Beautiful Chaos

Rating: 10/10 (2 July 2006)

I thought that this movie was another Hollywood offering; another weepy love story that I'd discard from my head as soon as the final credits roll up.
I was never more wrong.
From the moment the opening credits were presented - for how else do you describe it? A little man conducting an invisible orchestra with so deep a passion that you cannot help think it as ridiculous, the sombre opening, then the sudden jolt when time line is reversed, back to where it all began. And scenes after scenes edited faster than you can catch them - you'd think this was some sort of bad cinematic decisions they had made in the cutting room.
But this movie got away with it, because it was a perfect fit for the whole scenario: I've never seen anything like it before, and like a child looking at a new specimen, I stared and stared and tried to take it all in as much as I could. It was chaotic to the extreme. Whoopi Goldberg said it succinctly during the Acadamy Awards: "I guess Moulin Rouge! just directed itself." It was a compliment, because I cannot imagine how did Baz Luhrmann direct such a feast for the mind and soul without breaking the whole story.
In short, this is the revival of musical in the grandest scale ever.