Lazy film-making for the masses

Rating: Null/10 (14 February 2002)

'Moulin Rouge!' is an abysmal cover-version of John Huston's film of the same name from the fourties. The word of mouth was good- whereas the songs I'd heard on the radio were not- out of curiosity I paid my ££'s and experienced the film.
Never have I been so bored and embarrassed- I was close to walking out- which is not a very British thing to do, as we have a thing about 'things we've paid for'. So, endure I did.
This film is nothing like a decent musical- I'll direct you to 'All That Jazz', 'Cabaret', 'An American in Paris', 'On the Town' & 'Singin in the Rain' to see what one is like. Even a recent episode of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' attempted (and succeeded) with original songs & dances that advance the characters and storyline. 'Dancer in the Dark' re-used 'The Sound of Music' to give Bjork's character the location to escape to- and sing & dance her original songs. This film, on the other hand, just uses lazy 20th century songs & references. Lazy post-modernity that academics will discuss with undergraduates, as they did with the over-rated 'Romeo & Juliet'.

What gets me is the dearth of originality- Nicole Kidman sings 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend', with a snatch of Madonna's 'Material Girl'- whose video made reference to 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes', in which Monroe sang 'Diamonds are...'. How wacky. At least when 'A Clockwork Orange' & Morecombe/Wise re-used 'Singin in the Rain' it was with an original twist. The can-can song is abysmal; worse is the 'Teen Spirit' cover. The whole point of the original was for the band to sing to the audience "Here we are now/entertain us" as an ironic inversion of the traditional r'ship between audience and performer. It was ironic and very early 90's- this is tragic and says absolutely NOTHING. Other horrors await, Lamb's 'Goreki' is ruined- as is 'Your Song'- though the Queen song has always been an atrocity...We get a p***-poor story- half-arsed 'A Mad World, My Masters' territory. Deeply irritating camerawork; sub-'Querelle'-sets (the film does feel like the work of a heterosexual Fassbinder). McGregor is miscast and woefully underwritten, the love story is too rapid- a concession to the audience? Kidman has that special kind of consumption- where she still looks angelic. The depiction of Toulouse La Trec& Fin de Siecle Paris is deeply flawed- diluted in a late 90's/early zeroes kinda way- we get the dawn of the 20th century- seemingly just for the sake of it. The 'Bollywood'-bit is alright- but you could get that by watching the real thing or Basement Jaxx's 'Romeo'-video. What kind of writer is McGregor's character meant to be? Why don't we have absinthe related phantasmagoria? Why do we get the ironic use of Kylie? Why did people rave over this film?
It offers zero great songs- like Rodgers & Hammerstien etc- and the choreography is rather ordinary compared to something like Bjork's 'It's Oh So Quiet'. Heck, even Coppola's 'One From The Heart' tried (and mostly failed); to see a great musical moment on screen- check out 'Llorando' in 'Mulholland Dr' or Teresa Salgueiro in Wim Wenders 'The Lisbon Story'. Or Isabella Rossellini in 'Blue Velvet', the Swing-scene in 'Swingers', the Neil Diamond moment in 'Beautiful Girls', THAT dance-scene in 'Bande a part' (ripped off for 'Pulp Fiction')or the 'Memo from Turner'-sequence in 'Performance'.Or Woody Allen's 'Everyone Says I Love You'.Not forgetting 'Tommy'!
'Moulin Rouge!' is MOR postmodernism for the multiplex masses at its most funtional. It quite rightly got overlooked for the Oscars- not that they're worth much more than audience ratings and a short-term love affair with the studios. I object to such a lazy film being deemed a musical- and the notion that the youth of today thinks this is what a musical is like. This relates to the problem at the root of Western (well, American) cinema- where people used to watch Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa et al, they now watch 'Star Wars', 'Pulp Fiction', 'Trainspotting', 'Bridget Jones'. Populism has won out- the artistic notion is governed by the ethics of mass-marketing to a monocultural cartel. People who are going into cinema and film studies have no concept of any history, no depth of knowledge. Call me a snob- but where would Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen (or most film-makers) be without watching significant examples of cinema? 'Moulin Rouge!' is a mediocre slab of populism aimed at the TV-babies than anyone with any sense of cinematic lineage.