Moulin Rouge!

Okay, time for honesty: I have no idea what to make of Baz Luhrmann. The Australian director isn’t exactly prolific, having made only four films since starting with 1992’s Strictly Ballroom. Three of those films make up the so-called “Red Curtain Trilogy” (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!). Luhrmann also directed the 2008 epic Australia. He has a tendency, at least in the Red Curtain Trilogy, to utilize modernity within different contexts to produce a dizzying spectacle of a picture. 2001’s Moulin Rouge! is perhaps the best indicator of what this interesting director can do.

Moulin Rouge! is based on Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata. The three act opera is based on a novel by Alexandre Dumas from 1848 and describes an unlikely relationship between a courtesan and a young nobleman. Luhrmann’s adaptation keeps the same framework but alters the roles of some of the characters to create a greater sense of social class differences and character.

We open in 1899 and are introduced to a young writer named Christian (Ewan McGregor). He is trying to immerse himself in the artisan community and joins a musical troupe led by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo). The troupe is trying to write a production for Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) and his Moulin Rouge cabaret. Christian helps the troupe write the show and they head to the Moulin Rouge to present the finished product to Zidler.

While in the Moulin Rouge, Christian discovers the star courtesan Satine (Nicole Kidman) and is instantly smitten with her despite all of the yelping she does. She is to spend the night with the wealthy Duke (Richard Roxburgh). The Duke wants to purchase the Moulin Rouge and everything in it. In a bit of confusion, Satine ends up in a room in a giant elephant with Christian instead of the Duke and the two rapidly develop affection for one another. But the error leads to complications, including that of the Duke’s desire to own Satine and her ailing health, and the story veers inexorably towards tragedy.

Luhrmann has said that his Moulin Rouge! was largely inspired by Bollywood pictures and the grand pageantry involved. The jumbled approach to the music, the use of flashy colours and dizzying noise, and the spectacle piled on top of spectacle attracted the director and he decided to infuse his own film with those elements. As such, Moulin Rouge! is an appallingly confused, kitschy, flamboyant, ear-splitting, big-headed picture. It is both endlessly gruelling and endlessly fascinating.

Luhrmann’s desire to have the film relate to modern audiences is mutually mesmerizing and maddening. To accomplish this, he utilized modern music and spliced it together. It took Luhrmann almost two years to secure the rights to all of the songs he abuses, making a finished product that conceitedly and brazenly uses bits of Nirvana alongside bits of Madonna and Elton John for a multifarious stew of exasperation and culture.

The performances are alright at times, really quite good at other times, and really quite bad at other times (spot a trend here, yet?). McGregor, Kidman, and the rest do an admirable job conducting themselves in the middle of the madness. They sing well enough, straining through some songs and elegantly delving into others passionately. The chemistry between Kidman and McGregor is shaky and not overly convincing, and yet there is something magical about that uncertainty that drives the picture.

Moulin Rouge! is a film for lunatics. It is dizzyingly shot with every music video trick in the book and it often overdoes it with camera tricks, yelps and squeaks, and musical blunders. As I continue to think about the picture, I continue to wonder whether I liked it or not. And at this point, the only real safe answer is to say that I’m really not quite sure. Perhaps no other film in recent memory has polarized me internally like this and, for the sake of Luhrmann’s ugly but fascinating Moulin Rouge!, that has to be worth…something?

Trailer: