Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is the only Australian film selected to screen at
this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it will be the opening film.
Aside from a talent for spending money and throwing parties, Baz Luhrmann and
Jay Gatsby, the tragic hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, have little in
common. But after a customary six-month release delay, this May we finally get to
see the flamboyant Australian’s $125 million Warner Brothers adaptation of the
classic novel. So while, in the novel, Gatsby’s guests waft dreamily about his blue
gardens, Baz says: ‘Great parties are like chemical equations that explode.’
The film’s fusing of American lyricism and Lurhmann’s visual fireworks has already
inspired both controversy and expectation. Nobody but Luhrmann’s circle and a
handful of studio executives has yet seen the film, but that hasn’t stopped the media
from weighing in (the Daily News: ‘How Baz Luhrmann will ruin The Great Gatsby’;
the New York Times: ‘A Pre-defense of Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby’).
While the sceptics flag up the expensive six-month delay in the film’s release and the
fact that the hip-hop star Jay-Z is scoring much of the film’s -soundtrack, Luhrmann
optimists savour the prospect of the director’s creative spectacle meeting the book’s
‘epic grandeur’ (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s description). The bigger question is whether
Luhrmann’s version, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, Carey Mulligan as
Daisy Buchanan and Tobey Maguire as narrator Nick Carraway, can improve upon
Jack Clayton’s 1974 take starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Although it was
neither a critical nor commercial success, it remains a cultural and style reference.
When I met Luhrmann in a stylishly subterranean basement in the Ace Hotel in
downtown Manhattan, he was keen to stress that he was drawn to the project
because of an appreciation for the book. ‘Universally, Gatsby’s a bit like Gone With
The Wind and like Titanic. People vaguely know it and some people who are
Fitzgerald nuts know it very well. It’s amazing how many people know the Redford
film but therefore don’t know the book because they’re poles apart… The novel is
exquisite. You learn the history of Gatsby, everything about his life during the
journey and telling. You know where he’s come from, you know who he was and you
know what he is.’
It could end up being the role of a lifetime for Leonardo DiCaprio, whose more recent
screen outings have not always matched the subtlety of his performances in early cult
classics (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Basketball Diaries and, of course,
Luhrmann’s own 1997 Romeo+Juliet opposite Claire Danes). DiCaprio was 22 when
he first teamed up with Luhrmann. ‘Leo was a prince when we madeRomeo+Juliet.
Now he’s a king. Any time I’ve spent with him, he’s only ever had one focus in his life
and that’s acting and the quality of it.’
For his own part, the director divides critics with films that include Moulin
Rougeand Australia. He has a reputation within the industry as a perfectionist who
haemorrhages money in pursuit of the ideal. In a navy-blue suit and with salt-and-
pepper hair, on the surface Luhrmann resembles another commuter leaving Grand
Central Station. In person, he sweeps you into his world with a gale force of charm —
he is among the most charismatic men I’ve ever encountered. His powers of
persuasion are legendary — whether it’s persuading the Fitzgerald estate to buy the
rights to The Great Gatsby, or schmoozing the biggest musical artists of our time
to let him use their songs in Moulin Rouge.
While blazing a trail in the Australian theatre scene, hich included directing La
Bohème at the Sydney Opera House in 1990, Luhrmann acquired the nickname of
Count Von Groovy. These days the world is his fiefdom. ‘I have a philosophy — I
dream in Paris, I have fun in London, I like to live in New York and I like to dance in
Brazil. LA for work and Sydney is home.’
‘I love to affect culture,’ he says with typical understatement. Luhrmann may not be
shy in highlighting his role as a trendsetter, but his esoteric cinematic recipes have
resulted in mainstream cultural menus being transformed. ‘When I started
withStrictly Ballroom, everybody kept saying ballroom dancing will not be popular
in America. Strictly Come Dancing came directly from Strictly Ballroom. The
graphics and clothes from Moulin Rouge have been absorbed by other cultures.
They’re still doing bordello clips in pop. Every week there’s a new nightclub opening
saying it’s Moulin Rouge-ish.’
Romeo+Juliet was loathed by many critics but won him powerful friends in Britain:
‘Some people said it was MTV Shakespeare. But Lord Puttnam said it’s done more for
Shakespeare education [than anything else].’ And while Fitzgerald purists may flinch,
as Shakespeare purists did with Romeo+Juliet, it’s hard to begrudge a new
generation the chance to fall in love with another classic. There’s talk among his
creative team that Luhrmann’s plans include another Shakespeare movie mash-up.
‘My problem is death. I have more things in my cupboard I want to make. There’s the
Shakespeare canon, there are cinematic musicals, there are edgy psychological
works.’ He even hints he’d like a shot at directing 007. ‘Sometimes having a brand is
a burden,’ he says, ‘because sometimes I’d like to be a shooter and knock off a movie
just for the fun of making someone else’s script or a Bond film.’
Should his colourful depiction of 1920s Long Island find favour with audiences and
critics, Luhrmann will be able to do whatever project he chooses. But whatever the
outcome of the Gatsby gamble, the celebrations promoting the film will be legendary.
‘Gatsby was someone who liked parties. So look out for that!’
Aaddendum: Leonardo DiCaprio will join his Great Gatsby co-stars Tobey
Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton and Elizabeth Debicki at the Australian
premiere of the film in Sydney on May 22. The cast, along with director Baz
Luhrmann, will walk the red carpet at Hoyts at Fox Studios after the world premiere
of the film in New York on May 1, and after attending the Cannes Film Festival,
where it is the festival opener, on May 15.
The Great Gatsby is released in Australia on May 30.
Tom Teodorczuk – THE SPECTATOR – 30 March 2013