Windmills in Red

Rating: 7/10 (4 March 2005)

Satine is a performer in the Notorious Moulin Rouge of 19th Century Paris. She performs on the stage, and for people with enough money, in bed too.
But she falls in love with a penniless poet. Ummm...well that is the plot. Oh wait, I forget an evil duke.
Baz Luhrmann, the crazy Aussie director, takes this simple plot and proceeds to hit the audience over the head with enough camera cuts, visual style and just plan Bazisms so that you are forced into feeling everything the characters feel in a way no other film maker does.
Often I feel that Baz never has enough confidence to trust the audience to take the journey with him, but what what he does, only he does.
From the first moment you are dragged into an amazing cinematic world where you should turn your brain off. This is not because the movie is stupid but because Baz and his film making team are going to do the thinking and feeling for you.
Unique and amazing this movie uses things we are familiar with to transport us into a world that we don't really understand. A world where the can can is a notorious dance (actually women wore split crotch panties when they did this dance) and the electric light bulb was a modern wonder (people went to Moulin Rouge just to see this technological marvel...or so they told their wives).