Baz Luhrmann's Red Curtain Cinema and Epic Films

• Baz Luhrmann is considered an innovative director.

Red Curtain Cinema

• Shakespeare can never be number 1 in the US box office
• The musical will never be a form of cinema again
• Red curtain is identified by traditional theatrical conventions.
• Red curtain is identified by heightened other worlds.
• Red curtain is identified by song and dance used to drive the action.
• Art and life cannot be separated.
• Everything made starts very personally.

Epic Films

• Epic films tell a recognizable universal story using a vast canvas of a faraway place and historical events.
• The surface of these films appear extremely simple, but their undercarriages are incredibly complex.
• Epic films are made up of comedy, romance, tragedy, and drama.
• Epics are cinematic banquets, whereas most films today are like sushi and focus on individual flavor.

Features of Historical Epic Films

• Historical or imagined event is taken and feature a mythic, legendary or heroic figure.
• It includes an extravagant setting and lavish costumes.
• It is often accompanied by grandeur, spectacle, and a sweeping musical score
• Features a historical basis and recreates past events
• Lavish and expensive to produce
• There are elaborate panoramic settings
• On-location filming
• Authentic period costumes
• It is large/massive scale

Australia

• The budget was $130 million.
• It was the most expensive film ever made in Australia.
• It is a love letter to his home country.
• The genre is Western/romantic epic/drama war film
• Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) travels from Britain to Australia to inspect a cattle ranch she inherited, as the globe is on the brink of World War II.
• Lady Sarah Ashley reluctantly joins forces with the Drover (Hugh Jackman).
• They set out on a cattle drive across hundreds of miles of harsh terrain to save her ranch.
• They must contend with the same Japanese bombers that just rained death on Pearl Harbour when they finally reach the town of Darwin
• The film also deals with her developing relationship with a young boy, Nullah, as they navigate the racial and religious conventions of the time.

Elements of Luhrmann's Style

• Over-acting/Exaggeration (humor)
• Misunderstanding (humor) - breeding

Elements Evident in Moulin Rouge

• Superimposition
• Narration - by Nullah
• Colour
• Fast tracking

Motifs

• A motif is a recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story.
• Through its repetition, a motif can help produce other narrative aspects such as theme or mood and reflect insight to the story, characters or themes.
• A narrative can be created through the use of imagery, structural components, language and other elements.
• The motif found in Moulin Rouge is a windmill.
• The motif found in Australia is a baobab and is symbolic of Australia and an upside down world.
• Colour is used to establish atmosphere and mood.
• England is green and luscious.
• Australia is hot and dusty.

Themes

• Stolen Generations - Aboriginal children of mixed race taken by force and trained for service in white society.
• This is a theme as the following is a quote said "I not white fella I not black fella" from the movie, "half-caste" and "creamy" are also mentioned.
• There is a magical feel surrounding the theme of culture and identity.
• The following elements that contribute to the magical feel are movement from left to right, music, extreme long shot and lighting
• A sense of calm is often associated which regularly occurs in the midst of chaos.
• Depth of emotion and sense of inner power are created through Nullah's culture.
• There is the use of Close-up shots.
• Foreshadows Nullah's development and later events

Themes: Dreams - Wizard of Oz

• Yellow brick road is the journey to Darwin
• All the characters have their own dreams and are transformed by the journey.
• "The only thing you really own is your story...just trying to live a good one."
• Each character has their own journey to travel and transformation to experience - thus each individual story is highlighted.

Characters

• Lady Sarah Ashley is an English aristocrat whose husband, Lord Maitland Ashley, has bought a cattle station in Australia, called 'Faraway Downs'.
• She must travel here after his unexpected death.
• Drover is a cowboy and cattle drover.
• He is hired by Maitland Ashley to drover the cattle across the country to the army supply ship in Darwin.
• Nullah is part aboriginal and part white boy.
• Nullah lives on Faraway Downs with his aboriginal mother.
• His father is the station manager, Neil Flethcher (antagonist)
• King George is a Tribal elder from Arnhem Land.
• Is Nullah's grandfather.
• Is an embodiment of traditional aboriginal culture in the film.
• Is a Recurring presence (acts as a kind of 'character motif') signifies that sense of magic and power that the aboriginal culture carries with it.
• Neil Fletcher is the antagonist
• Neil Fletcher is unscrupulously and 'evil' manager of Faraway Downs
• Neil Fletcher maries King Carney's daughter and inherits the empire Film techniques are used to position the characters in certain ways.
• Music, lighting and clichés are used to highlight the differences between the antagonist and the protagonist when watch the film.

Critics Say

• It is a shameless-and shamelessly entertaining-pastiche.
• It works because Luhrmann, a true believer in movie-movie magic, stamps it all with the force of his own extravagant, generous personality. [David Ansen]
• Australia is so damnably eager to please that it feels like being pinned down by a giant overfriendly dingo and having your face licked for about three hours: theoretically endearing but, honestly, kind of gross. [Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail)
• Australia is a heaping blend of romance, adventure and action and is for all those folks who ask, "Why don't they make movies like they used to? [Barbara Vancheri]
• It is a pastiche of genres and references wrapped up into one horse-galloping, cattle-stampeding, camera-swooping, music-swelling, widescreen package. [Manohla Dargis]
• Baz Luhrmann isn't subtle, so it's no surprise that this compelling movie -- the most expensive one ever made Down Under -- has been criticized as a self-indulgent, grandiose and bumpy ride. [Sandie Angulo Chen]
• It is often beautiful, but wildly inconsistent, Australia is none more Baz Luhrmann, which perhaps says it all. Worth a look on the big screen, [Chris Hewitt]

An overview of Baz Luhrmann's innovative directing style and the conventions of Red Curtain Cinema. Also, explores the characteristics of epic films and their universal storytelling approach, blending comedy, romance, tragedy, and drama to create cinematic banquets.