Luhrmann: “It’s not naturalism”

Baz Luhrmann’s massive “Australia” keeps hurtling nearer, with the director apparently in an editing-room frenzy to have it ready in time. A new trailer and poster emerged last week, together with word that the film is hovering around the 170-minute mark. Fine by me — if that’s the scale of the project, then so be it.

However, one thing I’ve noticed about the reaction from many bloggers and commenters is how many people seem to have missed the point of what Luhrmann is aiming to achieve here. People are complaining that the film looks too “old-fashioned,” or that, heaven forbid, it doesn’t look “realistic.”

Apart from the fact that realism has never been on Luhrmann’s agenda, it’s perfectly obvious that he’s working in a throwback vein here. All the footage we’ve seen suggests the film is a homage to the epics of Hollywood’s golden age, with all the heightened performance style and florid visual sensibility that entails. Whether or not it works remains to be seen, but one has to understand the mode he’s working in first.

Luhrmann makes as much clear in an extensive piece in the Guardian, where he explains his epic intentions:

When I make a film, people don’t seem to talk about the film itself. Instead, they say: ‘How can he mix genres and styles like that?’ or ‘How can that cinematic language be credible?’ One expects it with this film, too, because, although I draw the DNA very directly from the epic tradition, this isn’t a carbon copy.

Will I be accused of reinventing the epic? Only if it works. If it doesn’t, I’ll be accused of wasting a lot of time and money. The cinematic language is not like in the Red Curtain trilogy [Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!], but it’s not naturalism. I think you’ll see the influences of those movies I’ve loved, but it will also be something of its own. It’s a very difficult thing to achieve.

Citing “Gone With the Wind” and “Lawrence of Arabia” as clear inspirations, not least in the broadness of their appeal. Making the astute point that few films today dare to reach beyond a certain demographic, he argues that such classic Hollywood epics captured a broader audience by spanning a far wider tonal range:

The surfaces of these films appear extremely simple, but their undercarriages are incredibly complex. They were made up of comedy, romance, tragedy and drama. These epics were cinematic banquets, whereas most films today are like sushi, focusing on individual flavours.

It’s all about definition now. You are a 17-year-old boy, so you will like action. You are an office girl? You will like Sex and the City. You are an older male? You will like drama. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but there used to be a cinematic form that wasn’t about what was so different about us, so much as what was the same about us. These epics sweep everybody up in them as a cinematic event … I’m extremely challenged by the idea of including everyone. If a 20-year-old sits in the same row as a 50-year-old, or, goodness forbid, the disparate members of a family go to watch it together, I’ll feel that we’ve achieved something.

Fingers crossed the gamble pays off. It’s a really interesting interview with a genuine industry maverick — I could quote ad nauseum, but you may as well read it all here.