Moulin Rouge (2001) Review

Moulin Rouge (2001): Director Baz Luhrmann Screenplay Baz Luhrmann Craig Pearce Production 20th Century Fox and Bazmark Starring Nicole Kidman Ewan McGregor DoP Donald M. McAlpine Production Design Catherine Martin Editor Jill Bilcock

The opening five minutes of Moulin Rouge essentially summarizes the form of the film. The brash and sweeping introduction by way of the 20th Century Fox fanfare, snippets from The Sound Of Music and the Can-Can contrast dramatically with the subdued, melacholic rendition of Nature Boy, which introduces us to the character of Christian.

Through the framing of the titles within a proscenium arch, and the adoption of a sepia, pop-up book version of Paris in nineteen-hundred, it is firmly established that the following one-hundred and twenty minutes will take place in the realm of fantasy.

Christian is a young, naive and idealistic poet in the Orphean mould and it is through his storytelling that we experience the past years events at the Moulin Rouge. The duality of Christian's character is alluded to in an extreme close-up shot where half of his face is lit in blue and the other half in darkness, symbolising his innocence and naivety at odds with the pain and jealousy he must also feel. The use of the typewriter also contributes to the pacing of certain parts of the film, makes the non-naturalistic form understandable and to a certain degree acceptable to the audience. It is also through Christian's typewriter that his "real life" experiences at the Moulin Rouge become art. The story itself is not especially imaginative; the young hero/poet falls in love with the princess/courtesan, the evil Duke thwarts his ambitions but in the end true, idealised, pop love prevails and the Duke is left defeated and alone. It all comes straight out of Vladimir Propp's text book, but this simplicity of narrative is submerged beneath the conceptual ambitions of Luhrmann and Pearce.

The idea of merging old and new forms in order to decode experiences unfamiliar to a modern audience is a theme which Luhrmann has employed before, in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The use of modern pop-anthems, along with nineteen-fifties musical numbers, all choreographed in Busby Berkeley fashion succeeds, for me, in decoding eighteen ninety-nine Paris for a modern audience. However, an understanding of the film will very much depend on the audiences relationship with the songs concerned, in that a kind of satisfaction will be gained from the recognition of intertextual references, for example; Kylie Minogue as The Green Fairy, singing Children Of The Revolution, intercut with "the hills are alive with the sound of music" references the bohemian drink of choice circa nineteen-hundred, nineteen-sixties epic musical, nineteen seventies glam rock and camp modern pop in one song and dance routine.

It is not only in musical and lyrical content that Moulin Rouge draws from modern popular culture however, but also in its cinematography. Rapid edits and epic, sweeping camera movements combine stylistic elements of music video direction, musical direction styles of the nineteen-forties, fifties and sixties, as well as early silent films, all once again serving to communicate with an audience on a visceral level the feeling of being in the Moulin Rouge one hundred years ago.

A defining moment for the representation of women in cinema comes with the first appearance of Nicole Kidman's Satine, descending into a created sense of awe, the still blue light, the birds eye view crowd shot and marked contrast with the previous scene of chaos and debauchery, with red the predominant colour. In a conscious effort to draw a three way comparison of Marilyn Monroe, Madonna and Kidman, her performance of "Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend" shows the sassy, materialistically and sexually aggressive woman of today, combined with a more demure, passive image of nineteen-fifties woman and questions Satine's existence as high-status but still ultimately owned. On a superficial level it also succeeds to raise Kidman's own iconic status, by virtue of this comparison.

For me, Moulin Rouge succeeds as pure entertainment, as a postmodern exercise and as a celebration of the popular art-forms of the twentieth century. It is also a thoughtful exploration of the languages of love, namely music, dance and lyrics or verse and the heightened emotional plane that these languages operate on.