesthetics and eclectic music choices signified a new frontier, and a vastly successful 2018 stage adaptation has cemented Moulin Rouge's place as a Spectacular Spectacular achievement.
Sun 19 April | Book Now
Inspired by his own childhood in ballroom dancing, the red curtain's first parting is as personal as it gets for Luhrmann. Set in the suburbs of Sydney and introduced in deadpan mockumentary, the film follows rebellious ballroom dancer Scott Hastings (Paul Mercurio, coincidentally now a local politician in the seat of Hastings!) and beginner Fran (Tara Morice) as they attempt to break free from the dance world's rigid guidelines.
The result is a gently satirical, hyper-local and profoundly quotable Cinderella story – Lurhmann's penchant for high-octane drama is at its funniest when the stakes revolve around whether our hero will become the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Amateur Five-Dance Latin American Champion. Amidst its glib, glittering silliness and BAFTA-winning feel-good soundtrack, Strictly Ballroom also takes careful aim at Australian conservatism. Through the struggle against the oppressive, traditional force of the fictional Australian Dance Federation, and the sheer joy of the film's final scenes, Luhrmann calls out for a better, more multicultural, less 'gutless' country.
It's difficult not to draw a parallel between Luhrmann's grandiose, innovative hero ("I'm just sick of dancing everyone else's steps all the time!") and the director himself. In interviews, Luhrmann recounts industry peers walking out halfway through the film, devastating silences after screenings, and investors pulling funding after hating early cuts. But after the film's midnight premiere at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival, Strictly Ballroom would catapult its young director into the spotlight, perhaps proving its central wisdom: a life lived in fear is a life half lived.
Sun 26 April | Book Now
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