Essay Example on Baz Luhrmann is an auteur his films follow a simple common Theme

Baz Luhrmann is an auteur his films follow a simple common theme of difficult love and he has a distinctive recognisable directing style using bright and colourful costumes exaggerated acting fast paced editing and anachronistic music It is a style that Baz Luhrmann describes as theatricalized cinema style Both films open with a theatrical start Moulin Rouge starts with a long shot of a theatre with red curtains and the sounds of an audience clapping and cheering The curtains then open to reveal a screen with Century Fox s logo The curtains close and open again to show a title card with 20th Century Fox presents to the next card that says a BazMark production and then Moulin Rouge The Great Gatsby starts with a gate design surrounding the Warner Bros logo which fades into the same gates with the Village Roadshow Pictures logo which fades into the BazMark logo and eventually to show J G From here the audience enters Luhrmann s own theatrical creative world Both stories are told by a narrator Christian in Moulin Rouge and Nick in the Great Gatsby remembering their best moments and how they end in tragedy Moulin Rouge starts with a depressed Christian typing the love story that is about him and Satine likewise the Great Gatsby starts with a depressed Nick reminiscing about Gatsby Both films end with Christian and Nick finishing their stories In both movies the two main characters make grand entrances and both instances their lives end tragically in the same setting that they were first introduced 

Both films are based on a couple falling in love against all odds and ending tragically Moulin Rouge is set between 1989 and 1900 in Paris It is based on the myth of Orpheus in the Underworld The Great Gatsby is based on Scott Fitzgerald s novel of the same name set in 1922 during the Roaring 20s In both films Baz Luhrmann follows a recurring theme of difficult love where the main characters cannot love each other because they come from different backgrounds Christian cannot love Satine because she is a courtesan and Daisy cannot love Gatsby because he is a bootlegger In both films we get the message that there are no limits to a decadent lifestyle but that pretending cannot last forever Satine ends up admitting to Christian that she cannot pretend any longer and Gatsby tells Nick his true story Baz Luhrmann s camera work consists of fast tracking movements the dancing in Moulin Rouge and the parties in The Great Gatsby extreme close ups Satine and Daisy to show their beauty high angles cgi is used to move the camera around the cities in both films In Moulin Rouge right at the start the camera travels from an extreme long shot of Paris to Montmartre proceeding through the streets of Montmartre until it enters Christian s room through a window In The Great Gatsby the camera travels from East Egg to West Egg with long shots of the Valley of Ashes and New York superposition is used to speed up and tell the story e g when Nick talks about the love triangle in 

The Great Gatsby there is a shot that has Gatsby in the foreground in the background there is old footage of soldiers marching which dissolves into a shot of Tom in the foreground and in the background a newspaper headline with America's Wealthiest Bachelor to Wed In Moulin Rouge when Toulouse Lautrec is singing on the rooftop a superimposed shot of Christian appears showing us who is being sung about filters the colours in flashbacks to Gatsby and Daisy are washed out and when Satine breaks up with Christian the scene is in black and white To show sadness blue is used when Nick walks through Gatsby's abandoned house and when Satine is forcing herself to please Duke Luhrmann creates a heightened reality in both films by using colourful costumes and sets exaggerated acting and fragmented shots of both Moulin Rouge and Gatsby's mansion using a very fast editing style that echoes the crazy decadent lifestyles in Moulin Rouge and the parties at Gatsby's mansion The soundtrack in both films is anachronistic Contemporary pop and hip hop music is used by Luhrmann to convey the feelings of the people in the period the story is set in to his audience and in this way the audience is kept involved and engaged A Baz Luhrmann film is not about the complexity and depth of the story the stories are simple It is about creating a theatrical and entertaining show for the audience Baz Luhrmann himself has said that all his films are set to three rules namely a simple identifiable story set in a heightened creative world that keeps the audience awake to the story at all times His intention is to entertain and engage his audience through visuals and sound I believe that he does this using his personal theatrical and creative directional style adds to the audiences experience