Pudokin was right! Luhrman is too!

Rating: Null/10 (5 June 2001)

Editing is the only original and unique artform in film - Vladimir Pudokin
I read this quote recently on the Film 100 site and was struck by its truth. No film of recent memory drives this point home so well as Moulin Rouge. If no other talent from this movie is recognized next March, Jill Bilcock had better be. Baz Luhrman demands a breakneck pace for this movie, and Bilcock delivers.
The story is simple: a rudimentary love triangle with all the usual outside pressures, including the villain holding the deed, a jealous co-worker, friends banding together to put on a show... the archetypes rattle on indefinitely.
The acting is nearly nonexistent. Who has time to emote or construct a persona when the production is carried out a bullet-train speed? Casting then must carry the weight, and it does. Everyone from the leads on down to Warner, the thug, instantly project a character recognizably and completely. However, special kudos must go out to Ewan McGregor and Jim Broadbent for being especially effective in their roles. (And Nicole Kidman should be in every movie made... but that's just my opinion)
After all this, you'd be tempted to guess that I disliked the film. I most emphatically did not. I loved it. This is a carefully constructed movie that has nothing to do with fin de siecle Paris and everything to do with youth, beauty, truth, freedom, and love. For those looking for a docudrama (documusical?) recounting the tawdry facts of life in Montmartre at the Moulin Rouge, I advise they hunt up John Huston, Jose Ferrer and their Moulin Rouge. For anyone who wants to understand the ecstacies of forbidden doomed love, of the joys of instant friendships that last a lifetime, however brief those lifetimes, for anyone who needs to learn about the rash painful but unregrettable follies of youth, send them to Satine, Christian, and Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge.
So much remains to be said, yet I am too overwhelmed to say it all. The witty animations. The spectacular sets and models that serve the storytelling so much better than the real Paris could ever have. A film that does not pretend to be real, but knows it is a tale told for the entertainment and edification of the audience.
Oh there are real flaws. Le Chocalate arrives at his big moment without adequate build up. And there is no reason that Leguizamo's character has to be Toulouse-Lautrec. The painter could have been alluded to in a crowd scene and more than fulfilled our historically minded friends. As for me, I'm looking to become a narcoleptic Argentinian
Can a play show us the very truth and nature of love? If Romeo and Juliet manages to, as Shakespeare in Love maintains, so to0 does Moulin Rouge.