Moulin Rouge Wows for about an hour
 Nov 2nd, 2001
Advantages:
Imaginative, sometimes innovative, some magical moments
Disadvantages:
very loud, and brash and becomes more conventional at its end .
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
Did you enjoy it?
Characters / Performances
Soundtrack
How does it compare to similar films?
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  ChrisJarmick
About me:
Thank you for the warm welcome and over generous comments. THE GLASS COCOON is the name of my first...
Member since:29.10.2001
Reviews:15
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Review rated by 30 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
Moulin Rouge almost immediately reminded me of Terry Gilliam's Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989). It's excessively loud, theatrical, full of slapstick and garish. It is however too sweet and sentimental to be down right vulgar. At times its even touchingly romantic. It has also been made by a crew of seemingly fearless film technicians who use everything they can afford to put on the screen-on the screen. You have no idea how far this film will go. The only clue is that its rated Pg-13 (in the U.S.) but it seems like it's going to push through that barrier at any moment anyway. It evokes Keystone Cop slapstick and Allan Carr's (Can't Stop the Music, Broadway's La Cage Aux Folles) excesses sometimes at the same time. It's frenetically edited like an MTV video on speed, but creates such a detailed period opulent fantasy world you will hardly notice. It's got as much subtlety as a porno-film, but after director Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom and especially William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet if you thought it would be any different, you just aren't paying attention to movies these days. You can also forget about so much as a reference to Jacques Offenbach's music or anything more than the slightest resemblance to John Huston's 1952 Moulin Rouge. Moulin Rouge 2001 is a musical by borrowing and twisting, in sometimes hilariously, sometimes alarming and sometimes unabashedly campy ways, pop music of (mainly) the last thirty years. What it does with Elton John's Your Song, Madonna's Like a Virgin, Paul McCartney's Silly Love Songs, and The Police's Roxanne is utterly audacious. If you hold these songs as sacred you will HATE this film. No, not all the songs are trashed and ridiculed, some a re-used replicating the tone and attitude of the original song, but some are turned into high camp akin to a Rocky Horror Picture Show. This idea of mining popular songs to use for a musical is a concept that struck gold in the classic: Singing in the Rain; which only contained a couple of original songs and found several classics to revitalize so successfully as to make them nearly definitive versions. It's unlikely you'll consider any song performances from this film as definitive versions of the song however. There's nothing as brilliant as a Donald O'Connor doing the original, Make 'Em Laugh, or as memorable as a Gene Kelly doing Singing in the Rain. Although Jim Broadbent and Richard Roxburgh's Like a Virgin is a number you won't ever forget). There is however enough energy in every performance and every musical sequence to make you forget that cleverness, energy, and inventiveness alone doesn't guarantee the kind of movie magic you find in a film like 'Singing in the Rain.'
Then again, expecting a movie to be magic almost insures it won't be. Timeless movie magic doesn't occur all that often. The fact that this film gets close to being magical is a compliment of the highest order. The film's fun drunken appeal is infectious if you want it to be. There's so much color and cinematic technique on the screen at times you'll feel like Jackson Pollock is splattering film paint at the screen but its not being splattered with hate
or anger or contempt. There's not a drop of cynicism anywhere in this film and I think anyone who claims the film displays any kind of condescension or contempt for the audience is bringing too many pre-conceived notions into the theater with them.
However, energy and spirit is only part of what makes for a successful film experience. Unfortunately for all the go for broke excess and inspired lunacy the film embraces completely in its first hour, by the film's last forty minutes or so, it decides to actually concentrate on its melodramatic plot and corny sentimental love triangle to deliver an overly familiar poignant message about love. It stops throwing everything but the kitchen sink at you. It concentrates on trying to breath new life into the chestnut of a plot it has saddled itself with by coming up with a couple of minor twists, which feel more repetitious than clever. The film tries desperately to find a way to cleverly thrust its plot and resolution at us. We already know exactly where it is going, and pro-longing it doesn't help. As the film gets quieter, we're reminded how exhausted we are by what we've seen. I suppose its creators wanted to be sure everyone knew the people who made the film have souls and are hopeless romantics-never mind that we actually get that message during the films most excessive moments. It's a miscalculation on the filmmaker's part to allow the film to become a fairly standard opera during its last act. It merely plays out its tragic romance like it's supposed to. For over an hour however the film does things it isn't supposed to and delights in doing so. Darn. It was a great game but damn it, the Mighty Casey struck out.
