director
Baz Luhrmann
screenwriters
Baz Luhrmann
Craig Pearce
producers
Fred Baron
Martin Brown
Baz Luhrmann
cinematographer
Donald McAlpine
music
Craig Armstrong
editor
Jill Bilcock
cast
Nicole Kidman (Satine)
Ewan McGregor (Christian)
Jim Broadbent (Harold Zidler)
John Leguizamo (Toulouse-Lautrec)
Richard Roxburgh (Duke of Monroth)
Kylie Minogue (The Green Fairy)
Jacek Koman (The Argentinian)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 127m
u.s.
release: June 1, 2001
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
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What to do with a movie like
Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge? It demands to be taken on
its own glitzy, stylized terms. It has been described as the
love-it-or-hate-it movie of the season -- much like last year's
equally bold (and far superior) musical Dancer
in the Dark -- but I didn't love it or hate it; mostly
I just stared at it in a trance of indifference, trying to stay
awake. If you enjoyed Luhrmann's other two shimmering pop artifacts
-- Strictly Ballroom and especially Romeo + Juliet
-- chances are you'll fall in love with Moulin Rouge.
If you like your films with a little less pizzazz and a little
more substance, you'd do well to sit out this dance.
Luhrmann and co-writer Craig
Pearce have constructed Moulin Rouge (which has nothing
in particular to do with the 1952 John Huston film, except that
it features Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, played a bit too avidly
by John Leguizamo) not as a musical, exactly, but as a riff on
The Musical. As in Pearl
Harbor, everything in it is appropriated from somewhere
else. For instance, here you have Christian (Ewan McGregor),
a sensitive writer who loses his heart to dynamic courtesan Satine
(Nicole Kidman). In a few ways, this could be called an uncredited
remake of Cabaret, only without the troublesome Nazi milieu,
except that it swipes from so many other sources that, ha-ha,
no single creator has enough grounds for a lawsuit.
The "plot" is wafer-thin:
Christian and Satine, who are working on some sort of show called
Spectacular Spectacular, are frustrated in their affair
by the attentions of a sneering duke (Richard Roxburgh) who wants
Satine to himself. Rather stupidly, Christian and Satine craft
their show as a veiled parallel to their own situation; also
rather stupidly, the Duke takes forever to see the parallel even
when someone in his presence, describing Christian's fictitious
counterpart, slips and says "starving writer" instead
of "starving sitar player."
It's probably no use to attack
Moulin Rouge on logical grounds. Luhrmann thinks in terms
of fragments, moments, visual opportunities. Working with the
boldly painting cinematographer Donald McAlpine, who has a rich
sense of color and an unerring sense for how to frame an interesting
composition, Luhrmann sabotages McAlpine's work, more often than
not, by being too restless in the editing room. I often say of
editing-happy directors, "If you don't like a shot, wait
two seconds and it'll change"; here it's more like "If
you like a shot, don't get too attached to it, because in two
seconds it'll change."
Christian and Satine often
serenade each other, using snippets of modern-day rock love ballads,
which I guess is supposed to make this turn-of-the-century romantic
fable more relevant to the teenagers of the turn of this
century. I almost never felt that the pop songs (including Elton
John, the Beatles, David Bowie, and many others) worked for the
movie, and in one case -- when a group of men break into the
chorus of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" -- I
found it embarrassing. Kidman and McGregor aren't really singers;
they sell their crooning more on attitude than on skill, and
that goes for their overall performances, too. McGregor has the
right look -- brilliant eyes, brilliant teeth -- for a big-movie-musical
leading man, and Kidman is breathtaking in her many costume changes,
but when they have to be still and communicate with each other
it's amateur hour (and, I hasten to add, they haven't been amateurish
elsewhere). They simply have no chemistry.
I wish I could support Moulin
Rouge, because it's certainly not timid (except, perhaps,
for the choice of soundtrack tunes slavishly geared to teens)
and there's nothing else out there remotely like it. It's the
sort of overstuffed extravaganza that, if it works for you, really
works for you, and if it doesn't, really doesn't. Talent
and, yes, vision have gone into this project. Baz Luhrmann isn't
a hack; you feel he believes passionately in what he puts on
the screen (much like Paul Thomas Anderson, another virtuoso
who swings for the fence and misses), and some of the movie's
enraptured lack of irony is refreshing. Luhrmann is straining
to achieve something new, original, different. He should've started
with the script.
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