Baz For Beginners
Been to see Elvis and not sure what to do with yourself? What was all that glitter about? The new film about the king of rock’n’roll isn’t a biopic like any other, because it was made by a filmmaker like none other. Not sure where to begin? Here’s a five-step guide to Baz Luhrmann for beginners, by Storyboard editor Ella Kemp.
Every Baz Luhrmann film is different, yet each is a star part of the same constellation that makes up who the Australian filmmaker is: a staunch believer in destiny, fame, truth, beauty, freedom and love. All roads lead to Elvis, his latest and biggest film which couldn’t make more sense in the context of all the others who got them here.
Side note: you will notice Australia is absent from this list. This is simply because 1) it is not good enough and 2) we can talk about it again once the TV show comes out. Luhrmann knew he had to do something.
Strictly Ballroom
It all began in 1992, when Australian filmmaker made a hometown classic with Strictly Ballroom. So much of the ambition of Elvis can still be felt here, with young dancer Scott Hastings trying to convince himself that “a life lived in fear is a life half lived” as just days before his biggest competition he has to make a decision that could change everything.
Throughout his career, Luhrmann might have lost a bit of the humour that made Strictly Ballroom so charming (could a return to the mockumentary format be on the cards soon?) but it was the start of everything: the glamour, the courage, the resilience. Still a total triumph.
Moulin Rouge!
Arguably Baz Luhrmann’s magnum opus, everything comes back to this. It’s one of his only stories not based on an existing piece of pop culture (Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, and so on) but it’s the one that boasts the most dizzying amount of references in the end. The jukebox soundtrack laid the blueprint for the success of Elvis, somehow deftly weaving Elton John, David Bowie, Madonna, Rufus Wainwright, Police and more into an extremely straightforward story of love and tragedy.
And of course, the staging of the grand musical is completely staggering: Luhrmann’s longtime production and costume designer and wife, Catherine Martin, shot for the moon and let it rain glitter everywhere. Presley’s Vegas residency couldn’t have been brought to life by anyone else.
Romeo + Juliet
The story of Elvis Presley, according to Baz Luhrmann at least, could not be told without Colonel Tom Parker. The Dutch music mogul took the musician under his wing and manipulated him for everything he had – but in the film, Parker narrates the story as if he and his protégé were star-crossed lovers, bound by destiny.
That’s the tragic romantic in Luhrmann, always looking for ways to tie lonely souls together and reel us in, since the very moment he laid eyes on William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. His take on the play, a much more colourful and often entertaining look at the love affair, calcifies all the things he’s always cared about, and proved just how much we should take it – and him – seriously.
The Great Gatsby
An outsider looking in, all Nick Carraway ever wanted was to feel involved. At Gatsby’s parties, in Daisy’s life, in a city that always left him feeling alone. It’s the same way Elvis started, a loner with a dream just searching for a voice until he was suddenly under the spotlight.
Granted, the similarities between Carraway and Presley somewhat stop from the moment Presley is signed, but so many of the party scenes in The Great Gatsby, breathtaking in their opulence and effervescent in their pacing, set the tone for Elvis – if the editing made you feel seasick, Luhrmann probably feels accomplished.
Elvis
So where does that leave us with the film we’ve been waiting years for? It is a Baz Luhrmann picture even more than an Elvis Presley picture, a film about entertaining and surviving and carrying the torch for all the things that make you feel brave and alive and true and beautiful.
It deserves multiple viewings – through the lens of a music fan, through that of a lonely heart, as a cinephile, as a Baz Luhrmann connoisseur. All the clues are there: now you have them to watch the magic unfold even better.
Elvis is in cinemas now.
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