By Deke Rivers
“That’s what happens to a film,” Baz Luhrmann once told FilmInk Magazine. “You hope, you dream, you birth it. You hopefully make sure that it isn’t killed on arrival. You give it a life, and it grows up. And a relationship forms between the film and the audience.”
Film audiences have been developing deep, passionate relationships with the movies of Australian director, Baz Luhrmann, since he hit the cinematic dance floor with his much-loved big screen charmer, Strictly Ballroom, back in 1992. Driven by dazzling dance numbers, peppered with brilliant performances, and boasting a swooning central romance, the modern movie classic was even reconfigured for the stage by Baz Luhrmann himself, with Strictly Ballroom The Musical proving a huge hit. And now he delivers another bold-as-brass music themed movie with Elvis, which tells the life story of The King Of Rock’n’roll.
Despite his highly theatrical films and rich sense of personal style, Baz Luhrmann is no cashed-up city slicker. He was raised in Herons Creek, a tiny rural settlement in northern New South Wales, where his father ran a petrol station and movie theatre, and his mother taught ballroom dancing. “I’m from a very small country town in the middle of nowhere,” Luhrmann told FilmInk Magazine.
Initially dreaming of becoming an actor, Luhrmann was accepted into The National Institute Of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1983, and eventually scored on-screen work, with roles in the film, Winter Of Our Dreams, opposite Bryan Brown and Judy Davis, and on the long-running TV series, A Country Practice. But when he made his directorial debut with Strictly Ballroom, Luhrmann’s acting days were over.
The film was a local award-winning smash, and its bravura style saw its director recognised instantly internationally. Luhrmann next took on William Shakespeare with his youthful, energised, contemporised reinvention of Romeo + Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. The glitzy, highly stylised musical, Moulin Rouge!, followed, starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, before Luhrmann mounted the massive local epic, Australia, with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. He applied his trademark eye-popping visuals to an American literary classic with The Great Gatsby, and proved that not all blockbusters have to be about superheroes.
While talent isn’t always rewarded, Baz Luhrmann has done his fair share of well-deserved podium jumping, beginning with Strictly Ballroom, which took home eight AFI Awards, as well as three BAFTAs and a Golden Globe nomination. Moulin Rouge! scored six Oscar nominations and two wins, and also danced away with three gongs at The Golden Globes, while Australia received an Oscar nomination for its exquisitely rustic costumes. And most recently, The Great Gatsby scooped the pool at the AACTA Awards, staging its own party with a staggering twelve wins, while also snagging two nominations at The Academy Awards.
Now, Baz Luhrmann tells his first true life tale, and unsurprisingly, he has opted to do nothing by halves. Cinema on a grand, epic scale, Elvis looks at the near-mythical tale of Elvis Presley (Austin Butler) via his deeply complex relationship with his enigmatic manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). The film burrows deep into the fraught dynamic between the two men, crossing a period of over twenty years, from Presley’s dynamic rise to fame in Memphis, Tennessee through to his career triumphs but ultimate fall in Las Vegas. And if the film’s scenes in the casino-filled city that never sleeps get you in the mood, you can find free online pokies using sites such as www.nodepositpokies.com. Also central to the journey of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is the other essential figure in Presley’s life, his wife, Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge). “Elvis is still in our lives and he will continue to be,” Luhrmann has said of the musical icon.
While Baz Luhrmann’s edgy, highly original films have triumphed at the box office, the director says that one of his greatest challenges from the very beginning has been convincing others to share his vision. “That has never been an easy road,” Luhrmann told FilmInk. “When I made Strictly Ballroom, it was like, ‘You know that ballroom dancing is never going to work.’ Romeo + Juliet? ‘Shakespeare will never be popular.’ If I had a dollar for every time that I heard that…but that’s alright though. That’s our job.”
