I Have A Bone To Pick With Baz Luhrmann

Dear Mr. Luhrmann,

I hope this letter finds you well—though, given your penchant for spectacle, I suspect it was immediately lost beneath a cascade of sequins, crushed under an avalanche of rhinestones, or perhaps bedazzled beyond legibility before it even reached you.

I write to you not out of malice, nor out of some deep-seated vendetta against rhinestones, but out of genuine, scholarly concern. You see, every time I watch one of your films, I feel like I’m being held hostage at a rave that has no exits, no water stations, and no discernible sense of time. At first, it’s exhilarating—the music is booming, the colors are blinding, and some glittering person just did a double backflip for no reason. But then, an hour in, I realize I am exhausted. My heartbeat is syncing to the frantic rhythm of your editing, and my last remaining brain cell is pleading for a single moment of stillness.

Mr. Luhrmann, sir, I must ask: Have you ever considered filming a scene at normal speed?

Take Elvis (2022), for example. The life of Elvis Presley, already a study in spectacle, somehow takes the backseat to an editorial style that I can only describe as “TikTok on amphetamines.” The editing choices—specifically the sequences that feature twenty cuts in thirty seconds—create hysteria. Instead of letting Elvis’ life unfold with any sense of gravity, the film shuffles through it like a manic PowerPoint presentation, skipping past genuine emotional beats in favor of visual and sensory chaos. Even when Austin Butler is delivering a career-defining performance—take, for instance, the 'you're fired' scene, where Elvis, exhausted and unraveling under the weight of his own myth, finally confronts Colonel Parker with years of pent-up fury—the film refuses to let the gravity of the moment settle. Butler’s voice cracks with anguish, his hands tremble as he hurls accusations, yet rather than allowing us to sit with the raw devastation of the moment, we are yanked away, distracted by split screens, animated transitions, and Tom Hanks whispering in a perplexingly extraterrestrial-esque accent, framing Presley’s collapse as just another spectacle to be consumed. The tragedy of Elvis Presley is profound; your film, however, barrels through it at 100mph, horn blaring and lights flashing, unable to slow down for even a second of introspection.

There is something deeply hilarious about the contradictions that Luhrmann embroils himself in. In The Great Gatsby (2013), he so desperately wants to capture F. Scott Fitzgerald’s delicate critique of the melancholic disillusionment of the Roaring Twenties. The film is tasked with tackling themes of excess, but when every frame is an unrelenting assault of fake confetti and swirling chandeliers, when real emotion is drowned under Lana Del Rey’s incessant wailing (no offense), do we ever actually feel the loneliness at the heart of Gatsby’s tragedy? Can we?  The world of new money is supposed to be intoxicating, yes, but it’s also suffocating—its excess is meant to feel hollow, not like a music video for a Jay-Z-produced electro-swing fever dream. The emotional moments continue to be buried beneath stylistic excess—take, for example, the wardrobe scene, where Gatsby, in a moment that should feel tender and melancholic, instead pelts Daisy with a tidal wave of custom shirts captured with three spinning cameras in slow motion all adorned with perplexing lenses as Young and Beautiful swells in the background. What could have been an intimate exploration of longing and regret instead feels like an opulent fragrance ad, where fabric—and not Gatsby himself—is the main character. Elsewhere, the film leans so heavily into artificial spectacle that the emotions barely have room to breathe, whether it’s a CGI recreation of 1920s New York that looks like it was rendered on a PlayStation 3 or a camera that swoops around like it’s being operated by a caffeinated hummingbird. By the time Gatsby is reaching for the green light, I am less consumed by his longing and more concerned that the next scene will hurl me through a time-space continuum of Art Deco and dubstep

Then, of course, we must discuss Moulin Rouge! (2001), which, when stripped of its turn-of-the-century theatricality, is just a Ke$ha music video with a bigger budget. The film operates like a jukebox set to maximum drama, a kaleidoscope of rapid-fire cuts, sweeping crane shots, and anachronistic musical choices so brazen they should be classified as performance art. But amidst the sheer volume of your aesthetic and the exposure it necessitates, the romance between Satine and Christian is barely given room to exist. Every time they so much as glance at each other, the camera whips away like it’s personally offended by the idea of human intimacy. It is a film so visually overstimulated and overstimulating that by the end, as Satine is dying, as Christian lies heartbroken, as the Bohemians rebel and riot, I am less provoked by Satine’s death and more relieved that my retinas can finally take a break.

Herein lies the problem: you treat every single scene like it is the most important moment in cinema history. There is no breathing room, no contrast, and god forbid a buildup—only maximum drama, maximum movement, maximum noise. Why am I still making this case, when you inadvertently said it best yourself: “I’m probably the Stanley Kubrick of confetti… We all have our own language. And you don’t have a language unless you know how to write in it.” Any regular, normal, well-functioning director filming a love confession might choose to focus on subtle expressions, the flicker of emotion in an actor’s eyes. Only you film it like the summation of all Super Bowl halftime shows. If another director portrays a character’s downfall, they might use quiet introspection, letting silence speak volumes. Only you strap the audience into a rollercoaster, blast tonally abrasive hit songs, and have the camera do a barrel roll. You aren’t just making films; you are orchestrating cinematic aneurysms. I am suffering, but I cannot look away.

I need you to understand that I am writing this not just as a film critic, but as someone cosmically assigned this duty. You lived two doors down from me in Sydney, and so I have been forced to exist in your sparkling gravitational pull for years. Therefore, I must believe that fate brought us together so that I could deliver this all-important message.

So I beg of you, Mr. Luhrmann, sir: take a breath. Let a scene exist in its own right. Trust that sometimes, in cinema, stillness is just as powerful as spectacle.

With nothing but admiration and appreciation,

Tokyo (your true fan, despite the ranting and raving)