May
18, 2001 | Baz Luhrmann's incessantly sensational Moulin Rouge
is a surreal, supercharged whirligig of artifice and feeling, irony
and intensity. Set in an exuberantly decadent dreamworld of 1900 Paris,
but throbbing and undulating to rhythms of late-20th-century pop standards,
the movie is a postmodern collage of opulent grand operas, Old Hollywood
musicals, cutting-edge music videos and India's bigger-than-life Bollywood
extravaganzas.
You
might expect such time-tripping and cultural cross-pollination from
Luhrmann, the same cheeky Aussie who spun the doomed romance of Shakespearean
tragedy into the collateral damage of Miami gang warfare in William
Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet. But even that outrageous folly couldn't
prepare you for the frenetic blur of sights and sounds that await you
in Luhrmann's latest excess. Moulin Rouge is a breakneck spectacle
of furious razzle-dazzle, mischievous anachronism and shoot-the-moon
melodrama. Even if you hate it - which, occasionally, is quite easy
to do - you can't help being impressed by the sheer audacity of the
endeavor. And during some of the elaborate production numbers, you may
find yourself savoring a rollercoaster rush of excitement.
Trouble
is, even at its sporadic best - during those inspired stretches when
all the disparate elements gel beautifully, even magically - the movie
remains frustratingly distant, far removed from your embrace. Moulin
Rouge quickens your pulse, but it never really touches your heart.
The
script, cobbled together by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, pilfers shamelessly
from sources as diverse as La Traviata, 42nd Street, An American
in Paris, the ancient Orpheus legend and the 1980s MTV playlist.
Christian (Ewan McGregor), a would-be bohemian, journeys to turn-of-the-last-century
Paris to write about "truth, beauty and, most of all, love."
He immediately falls in with artist Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo),
who literally falls through the ceiling of Christian's shabby apartment
while preparing a new show - optimistically titled Spectacular, Spectacular
- for the trendy Moulin Rouge nightclub. Christian joins the creative
team, introducing a crazy-quilt medley that begins with The Sound
of Music and climaxes with Children of the Revolution.
Lautrec
senses a hit, a palpable hit, so he takes the show - and Christian -
to see Zidler (Jim Broadbent), the amorally robust impresario and master
of ceremonies at the Moulin Rouge. Once at the legendary nightclub,
rendered by Luhrmann as the 1900 equivalent of Studio 54, Christian
falls for Satine (Nicole Kidman), a leggy chanteuse and part-time courtesan
who commands the mostly male audience with all the haughty swagger of
a ruby-lipped, radiantly pale dominatrix. ("I'm paid," she
explains, "to make men believe what they want to believe.")
Satine mistakes Christian for a wealthy duke she's supposed to seduce
- at Zidler's behest, in order to ensure funding for the next big Moulin
Rouge show - and she doesn't realize her mistake until she's kinda-sorta
mad about the boy. By that time, of course, he's just wild about her.
Unfortunately,
the real duke, played by Richard Roxburgh as a slow-witted and quick-tempered
rotter, refuses to finance a production of Spectacular, Spectacular
unless he has exclusive rights to Satine. Even more unfortunately, the
romantic triangle may not have a hypotenuse for long: The opening scenes
announce, and Satine's periodic coughing fits underscore, that this
won't be a story with much happily-ever-aftering.
Treating
his tragicomic plot as just so much pop kitsch for slicing and dicing,
Luhrmann directs Moulin Rouge with all the whirling-dervish frenzy
of someone desperately trying to entertain an audience of Ritalin-deprived,
attention-deficient thrill-seekers. His camera swoops and swirls over
digitized dioramas of Paris street scenes. His dance sequences are fractured
into chaotic abstractions by rapid-fire editing. And as for the songs
- well, truth to tell, we don't really get whole songs, only tantalizing
bits and pieces: A line or two from one, then an off-hand allusion to
another, followed by a wink-wink reference to a third, and so it goes.
When
Satine first appears in performance at the Moulin Rouge, she is a Marilyn/Madonna
icon at the center of a showstopper that samples Material Girl, Diamonds
Are a Girl's Best Friend, Lady Marmalade - this new version of the
classic is a current chart-topper, though you don't hear nearly enough
of it here - and, bizarrely, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Later, when Satine and Christian musically woo each other in her faux-Indian
penthouse, he begins with the eager longing of Elton John's Your
Song, she counters with a cynically reconstituted All You Need
Is Love, and they continue on and on while referencing hits by U2,
Phil Collins, Paul McCartney and several others. It's all very clever,
but, like so much else in Moulin Rouge, it goes by too quickly
to strike emotional sparks. On the other hand, if you're old enough
to remember the days when Dean Martin and Judy Garland did this sort
of thing with their TV variety-show guests, you'll likely feel a pleasant
twinge of nostalgia.
But
that's not quite enough. When Kidman (who sings passably well) expresses
the melancholy longing of One Day I'll Fly Away, or when McGregor
(who sings even better) interrupts his "love medley" for the
full-throttle romantic fervor of Up Where We Belong, the sudden
rush of passion is stunning, stirring. Throughout most of the rest of
the movie, however, neither the well-cast leads nor the madcap supporting
players get a chance to truly soar. No doubt about it, Moulin Rouge
is an eye-popping, attention-grabbing piece of work. But it could have
been more, a lot more, had Luhrmann provided more heart and soul between
the outbursts of fireworks.