The Emperor has no clothes

Rating: 6/10 (11 June 2001)

Never mind about polarising the reviewers (or at least the professional ones) - this movie polarised me. The production is spectacular and lavish, the set design is outstanding but stylistically I was left cold.
It's not entirely Baz's fault. He's more of an addict than a pusher, even though I know it was him sliding the needle under my skin. I felt dirty and used, even as (or because) I enjoyed the spectacular. Was I being cynically exploited (as other reviewers have suggested) by someone that was simply out to sell a product, or was I being offered something that the purveyor believed was a valuable insight into the inner workings of society?
I can cope - cringeworthy as it was at the time - with 'The hills are alive with the sound of music'. I have more trouble with the love scenes. It appears that both Christian and Satine are incapable of expressing their emotions except through the regurgitation of lyrics from popular music. I find it hard to empathise with characters who pledge their undying love for on another by using phrases equivalent to 'In the words of Dolly Parton, "I will always love you"'. To be sure, musicals are based around scenes where emotions are expressed in songs, but they also have love scenes where the characters talk to each other rather than quote each other song lines.
I am not immune to having had a song stuck in my head, or to associating songs with emotions and relationships. However, I do not confuse the song for the feelings. If being a romantic is shorthand for ringing up radio stations to get them to play 'our song', I'd have to say that I'm not a romantic. To me, being romantic involves a lot more - and at the very least it means refusing to express emotions at second-hand, which I see as a form of dishonesty.
Baz's characters are emotional vampires, with no emotion but what they can suck from the carcass of popular culture. Maybe that was done deliberately. Maybe Baz meant this film as a satire on our obsession with living life vicariously. Certainly the overall effect was of a caricature, something larger than life - a fairy tale romance - which our post-modern sensibilities will judge as no more than pleasing fiction. The problem is that everyone has to be in on the joke for this to work properly.
I feel that the film faultlessly panders to the lowest common denominator, where love becomes its own caricature and is debased in the process. Technically the film is a work of art, but it ends up feeling like a rock video clip - all style and no substance. I liked this film but hated doing so. Maybe the style was a cynical attempt to manipulate the audience. Maybe Baz believes that there is nothing new to be said artistically and that all new art can be no more that pastiches of existing works. In any case, I was left in awe of the technical achievements but untouched emotionally.
I'm giving this a score of 6/10. That said, I think that it's a great film - possibly a classic, and it makes me wonder why I've given better scores to worse films. See it and marvel. Just don't leave your brains at the theatre door.