The script by Luhrmann and Craig Pearse, exists to set up the film's cliched sentimental plot, and twist pop song lyrics into silly bits of dialogue whenever possible or to set up the next musical number. When the plot mechanics demand longer and less satiric dialogue exchanges, the film's weaknesses get more noticeable. When the film jumps quickly from musical number to musical number it feels like inspired lunacy. So am I about to reveal that the film has some flashes of brilliance but is a fire-cracker whose
color is too dull and explosion too quiet to satisfy?
Nope. I so much admire the courage and audaciousness of the filmmakers I'm more than willing to over-look the fact the film fizzles during it's last half-hour. For 90 minutes it's so much fun, and so giddy with itself in almost every way imaginable, the fact it miscalculates at its ends is not something that ruined the entire film for me.
This is a film made by people who love not only what they do, but also what film has done in the past. They celebrate their love and passion for film by updating and partially re-inventing the movie musical. Purists be damned. The credits of Moulin Rouge begin cleverly by having a conductor standing in front of a bright red velvet curtain which pulls back as the 20th Century Fox fanfare begins.
Moulin Rouge opens up by introducing us to struggling wanna-be writer Christian (Ewan McGregor) by having David Bowie sing a soulful version of Nature Boy. We see a ruin of the Moulin Rouge, and Christian tells us the love of his life is dead. The rest of the film is a flashback and we proceed back a year to 1899 (described as 'the summer of love"), when Christian first arrives in the land of the Bohemians, colorful courtesans and Theatre people of the Montmartre district of Paris. It's a place where creative people live life to the fullest and hob-knob with the richest of people who venture to places like the Moulin Rouge to gorge themselves on vices.
Christian as his clever moniker indicates, is a naive innocent (with a guilty conscious) who fancies himself a writer. A writer who quickly realizes he is about to write about love without knowing true love himself. Suddenly an only in the movie type of introduction occurs and Christian meets a struggling group of theater folk led by Toulouse La-Trec (played in a farcical manner by John Leguizamo with a strange lisping accent). Christian ingratiates himself to the troupe when he comes up with the perfect lyrics to a song the group is having trouble with. "The hills are alive with the sound of Music" sings an inspired Christian. The lyrics strike nearly everyone in the troupe as so inspired it fills them all with an almost orgasmic sense of glee.
Yes, it's a very funny scene and if you don't see the possibility then it's obvious you're not going to enjoy the film at all. From there the film downshifts and wildly careens for the next hour through scenes that embrace bedroom farces, opulent music numbers and melodramatic nonsense.
Christian is taken to the Moulin Rouge where he will impersonate a famous writer to impress the very rich Duke of Worcester , who will hopefully agree to back Talouse's show. The Duke is completely enamored with the Moulin Rouge's headline performer, Satine (Nicole Kidman). We get a fun musical number to Lady Marmalade, and then Satine appears and gives us an overly- gaudy, campy Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend Number. Once Christian lays eyes on Satine, of course, it's love at first sight. Bedroom farce style, Satine and Christian meet. It's a case of mistaken identity and silly complications involving the Duke, Satine, Christian and Moulin Rouge owner Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) result. The Duke (Richard Roxburgh) is the kind of character who walked right off a 19th century stage melodrama and into a silent film complete with his pencil moustache, lecherous sneer, sadistic cruelty and insane jealousy. Broadbent's Zidler is part Fellini, and part Cabaret. The film fires on all cylinders for about thirty minutes at this point. If you don't like your comedy loud and broad, you'd better have plenty of aspirin.
The film celebrates excess as it careens from scene to scene which embrace the styles of old fashioned bedroom farces, to the corny romantic lover's courtship scenes from dozens of musicals, and to un-apologetic Gaslight melodrama. The envelope is pushed and the audience is assaulted with a cacophony of cinematic techniques which include lots of digital effects and even animation to remind us of everyone from Busby Berkeley to the early cinema of Georges Melies (Trip to the Moon 1902), to Walt Disney to Vincent Minnelli and Frederico Fellini and Bollywood (musicals from India).
When director and co-writer Baz Luhrmann pushes pedal to the metal it works, when he slows down a bit and gives us a chance to think about such things as plot... it doesn't. During the films inspired, Love Medley sequence Luhrman connects to every hopeless romantic in the audience-most of whom will consequently forgive Luhrmann the films predictability and repetitiousness precisely because he delivered the Love Medley sequence. For many, the film will likely be much too frenetic and loud and merely a marvel of art and production design, thrown in our faces too quickly to be effective.
