LUHRMANN'S LANDSCAPES AUSSIE FILMMAKER HEADS FOR BRUTAL LAND DOWN UNDER TO MAKE HIS NEW `AUSTRALIA'.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

When last we saw Baz Luhrmann, five years ago, he was undergoing a dizzying Oscar whirl because his dizzying ``Moulin Rouge'' had eight nominations.

Except for a short sojourn in 2003 to our shores to annoy some opera fans while delighting others with his hipster version of ``La Boheme,'' with its hunky guys and sexy gals, the Australian filmmaker has pretty much been down under. An attempt to do a biopic of Alexander the Great went by the wayside when Oliver Stone beat him to it.

Now he's releasing a 10th-anniversary special musical edition DVD of his ``Romeo + Juliet,'' one of the films in his ``Red Curtain Trilogy,'' just as he's about to start filming an epic big-budget romantic saga called -- yes -- ``Australia,'' starring all Aus-

sies, most notably leads Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

We recently got ahold of Luhrmann, just before he headed to the wilds of the bush. It was Australia Day, appropriately enough, complete with the local air force flying overhead. During our conversation, the 44-year-old director talked about a shift in his filmmaking from the rapid editing of his ``Red Curtain'' trio to the big landscapes of films such as ``Giant.'' The change reflects his new family life (he has two children) with his wife, costume designer Catherine Martin, whom he calls CM.

Q: It's been quite awhile since you made a film.

A: So you're basically asking me where I've been. I'm about to shoot ``Australia.'' We've been on it for a number of years. It's a fundamental shift from all those films that belonged to the ``Red Curtain Trilogy.'' Those films came from an interpretation of the Hollywood musical. This really comes from the love of big romances that use landscapes to tell stories.

I've got to be really careful not to say I'm making ``Gone With the Wind'' or ``Giant'' or ``Lawrence of Arabia.'' But those films share something in that they take a heightened emotional story and use the landscape to kind of amplify it. They're mythological pieces, and that's what I'm making.

Q: You told me after you made ``Moulin Rouge'' you might make a small psychological drama, but I guess you didn't do that.

A: Actually ... no I didn't do that. We we're pursuing ``Alexander'' as we did ``La Boheme.'' ... But we came to a point where we had to race or not race. It's nothing against Oliver. I have great respect for him. The world had changed, and we have changed. CM and I were buried away from public life. ... Having children was a natural gear change, and the work we were doing has come out of that. So I suppose having children is a psychological drama. It was for us.

Q: How does that relate to your new film?

A: Having children is a journey in itself, but it's having an immediate effect on the work I'm doing. You can't not be affected by that. ... The film ``Australia,'' set in the '30s, is about a woman who thinks that it's all over, thinks that she can't feel anymore. And she's trapped out in the far deserts of northern Australia.

Then she gets involved with a rough-hewed cowboy played by Hugh Jackman, and in the quest they go on, she discovers that her life can be reborn. She chooses to feel, but it takes a degree of risk.

We relate to that in our own lives. That's the best you can hope for -- to find what you're dealing with in your own life in the work you're creating.

Q: In your commentary on ``R+J,'' you said everything now looked slow.

A: The irony is that many of the choices we made in ``R+J'' are so commonplace today that they are not even remarkable. ... In the U.S., it was interpreted and sold as an MTV ``Romeo + Juliet,'' but the film was created on a lot of academic research on what the Elizabethan stage was. ... Did Shakespeare use pop music on stage? Yes. Did he swing wildly from in-your-face comedy to tragedy? Yes. Did he grab-bag quotes from topical things that were happening? Yes.

Q: You also made some interesting casting choices.

A: ``R+J'' really burst out in a really good place -- Leonardo (DiCaprio) and Claire (Danes) and John Leguizamo and Jamie Kennedy and all those young fellows. Whether people agree or disagree about how the material was interpreted, it's kind of a moot point because the story lives. In fact, it's time for someone else to do it now. It's 10 years old. It's time for someone else to interpret it for a new generation.

Q: You did some very inventive things musically with ``Moulin Rouge'' and ``R+J.'' Are you going to go with a traditional score for ``Australia''?

A: I guess in the same way ``Out of Africa'' had a very romantic score. John Barry brilliantly took indigenous music and didn't just layer it in. He interpreted it. That is what we're going for in this film.

``Australia'' ends when the attack force that hit Pearl Harbor came down and wiped out the northern city of Darwin. At the time there was a lot of country-and-western influences from America in the music, a lot of folk influences, Hawaiian influences and jazz band music was the rage. But yet it will be a rather lush romantic score.

Q: The ``R+J'' set in Mexico looked like it was adventure.

A: It was like ``Fitzcarraldo'' meets the Rolling Stones tour in the '60s. It was far-out whether it was hurricanes or kidnappings. It was very intense.

Q: You're in Australia for your new shoot, so you should be on safer ground.

A: I don't know. Where we're shooting is some of the most brutal landscapes in the world. And we're doing something people really don't do anymore. We're going out in tents. ... It's going to be a test.

Q: But you got some great actors again. Hugh Jackman ...

A: He's always really good, but he's really going into new territory. There's something real Clint Eastwood about him at the moment.

Q: Will you disappear after this film?

A: I have more projects than I'll ever live long enough to do. But I am driving on. I usually take many years to make a film, but now that we have our children, CM and I will be as creative as we can for the next 10 years, and then we might disappear again. Finally become recluses.

Rob Lowman [phone]

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(color) no caption (Baz Luhrmann)