Moulin Rouge
***
Cinema
Releases - September 7, 2001
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12. 127
minutes. Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Written by Baz Luhrmann, Craig Pearce.
Starring Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, John Leguizamo, Jim Broadbent, Richard
Roxburgh.
There was a woman on North West regional news
a few weeks ago who used to dance at the famous Moulin Rouge. She said she
was looking forward to the film, to see whether or not it was true to
life.
Hers is the wrong attitude entirely. Not all movies
are supposed to be 'true to life', and most modern cinema is not realistic
but merely uses 'realism' as an excuse for its blandness and timidity.
"Moulin Rouge" is a brash, bold, colourful and theatrical movie
of grand visual gestures -- entirely unrealistic, and highly
entertaining.
Consider. The film is a musical set in 19th Century
France in which the cast sings modern pop like The Beatles' "All You Need
is Love", Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Joe Cocker's "Up Where
We Belong". There are individual musical numbers and medleys, dancers doing
the can-can and swinging on trapezes, and a 'Spectacular Spectacular' of
pyrotechnics, fancy costumes and glittering props. I would choose all this
over an unimaginative drama about the same subject any day.
Ewan McGregor stars as a Bohemian writer who falls
in love with a dancer and courtesan played by Nicole Kidman. Theirs is a
forbidden affair, as Kidman has promised herself to a weasely duke for the
sake of her acting career and the financial saviour of the Moulin
Rouge.
There isn't a lot of chemistry between the two
lead players -- their dialogue scenes deal with functional issues, and they
only discuss their affair through song, leaving something of a coldness and
unreality to the love story. The musical number to which McGregor and Kidman
fall in love is superb -- it's a clever medley of famous lyrics about romance
-- but ultimately it hurts the melodrama.
If that is the major flaw of "Moulin Rouge", its
aesthetic energy makes up for a lot. The director, Baz Luhrmann, is the same
guy who made "Strictly Ballroom" more dynamic than we had any reason to expect,
and turned "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet" into a hyperactive trip.
Luhrmann clearly remembers a time when film directors were showmen, and does
his best to make the screen live, breathe, and do cartwheels.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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