In the very first scene when Christian talks about his love being dead, it means when Satine first coughs a little blood (revealing she has t.b.) we know exactly this is an overwrought tragic love story and we are way ahead of the film. Since Luhrmann obviously wants us to know more than the characters we watch do, it's the journey he expects us to be delighted with. I was, until, we start to linger too much on plot mechanics during the films last act. Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman actually possess vocal skills that impress which is fortunate since they sing quite a bit in the film. Perhaps trickery, over-dubs and more made this possible but it doesn't matter. They also employ the kind of Broadway musical comedy skills necessary to transport willing viewers to suspend all critical judgement and enjoy the corny, slightly campy emoting. Other performers particularly Jim Broadbent sell their singing with their charisma and theatrical skills. John Leguizamo's performance of Toulouse-Lautrec (who's a an important but minor character here) is far too cartoonish and brash but it's not as utterly manic and without charm as you might expect it to be. While the film is short on displaying many dancing type skills, impressive choreography is achieved through a combination of skill, filmmaking technique and editing.
I won't spoil any more of the film's many inspired/perspired surprises. Director Luhrmann throughout is doing more than merely showing off by assaulting the audience in the way a Michael Bay, James Cameron, or George Lucas does. Instead, Luhrmann is proclaiming his absolute love of film and his influences and is attempting to joyously bring back the musical by updating its possibilities. He still winds up assaulting us, but it's done without a trace of contempt. In fact he uses our knowledge of pop culture to have some additional fun. If you're thinking this whole film sounds like something Ken Russell might be behind, I had the same thought. Russell is another filmmaker who is known for often extravagant excess. Russell however also approached his filmmaking with some intellect. His Women in Love is actually pretty restrained where his Devils and Crimes of Passion certainly aren't. But you would hardly call Russell's films charming. There's very little intellect in Moulin Rouge. It lacks anything approaching depth, is utterly bereft of angst and is all about skimming the surface and working only those emotions that can b worn on the sleeve..
Luhrmann, has proclaimed he hopes the film will encourage other original film musicals to be made. I don't know how influential this film could possibly be. I'm not holding my breath that this type of cinematic juggling act can be duplicated with any degree of success. Perhaps we'll see another Broadway Musical green-lighted as a film, but I expect if we do, it will wind up being another Evita or Chorus Line. Of course the musical film of the past has been right under our noses all along, fused to almost every film genre in existence of the past 20 years with musical montages taking the place of musical numbers and soundtrack albums issued for every summer blockbuster of recent memory. Films from Saturday Night Fever and Flashdance to Everyone Says I Love You and occasional successful stage transitions like Little Shop of Horrors occur. The Full Monty and Billy Elliot are musical hybrids and many films feature a scene where musical numbers suddenly occur on occasion
A lot of that is marketing though, not embracing the musical film genre of the past, the way Moulin Rouge, for all it's excesses actually and quite reverentially does. It's cheeky and campy but still reverential toward past movie musicals? Yes it most definitely is. Hopefully Moulin Rouge won't wind up as merely a one shot attempt to bring back the musical, the way that say, Silverado, failed to bring back the Western film. Hopefully we'll see more than another Evita or A Chorus Line. Hopefully, one of the results will be that director John Woo will finally be able to realize his dream of making a movie musical in the near future.
BOTTOM LINE MOULIN ROUGE is a loud, brash but too sweet and sentimental to be called out and out vulgar, audacious film which celebrates the camp of pop-culture in ways that will probably please fans of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the musical Little Shop of Horrors. It's directed by the Australian Baz Luhrman and like his previous over-the-top film William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet (with Leonardo DiCaprio) is not for all tastes. It has little in common with John Huston's directed 195 Moulin Rouge in tone, style story or character focus. The film also runs out of inspired ideas and becomes a rather tired, predictable farce during it's last forty minutes (but does include a knock-out Bolly-wood style production number). However if you like glitz, camp and are a hopeless romantic you'll probably have a good time with this one. It's very loud, and obnoxious and a lot of its charm is based on its ability to surprise you
with its ideas. If you've been told too much about it, you may like it less.
Christopher Jarmick, is the author of The Glass Cocoon with Serena F. Holder a critically acclaimed, steamy suspense thriller. For more information visit the web site at:
http://www.radiofreegallery.com/jarmicknholder.htm
Original portions of this review CopyrightŠ Christopher J. Jarmick 2001. The above work is protected by international copyright law.
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02.11.2001 20:25
Its a pleasure to read an analysis of a film, rather than a step by step sequence of events which sometimes happens here on Ciao!, superlative writing, thank you.
02.11.2001 17:19
What a fantastic opinion, must see that film now! Shane
02.11.2001 16:40
A super review ~ Excellent stuff!! ~ Thanks Versatile :O)