The evolution of the director Baz Lurhmann
Andrew Venter
Topic two: “Lurhmann’s films are not so much adaptations as re-imaginings”
Baz Lurhmann is a very distinctive director who is both loved and hated for his bold cinematic techniques. These techniques allow Lurhmann to recreate famous titles such as Romeo and Juliet in a way that very few people could have ever imagined. From Lurhmann’s first film Strictly Ballroom these techniques were very prevalent and instead of out growing these brash techniques he actually evolved and developed his techniques. And thus resulted, resulting in the creations of very successful films. In this essay I will be discussing how Lurhmann has evolved these cinematic techniques beginning in Strictly Ballroom, continuing in Romeo and Juliet and finally in The Great Gatsby.
Strictly Ballroom was made on a very limited budget but this did not stop Lurhmann using very audacious costumes. His use of specific costumes always has a meaning behind it such as in Strictly ballroom: Fran’s dull and boring dresses that she wears at the beginning of the film, that creates a big contrast to all the ‘over the top’ costumes all the other people wear. Lurhmann does this in order to get people to over look her as a character because she doesn’t stand
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In The Great Gatsby, Jay is shown wearing very ostentatious pink and white suits where as Tom Buchanan wears more traditional dark suits. This symbolizes that Gatsby represents the ‘newly rich’ where as Tom Buchanan represents the old aristocracy. This shows how Lurhmann has evolved from using costumes to simply symbolize the importance of a character and the relationship between two characters to symbolizing the social backgrounds of two contrasting