Where to begin? We are talking about a film that is eight years old, but if you’ve been there and done that you know that it is worthy of a Critique. If not – then download it (with full surround sound of course) and watch it. You will be glad you did.
The movie begins perfectly. The red velvet curtains open. Are we watching a movie, or a live show at the theatre? Layers within layers within layers. Its a movie about a show about a song about a story about a love between a boy and a girl who must disguise their affair in the collaborative writing of a musical spectacular about a boy and a girl who must hide their affair from . . . you get the picture. The higher perspective loves layers and Moulin Rouge is the gift that keeps on giving.
But it doesn’t stop there – oh no. Baz Luhrmann decided to fabricate a musical almost entirely out of what we would now call “remix” songs. Each of the major songs in the movie are alchemical concoctions of myriad pop hits. Elton John, Madonna, David Bowie, Joe Cocker all make an appearance, mixed together in belle epoque cocktail that will leave your head spinning and your senses dazzled. Try to follow the thread of exactly what boy and girl are saying when you constantly have to identify “material girl” as a Madonna song, remember what that song is about, how it fit into its cultural context and then link that back up to the phrases before and after it – within the context of the point in the movie in which it happend. Beautiful.
Then there are the visuals. Let me first suggest that you are well strapped in and with plenty of munchies on-hand *before* the green fairy makes her appearance. This is a Moulin Rouge spectacular spectacular, after all. You have bejewled beauties swinging from high trapeeze (to the tune of Nirvana of course) and courtesans living on top of an elephant that must have been imagined by a string theorist. You have song and dance numbers replete with vein-popping, foot-stomping energy and narcoleptic Argentinans stomping out a tight tango (yes, to the tune of Roxanne). And if you’ve managed to keep your chin off the floor as the love story drifts past singing moons and animated frogs, you get the quasi-closing bollywood-meets-the-Bohemian extravaganza to make sure that you are right there with towelie having absolutely no idea what is going on. But loving it.
And, of course, the characters. We’ve already mentioned the narcoleptic Argentinian, but this film is full of em. Jim Broadbent does an insane job gnashing his teeth and rolling his eyes as the owner of the Rouge. But nothing comes close to John Leguizamo’s brilliantly absurd Tolouse-Lautrec who somehow manages to get cast as a magical sitar that only speaks the truth in the awe-inspiring conclusion. And what a relief – in a film that is linked and cross-linked, fiction within fiction within fiction to, finally, run into the pure unvarnished, obvious Truth.
This is a film that has the wisdom to remind you in the end credits what it was about: Beauty, Truth and (most of all) Love. Whew! After all of that, you very much need the help. And, amazingly enough, in-spite of the sound and fury, you really do get the sense that Love is somehow somewhere contained therein.
No related posts.