Aesthetics and emotion fused into one

Rating: 10/10 (20 January 2006)

I'll admit, it's hard for me to be objective about "Moulin Rouge." I've loved it since I saw it in the cinema, it was the first DVD I owned, and I still return to it. Every time, Baz Luhrmann's colorful, heartfelt, and sometimes overpowering film-making draws me into the movie's world of beautiful design and high emotion.
Yes, the plot is a total cliché--a love triangle between penniless poet Christian, doomed courtesan Satine, and a sneeringly villainous Duke. "Moulin Rouge" is intelligent enough to winkingly acknowledge the melodrama at times (it also winks at some iconic bits of pop culture), but irony is not the film's prevailing mood. The actors play many scenes completely straight, speaking the sometimes-trite dialogue so earnestly that you come to believe it after all.
And what marvelous performances! It's rare to find a male actor giving a performance as open and pure and vulnerable (and handsomely sung) as Ewan MacGregor's. Nicole Kidman gamely, and skillfully, does everything from low comedy to high tragedy to old-fashioned movie-star glamour. Jim Broadbent, playing the Moulin Rouge's owner Harold Zidler, finds unexpected depth and tenderness in his vulgar and blustering character.
In many musicals, the songs are moments of heightened emotion, but are also designed to show off the actors' singing and dancing talent. "Moulin Rouge," on the other hand, emphasizes emotion above all else. Yes, the corps of can-can dancers is excellent, and McGregor and Kidman sing very nicely, but the film-making, and the mood it evokes, is the true star. My favorite sequence, the "Roxanne" tango, encapsulates Luhrmann's technique. It's a wickedly clever use of a familiar song, turning it from a catchy, groovy little tune into something boiling over with tension and danger. The film rapidly cuts between the passionate tango dancers, Christian's heartfelt counter-melody, and a fight between Satine and the Duke in the tower, building to a climax where image, sound, and emotion fuse into one.
The credo of the Bohemian characters, and of "Moulin Rouge"'s creators, is "Truth, beauty, freedom, and love." I would argue that a fifth item should be added to that list: Art. The whole movie is about how life imitates art and art imitates life; how art can redeem and resurrect us; and most importantly, how art is central to the Bohemian credo. Art is "fake," but it conveys a higher truth; art highlights life's beauty; artistic expression is a kind of freedom; art inspires love.
"Moulin Rouge," a piece of film-as-art, does all those things.