Moulin Rouge

Musical theater is an art in itself for how it can create a story through less than normal means and create a connection through singing, dancing, and overly dramatic production.  Moulin Rouge comes off as a celebration of that type of musical theatre and a retreat to the older style of stage shows like vaudeville performances, including flashy sets, glistening colors, and grander theatre-style musical numbers. Instead, it comes off as a lazy, rehashed, boring, annoying, ego-stroking, eye straining picture that tries to be more than what it has any right to be. In Paris at the eve of the 20th century and the start of the Bohemian movement, the movie follows young optimistic writer Christian (played by Ewan McGregor) who comes to France looking for love and to create ”inspiring” music. He stumbles into a bizarre nightclub known as the Moulin Rouge, and quickly becomes entranced by the chaotic lifestyle and instantly smitten with the main performer and courtesan of the house Satine (played by Nicole Kidman). The proprietor of the Moulin Rouge, Harold Zidler (played by Jim Broadbent) plans to get Satine to sleep with the wealthy Duke of Monroth (played by Richard Roxburgh) in order to finance the establishment, and task themselves with putting a show on written by Christian for the Duke. Things get a bit complicated when Christian and Satine suddenly fall in love, which throws a hammer into the plans as the Duke’s lustful and aggressive nature could cause him to leave the production if Satine isn’t given to him. The clock is ticking for the Moulin Rouge and Satine herself as she must chose who to be with before she inevitably dies from a transmitted disease. Directed by Baz Luhrmann and acting as the final part of his ”Red Curtain” trilogy (containing Strictly Ballroom, Romeo & Juliet, and this), despite being a commercial and critical success, Moulin Rouge visually captures a big production and goofy musical without any of the charm and creativity added into its character and narrative.

The idea of telling a musical-style tragicomedy with an overly eccentric director like Baz Luhrmann at the helm isn’t a poor idea as for all his faults, he does have a visual eye when creating his movies that would honestly work stronger in a staged reality than a physical one. The problem comes in execution rather than premise as this film has every tedious element from a typical romantic rom com, but it has such a high degree and appraisal for itself that it pretends to be better than other films of the same calibre. With clear inspirations for stories ripped out of Greek tragedies and other monumental plays (with the strongest connection being the story of Orpheus and Eurydice), it thinks that its story is worthy of extreme emotional attachment and dramatic reactions from its viewers when in reality, it’s just copying the template of these great stories without mirroring what made them deep, thought-provoking, and tragic. It constantly spouts the importance of love and how meaningful it is to obtain it, yet never stops to consider, discuss, or even showcase what actual love is. This can be a common issue in other rom-com type films or movies that have a romantic leaning, but those films at least have the benefit of not pretending they are anything more than junk food, whereas this film’s insistence on it being challenging and unique just makes it come across as pompous and stupid for failing in this category so terribly.  The story written by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce doesn’t offer any surprises and adds anything new to the genre that the formula is based on outside of the location, dragging on pointless plot-thread after plot-thread until the third act concludes on a bittersweet that could’ve worked if they tried to get its audience to care. With the dialogue ranging from simplistically pretentious or overwhelmingly bizarre, it has an annoying goofy tone. Baz Luhrmann is known for obnoxiously adding in cartoony elements into realistic stories, which only seems to hinder moments and suck out the mood entirely.

All the actors are at best just decent and at worst gratingly irritating. They seem to have only been given direction to be overly whimsical or hugely melodramatic. This isn’t a subtle world as it clearly shows in its environment and visual and emotional style so while irritating, their exaggerated and cartoonish performance at least match the tone, but when it tries to be an actual romance, all this overacting seems out of place and ridiculous. The main leads have about as much chemistry as Twilight actors, which is only made worse by a childish script and almost non-existent directing, and all the side characters are either just annoying comic relief that gets way too much screen time, or unnamed background actors who sometimes give huge plot points out of nowhere purely for story purposes, it’s a completely messy cast and none of them have any charm or likability to them. Ewan McGregor is the waif of the film, being too hopeful, innocent and disgustingly boring throughout a good chunk of the film before reverting to a whiny, hypocritical and downright despicable person come the film’s final act, it’s an awfully written character, Nicole Kidman does her usual thing, being very bubbly and breathy, but in a film where that is not fun or used as levity so it just comes across as demeaning and lacking proper attention, Jim Broadbent can’t use any of his talent and is stuck with a truly oddball design, Roxburgh makes Looney Tunes look subtle with his jittery portray and complete lack anything resembling a human reaction, and everyone else is either a plot device, or some sort of stereotype. There’s no depth to them, the main leads are as dull as wheat, the villain and his plan is boring and goofy, and the other characters have little to no purpose throughout the whole film.

The singing in this film is hit and miss; at times it can okay, but other times it can get a little ear-grating and slightly stiff. A good majority of the cast seems like they can sing, but they either didn’t go far enough to be on musical level (more singing the words rather than saying them in lyrical form) or they’re not good enough singers to hit the notes to make an emotional connection. The film itself decides to take on a jukebox musical format, which is where the songs are already existing numbers from other artists created and placed into the movie instead of creating new ones. Though this may seem lazy, the one positive to this is that surprisingly, they do pick songs that flow well into the story. Each song has a clear message that is easily heard and understood through the lyrics, and this works well when they are using them conveying plot points. This doesn’t help the awful story, but that element was at least decently integrated. All the aesthetic parts of the film are quite pleasing to see as well, the costumes by Catherine Martin and Angus Strathie, the production design also by Catherine Martin, its all really good to see and it’s an aspect that Luhrmann is also notoriously good at, and the film does truly pop when the color is used along with great shadows and lighting. The set decoration by Brigitte Broch is very impressive, with each room having a great look with a fair amount of spacing which allows for more movement and expression involved in the performances. Each song has its own unique feel because of its sets, sometimes brightly lit but claustrophobic, some dark and moody, but open and atmospheric. Though limited to a location, they get away with not being dull looking through how they look and the way its shot. The cinematography by Donald M. McAlpine is very well composed, each shot finds new and interesting ways to shoot these locations and sets, leading to creative looking environments and colorfully interesting stages shown in unique and varied angles. The downside is that the editing by Jill Bilcock is so bad and sporadic that you’re not given time to appreciate the amazing ways the actors and sets are shown off. Above all else however, there is a song sequence in the middle of the movie centred around the dangers of prostituting yourself (with the song by The Police, Roxanne, being used), and it is amazing. For a film lacking any truly great scenes, this one song sequence succeeds all expectations and goes further. The singing, the pacing, the music, the angles, the lighting, the shots, the kinetic energy, even the editing, it’s truly the best part of the movie.

Though loved by many, this film takes every moment to never try anything different while proclaiming itself the newcomer and savior of cinematic musicals. While it definitely created a visual style and musical sensibility that was unique, it doesn’t excuse how much of its core elements are at best flawed and at worst, painful. The story is cliched as anything, the characters range from pointless, annoying, or just cartoons, the songs have varied results in quality, the editing is too rapid and distracts from the great looking sets and cinematography, the pacing is clunky, its cluttered, its unfocused, it’s either too melodramatic to be taken seriously, or too generic to expect any surprises. Overall, even if it’s held high in other hearts, what came from it isn’t satisfactory. In other words, no matter how hard you look, there’s not much to love in this glitzy picture.