little ado but definitely about nothing but a cavorting ego

Rating: 3/10 (24 August 2001)

Moulin Rouge makes one wonder what happened to Baby Jane. Whatever became of fun & entertainment? Even art (the so-called septième art') now seems to bow to post-modernist ego trips. From beginning to end, this film is an amazing lesson on how NOT to make movies. No kidding, Kidman, I really intend to incorporate it into my film classes: it exemplifies bad acting, bad directing, bad pseudo low key' photography, bad pseudoperiod sets, waste of money, feature-sized video clip aesthetics , and last but not least poor storytelling, or rather non-existing storytelling. It does defy not only cinematic conventions but also common sense, the Eisenstein theory of montage plus, incidentally, the spectator's tolerance, by delivering a most uninspired piece of boredom. It does take you on one of the wildest rides around a filmmaker ego. What happened to talent? Kidman and MacGregor have hardly been worse, and of course they can neither dance nor sing! Jim Broadbent is good, but even Bridget Jones' is an immensely superior movie. The use of Richard Rodgers, Jule Styne, Offenbach and other Baz' schmaltzy dated conceptions can only appeal to the self-indulgent spectator craving for arty crafts. The Tim Burton-like dark' cinematography is technically incompetent. It obliges to such an abominable aesthetics which video clips have been doing their best to impose upon mainstream cinema for about 20 years now. The visual effects are expensive, I'll say that. Kidman, by the way, seems to be a unique champion of some among the dearest of turkeys in movie history, as witnessed by Portrait of a lady' and Far and away.' Oddly enough, she was also in Eyes wide shut', To die for' and other genuine examples of exceptional filmmaking. At the heart of this sub-artistic would-be masterpiece is simply good old Dumas' Camille (Marguerite Gautier) dying of consumption within a tale of melodrama, bourgeois decadence and, of course, sex. Boy, is it crude, thick pricks jokes and so forth! Kudos to Baz Luhrman! Not since the days of Lina Wertmuller and Anthony Newley and I left the theatre with the feeling that someone actually meant to mystify me by creating mystification! Warning: If you ever were in touch with studio-system artistic giants such as Ford, Hitchcock, Griffith and you name it which Hollywood sponsored during last century, you may be put off by Moulin Rouge's uniqueness! John Huston's Moulin Rouge was brilliant, though its leading hero, Toulouse-Lautrec was a grotesque figure. Jean Renoir's French Cancan was lively, equally brilliant and musically rich. To the point. This Moulin Rouge, an homage to post-modern grotesquery, is simply grotesque , and its Toulouse' character, simple debauchery. Obnoxious.