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Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! is like staring into a glittery rainbow through a kaleidoscope for about two hours. It’s bound to repulse many who would view the film, but I am not one of them. I find the film to be alive with music, love, spirit, energy and great performances. It’s so grand, over-the-top really, during its first hour to pave way for the heartbreaking second hour, which descends into an emotional hell for all of our principal characters. It must be that bright, bubbly and ridiculous in the beginning to offset the darkness in the latter half. I have loved it very dearly since first seeing it in theaters at a very tender age, and it still leaves me breathless with its wild abandon.
Ewan McGregor is a penniless writer who gets swept up in the bohemian mini-revolution that painter Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo) introduces him to. You see, McGregor has moved into an apartment directly below Toulouse and his oddball set. One day an narcoleptic Argentian comes crashing through his roof, and so begins the proper story of how McGregor becomes Rodolfo to Nicole Kidman’s Mimi. She is a performer in a nightclub who also whores herself out when it is most opportune to the dreams and aspirations of her character and her surrogate father’s, Zidler (Jim Broadbent). Meet cutes, mistaken identities, characters who wear their names and descriptions on their sleeves, and a villain who is completely dislikable. The Duke, played to over-the-top lunacy by Richard Roxburgh, exists solely to stand in the way our of two main heroes/lovers, and to provide the money that’ll make Kidman’s showgirl-cum-actress dreams come true. Each characterization is paper thin, but deeply complicated characters with rich nuance and subtleties never seem to be an aim within a lavish movie musical. Nor should they be. Musicals rely on simplicity in storytelling to ground the feverish, dreamlike qualities involved in characters spontaneously bursting into song mid-conversation.
Anachronistic and slightly anarchic in spirit, Moulin Rouge! technically takes place in an imagined Paris of 1899, but comes armed with contemporary songs, MTV generation-style quick editing and the spectacle of an old MGM musical. We are introduced to the titular club through a medley of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the remake of “Lady Marmalade,” Fatboy Slim’s “Because We Can-Can,” David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” and snippets of numerous others. Visually, it is spliced and diced and seems to skip around on every syllable. It’s pure visually anarchy, but it has been arranged and directed in such a way that it drops us into the kinetic world and lets us know exactly what kind of experience we are in for. Normally this kind of editing bothers me to no end, but it works and feels right for this film. It could be because we are being dropped into an operatic pastiche, a film which wears its motto as the only overriding theme and makes an argument for music being the universal language of love and the soul. This version of the Moulin Rouge is an underground sex club, Studio 54 chic and the wildest rave ever envisioned. It makes the anything-goes politically, sexually and intellectually cabaret of Cabaret look faintly tame by comparison.
I have spent a great deal of space and time describing the visual and auditory palette that the film plays with so wildly. Yes, the film is like glitter and bedazzles exploding during the first half before going into darker territory. But the greatness of the film would be nothing without a group of actors that commit themselves fully to embodying their archetypes. Who is the penniless but brilliant writer Christian but the channel through which the Bohemian ideals are to be viewed and processed? He is not a character in a normal sense; he is a conduit for the film’s themes. McGregor easily nails the charm, jealousy, naiveté and sophistication of the character. He can look boyish and youthful in his penniless duds, but also very well-groomed and classy in his tuxedos. It doesn’t hurt that he can actually sing and dance. He’s not Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire-level, but who is, really?
And who is Satine but the leggy red-head who is equal parts Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe and Madonna? She’s a beautiful singer-dancer in the Moulin Rouge who also dabbles in the occasional whoring with dreams of becoming a real actress who dies of consumption at the very end. It’s a hell of a part involving the character to go from high comedy to tear-stained melodrama within a two hour movie. Along the way are complicated and busy production numbers and a lot of singing. Nicole Kidman gives a titanic performance. She doesn’t just nail it, but invests everything she’s got into it. Her performance here almost makes her eventual Oscar win for The Hours look like an apology for losing out to Halle Berry. That line of reasoning isn’t hampered by the fact that Kidman was nominated for this one year and then won the next. And they’re given great support by Roxburgh as the Duke. He performs the role like a silent film (over) actor. The kind of which would glower and tie girls up the train tracks in-between title cards and twirling his mustache. It works for this film, but in another it would be a disaster. It’s that fine balance and finding the correct tone. John Leguizamo and Jim Broadbent also swing pretty wide, with Leguizamo providing his own singing and Broadbent being dubbed. Both are incredibly diverse and highly talented actors.
I have talked a lot about how big and broad this movie is, how practically devoid of subtly it is, and those who know me know that things like this typically annoy me greatly. But I saw Moulin Rouge! at a tender age when it first hit theaters, and something within the post-modern glitter bomb reached into my soul and stayed there. It still holds an intoxicating and wondrous spell over me. Each time I watch it my heart soars with their love affair, I’m always amazed breathless at the “Elephant Love Medley” and stunned by “El Tango de Roxanne,” and I never fail to tear up by the end. I know the beats by heart. I could practically recite the entire film from start to finish for you, but I always get swept up in the journey. It’s a love-or-hate kind of film. I have loved it since the summer of 2001; I will love it until I die. I will defend it as the best movie of that year, and I will always claim it as a perfect film. Some movies just speak to us, and Moulin Rouge! speaks in a language that I understand. It’s old fashioned Hollywood in many ways, so beautifully ornate, so frantic and kinetic, so modern. It’s a contradiction.
This was the film that made me think of movies as something other than entertainments. This was the start of my exploration into film-as-art-form. It might seem funny to you, but it makes sense to me.
