Escape is a funky word these days. Up until just a month or so ago, we considered art to be our escape from our day-to-day lives. Sometimes it was an escape from a job we struggled with, an escape into something more creative and revitalizing. Sometimes it was an escape into a safer, kinder world where the good choices mattered. Sometimes it was even an escape into a world of frights and scary ideas because we wanted to feel something, anything in a safe way. We looked to art often to escape towards what we felt lacking.
But that was a pre-pandemic world. It’s a different world now in which all of us are home, and not just home because we want to be but because we have to be. Everything joyful has a tinge of melancholy to it because it existed in pre-pandemic times. Political jokes have more bite because politics lately have had a rising death toll. Humor about doofuses is not nearly as funny when there are doofuses regularly in denial of our reality, only prolonging the situation. And even space adventures feel a bit sad because, well, we may feel like the virus is Earth’s way of breaking up with us. Even everyone’s favorite escapist art, the batshit crazy Netflix documentary Tiger King, leaves a weird taste in your mouth because these are the very kinds of people making decisions about our lives.
So where’s the escape? And where, when you’re always home, is home?
Ladies and gentlemen, I present: Strictly Ballroom.
The more I think about it, the more I realize how perfect Baz Luhrmann’s 1992 debut film is for our times. Anyone who’s seen a Luhrmann film – be it Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge, The Great Gatsby – knows his love for over-the-top flair and hyperkinetic style. You can definitely see the seeds of this in his maiden voyage. But there’s an extremely telling choice that Luhrmann makes: he gives us a home our main characters escape to.
Home can be a literal place. But home can also be a feeling. A sense of security. At least once a week I think about Ladislao Loera’s story at an Austin Testify show in which he talked about finding home amidst chaos. He was dealing with the declining illness of his partner. The world frequently felt like it was spinning. But they both also loved dancing. And the most important thing he remembered about dancing is that no matter how many times you spin, you stay on track by locking eyes with your partner. When you look at them, directly and intently, the world stops spinning. You are home.
Early on, we see that Scott (Paul Mercurio) is different. He’s a dancer determined to dance his own steps in a competition that rewards uniformity. His partner breaks up with him because what he does is not strictly ballroom. It’s his own kind of jazz. His own kind of escape. From there, his desire to do his own thing runs headlong into Fran (Tara Morice), a misfit of a dancer looking for a true partner. Scott tells her, “We’re telling a story. The rumba is the dance of love. Look at me like you’re in love.” But Fran doesn’t need to be told. She’s already there, deeply at home.
Luhrmann makes a very telling choice in that everyone outside of Scott and Fran is filmed with a fleeting, near-claustrophobic camera. We’re shoved right in the oily, sweaty faces of the always-melting ruling class, the judges who insist things must be done a certain way. Luhrmann lights their faces from below, creating looks as ghastly as they are iconic.
But when he focuses on Scott and Fran, the background literally fades to deep blacks and blues. Their faces are perfectly lit, in all their detail and uniqueness. We can truly breathe and have a chance to see who they are. And we can see how much they see in each other. We can see, in their gaze, the first boards being nailed up and the carpet laid out. We’re seeing a story built, step by unique, freely-chosen step. We’re seeing them build a home.
By the end, Luhrmann finally gives the remaining cast a chance to be seen in a softer, more flattering light, at a distance that allows them to be human, when they submit to the fact there’s more to dancing than what’s strictly ballroom. There’s the partner, the gaze. There’s the steps and the flow. There’s the knowing there’s no one else you’d rather be moving with.
There’s home.
Strictly Ballroom is currently streaming on Netflix.
