He has just taken a cherished, 1920s-set story, hot-wired it with Jay-Z and Lana Del Rey songs, and is now braced for the brickbats. But he also feels a kinship with the tragic Fitzgerald, who set out to write a beautiful, groundbreaking, modernist book and found himself flayed by the critics and hung out to dry. Naturally, Luhrmann sympathises with the character of Jay Gatsby, who dreamed too big and was then brought low. "Back then he was a boy with a Stradivarius," the director recalls. The star last worked with Luhrmann in 1996, when he played another ill-starred lover in Romeo + Juliet. Such is the endless noise and colour, in fact, that Leonardo DiCaprio does well to even make himself heard as the elusive title character – a romantic self-made prince, destined to run aground in the Valley of Ashes outside Manhattan. Where F Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 source novel gave us the world in a soap bubble, weightless and gorgeous, Luhrmann's Gatsby is more akin to a mirrorball, a spinning, fractured dazzle of wild revels and swooning courtships. Undeterred by the tale's vaunted reputation, the director goes at it free-style, kicking up sparks – and the sight is arresting. This time around his victim is Gatsby, that gilded classic of American letters. It's like I've committed a violent, heinous crime against a personal family member."īaz Luhrmann: 'The critical fall-out is pretty much identical for all my films.' Photograph: George Pimentel/WireImage "The critical fallout is pretty much identical for all my films," he concedes.
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For non-believers, Luhrmann is a vandal, a philistine the barbarian inside the gates, gorging himself on the free champagne. For the fans, he is one of the most exciting, distinctive voices in world cinema, a gung-ho master of ceremonies who plays the movies as mad opera. His film credits include a jubilant Strictly Ballroom, an exuberant Romeo + Juliet, a cacophonous Moulin Rouge! and a galumphing Australia. When it comes to Luhrmann, the level always goes up, the volume turned to 10 or above. This, it occurs, must be his default position. "I just think the level needs to come up during the transition," he instructs his assistant. Rhapsody in Blue booms out of the laptop. When I walk in, he is busily supervising the soundtrack that will play at the following night's red-carpet event. As it is, the corner suite goes to Baz Luhrmann, a faintly Gatsby-esque construct himself, who changed his name, fled his home and found wealth and fame as a Hollywood director. If high-rolling Jay Gatsby had ever come to Cannes, he would surely have boarded at a joint like this, with its grand beehive domes and tranquil private beach. " Merde," exclaims the woman, but she barely breaks her stride. The cakes go everywhere the carpet is carnage. An immaculate woman, all but blinded by the potted plant she is carrying, blunders haplessly through a platter of macaroons that has been left on the floor. On the day before The Great Gatsby opens this year's Cannes film festival, the nearby Carlton Hotel has been recast as a chaotic factory of harried PRs and industry factotums. It takes a lot of heavy lifting to make a lavish party swing. The Great Gatsby - watch the trailer Warner Brothers
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