Directed by Baz Luhrmann
Written by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce
Starring Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo, Richard Roxburgh
USA/Australia, 2001
Rated PG-13 (sexual content)
BROADWAY RHYTHM
A few months ago, I saw my first Broadway musical when The Phantom of the Opera came to town. My sister and I got dressed up and we were so excited. When we left the theater, we weren’t the same. I’m not sure if we were moved by the story that had been told, which was based on the novel by Gaston Leroux, but I knew we had been hit over the head with magic- lights, rapidly changing sets, intoxicating atmospheres, operatic excess. When you hear a song like Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart’s “The Music of the Night” when it’s not nestled inside the lavish production, it reveals what a real stinker it is; when you’re taking in the whole experience, you’re so dazzled that everything seems to work. I’m so glad that I’m a theater novice; the songs are all familiar, but I come to the shows innocent, not jaded. Knowing what I know about movies, I’ve come to expect something from them but, for now, all I want when I go to a musical is to get my money’s worth or, in other words, to be amazed.
Moulin Rouge has the opulence of a Broadway production, and you get a similar feeling too. You can’t get far enough away from it to think about it, at least not while you’re watching it, and that’s part of the beauty. Director Baz Luhrmann is obsessed with images and romance and romantic images- he wants to dazzle you. His MTV-ized Romeo and Juliet was all about staging and it just wasn’t interesting, but this is a movie about Paris and the Moulin Rouge, two places that are more like ideas to those who haven’t been. We have idealized fantasies about these legendary locations and the best Hollywood musicals have always been about solidifying our dreams. All the emotion is dream emotion; there’s an obvious dimension of fakery there. But the emotions are very simple too: love, joy, and sadness- all the things you can sing and dance about.
In Moulin Rouge, Satine (Nicole Kidman), an ambitious star in the club’s grand, decadent show, descends from the ceiling on a swing under blue lighting, and it’s a smoldering, old-fashioned entrance, like Rita Hayworth’s in Gilda. Christian (Ewan McGregor), a young writer, has joined a group of bohemians who are putting on a play at the Moulin Rouge and he seeks the approval of Satine, whose first number in the film is a convergence of Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” and its modern counterpart “Material Girl.” The star and the poet fall in love but a villainous duke (Richard Roxburgh) who invests his money in the club and falls for Satine complicates matters, and so does the heroine’s fatal tuberculosis. A host of supporting characters, including the vertically challenged Toulouse-Lautrec (the tone deaf John Leguizamo) and the good-hearted club owner Zidler (Jim Broadbent, who croaks out “Like a Virgin”), pop in and out of the story, which builds up to an art-imitating-life finale that is both deliriously sumptuous and romantically Camille-like.
Who cares about the plot, though? It doesn’t really matter, just like it didn’t really matter in The Phantom of the Opera. Luhrmann and co-screenwriter Craig Pearce don’t allow Satine and Christian to fall in love like any normal couple of people would; they take it for granted that the audience knows where the story’s going and the two characters are immediately smitten, even when Satine tries to shake off the unprofessional feeling. And this doesn’t throw the film off course one bit because you can see the angelic, unsullied idealism and romance in the eyes of Ewan McGregor. I’m a sucker for spectacle but this one is unusually and surprisingly grounded by his youthful performance. Nicole Kidman is frequently wooden but Maurizio Silvi and the makeup team work miracles, turning her into a vulnerable, erotic figure like Marilyn Monroe. Her face looks sickly and drugged-up but in her love scenes with McGregor, she’s raging against the dying of the light because love has healed her and made her young. I don’t believe there’s any genre that exists today in which you could get away with these supposedly impractical ideals of “truth, freedom, beauty, and love” except the musical. People begin to roll their eyes, but there’s still the power of the love song and people still respond to that.
The only reason why the masses have stopped responding to traditional musicals is because Tin Pan Alley music, to them, seems archaic. Moulin Rouge is giving them a new way to react; the extravagant musical numbers anachronistically revolve around familiar tunes of recent decades. We get a little bit of Rodgers and Hammerstein but the main picks for the soundtrack are hits from the ‘70s and ‘80s. The first number at the Moulin Rouge has the dancing girls singing LaBelle’s “Lady Marmalade” and the male audience, dressed up in suits, recreating Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in a civilized mosh pit. Christian woos Satine (on top of a giant constructed elephant) with snippets of “All You Need is Love,” “Up Where We Belong,” and “Your Song,” which must be one of the definitive guilty pleasures for us bleeding, sighing romantics. And, in response to the tragic situations that force Satine to sleep with the possessive duke while her lover tries to keep his jealousy at bay, “Roxanne” is humorously butchered. McGregor can carry a tune and, during the dramatic conclusion, he charmingly uses his voice with full force. Kidman’s vocals are thin and functional. Neither actor’s readings of these songs have any jazzy energy whatsoever, but its absolutely ridiculous how these songs get to you and make you drunk on those impractical ideals of “truth, freedom, beauty, and love.” “Your Song” is turned into a showtune; they’ve done away with Elton John’s subtle piano and delivery. While singing, Christian and Satine jump onto a cloud as the man in the moon smiles. Even the sky is woozy with l’amour.
Certainly this film, like most movie musicals and, I assume, many Broadway musicals, is a case of style over substance. But in Luhrmann’s creation, the style is the subject. The musical numbers are as divinely absurd as those of Busby Berkeley, but he doesn’t have Berkeley’s elegance or creativity. Luhrmann’s wife, Catherine Martin, is the production designer, and the sets are so gorgeous and gaudy and wildly detailed that the cinematographer Donald McAlpine and the editor Jill Bilcock, who have both worked with Luhrmann before, don’t seem to know where to go with them. The framing and the editing are senseless. They want to look at the overwhelming art deco from every angle. There is nothing like Berkeley’s sense of fluidity here, and the choreography by John O’Connell is uninteresting. But when the characters aren’t singing and dancing, the movie starts falling apart.
This is a musical for a new generation of movies. We’ve been through the work of prominent daring filmmakers and musicians who had more passion but less feel for shape and color. We’ve been through MTV and the quick cuts and the often unstylish presentation. Luhrmann takes a cue from the commercial saturation of MTV and fills us up with his beautiful, illogical images. He’s here to put on a show, not to tell a story. He’s here to entertain us, not to teach us. The whole thing comes together for one cumulative effect that’s like being hit over the head with magic. It’s like being infatuated, like having a mysterious crush- all the feeling is in the present. I remember how it excited me, but I can’t quite conjure up the feeling from the memory. Moulin Rouge turns us into saps, and my only regret is that no one on that screen or behind the camera could hear me applaud.
By Andrew Chan [JULY 3, 2001]