Moulin Rouge

After a lot of thought and careful consideration, I have decided that “Moulin Rouge” is, in fact, a musical. This may seem puzzling, because, as we all know, they don’t make musicals in Hollywood anymore (except for Disney, that is, and they are usually cartoons). Still, the signs are there: most of the dialogue is sung, not spoken; big production numbers help advance the plot; and there is even dancing. Credit Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, his co-writer, for bravely going where pretty much no one else wants to go these days. Credit Luhrmann for making it look new. Luhrmann, whose 1996 adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet,” was an invigorating update of the Bard, is less successful here. “Moulin Rouge” may be a failure, but it is a glorious, and at times hugely entertaining one. The fact is that Luhrmann may have outsmarted himself. He is so enraptured with throwing modernist twists at an old form that at times the whole production veers over the top into something that looks suspiciously like parody. The vaguely La Boheme -ish story concerns Christian (McGregor), a struggling writer, who moves to Paris in 1900 to pursue his art, along with the four bohemian ideals: truth, beauty, freedom, and (above all, as they say over and over again) love.

He falls in with a group of young artists, including Toulouse-Lautrec (an oddly cast and made up Leguizamo), who are trying to mount a show they call “Spectacular Spectacular” (which, come to think of it, could have been the title of this movie). Christian gets drafted to write the show, and he turns out to have a gift for the form, particularly the part that involves pasting together bits of twentieth century pop into songs for the production. McGregor comes across well in the picture, displaying a certain appealing winsomeness. He is, perhaps, the most believable character in the film (except, perhaps, in the scenes of bearded dissipation when he is gloomily recounting the events that we are about to see). The songs, then, are one of the riskier hooks of the movie. In “Romeo and Juliet,” Luhrmann updated the setting and the style, but kept Shakespeare’s language intact. In “Moulin Rouge,” he re-creates the look of 1900 Paris (although in an admittedly stylized and digitized fashion) while incorporating modern day pop songs (or at least as modern day as Elton John’s “Your Song”) into the production.

Make no mistake: the characters in the movie actually sing these songs (although they never get through an entire song; rather, they hop along in a kind of demented medley), or in some instances simply speak the lyrics as dialogue. (This is in contrast to that other recent period piece “A Knight’s Tale,” which also used modern pop tunes, but didn’t seem to insist that the characters sing them.) It’s a goofy gimmick, but at some level it works, perhaps only because I am of the demographic that connects to some of these songs. (I am not sure if the fan base of Blink-182 or Limp Bizkit would feel the same way.) The songs act as familiar guideposts as we wander the truly foreign terrain of Luhrmann’s visual imagination.

As for the singing itself, it appears that Kidman, McGregor, and the others are doing their own, though these days it can be hard to be sure. If so, they do a respectable job, though no one would ever mistake them for Tom Jones and Whitney Houston. Christian and his cohorts hope to stage “Spectacular Spectacular” at the world-famous Moulin Rouge club, depicted as a combination dinner theater, nightclub, and bordello. The star of the Moulin Rouge, and its most renowned courtesan, is the vampy and consumptive Satine, played by Nicole Kidman. Kidman has never been my cup of tea. She is attractive enough, and a game performer, but she has always struck me as a little brittle and reserved. (Maybe I could never completely escape the suspicion that her fame was mostly reflected off of former husband Tom Cruise.) Here she flings her long limbs about with abandon, her alabaster skin all but glowing (this despite the fact that she is at the tail end of a bad case of TB, which makes her the best-looking TB patient I have ever seen). She jumps into the song and dance scenes with admirable enthusiasm and does not shy away from the screwball antics in which she is required to participate.

Christian takes one look at Satine and is smitten. However, Harry Zidler (Broadbent), the buffoonish owner of the Moulin Rouge, has promised Satine to the wealthy Duke of Worcester (played, rattily enough, by Richard Roxburgh), to encourage him to invest in the theater and the show. Although Satine and Christian initially meet by accident, she eventually falls for him, which bodes trouble. The Duke is the jealous type, and is not too keen on having his prize cavorting with a penniless writer like Christian. Satine, then, is forced to choose between true love, and certain fame and wealth, while at the same time going on with the show while her heart is breaking (presumably her lungs are breaking as well). Satine’s desire to be a true “star” (as opposed to a mere courtesan) is quite palpable and would not seem out of place in Hollywood today (I imagine hundreds of struggling actresses can empathize).

But if you can’t predict whether love wins out over money, you haven’t seen enough bohemian period musical fantasies with pop tunes. The movie does have some very effective sequences. I liked the scene in which the cast puts on an impromptu pitch for the Duke, and there are modest satisfactions to be had from the way that the plot of “Spectacular Spectacular” parallels that of the movie which contains it. Luhrman is a director of tireless visual imagination, which he lets run away with him at every opportunity. The movie is packed to the gills with teeming production numbers, outrageous costumes, and spectacular tracking shots which somehow seamlessly blend live action with elaborate matte effects. He gives screen time to every notion that pops into his head, no matter how silly. At first the result is a bit enervating, but after a while you can only shake your head and give in to the sheer creative lunacy of it all. No matter that the narrative is trite, the attempt at tragic import unconvincing, and most of the characters cartoonish. “Moulin Rouge” is a movie that believes one hundred percent in what it is doing, and in this day and age, you have to appreciate that kind of conviction. (6/17/2001)