Luxuriant Visuals But A Sinisterly Arrogant and Putrid Empty AfterTaste

Rating: 4/10 (16 May 2008)

I think that Moulin Rouge is an optically lush film, the set designs and costumes were magnificent, however I found Nicole Kidmans panting, pretty performance as a dying prostitute with a heart all too familiar, all too clichéd and all too irritating. Looking back at Ewan Mcgregor I think that his performance was actually quite wooden, and by-god the portrayal of Henri Toulouse Lautrec as a homo-sexual, camp little clown was maniacal beyond belief! I hate the way Baz Lurhman and his friends have taken some of the 20th Centurys most influential songs such as Queens 'The show must go on', Nirvanas 'Smells like teen spirit' and many others and used them as kidnapped material devices to illustrate their characters self-indulgent, careless, quite frankly brat-like lifestyles of filthy sex, drugs and {the most sickening of all} their fetid idea of what Art is. At times, this was like watching a Kylie Minogue:The Movie. A kiwi ego-maniac drenched in feathers and jewels dancing around whilst playing a vintage actress/ sensitive showgirl was just so clichéd to me. Burlesque and all that stagy splendour is something we see so much of nowadays with girl bands and various other movies like Chicago. I look back at this film and think of it as a giant, sexed-up, arrogant music video with a vintage theme. It makes me feel rather sick and angry. Perhaps the most perplexing, mind-numbingly annoying thing about this film is that Lurhman obviously thinks he has achieved something completely out of the ordinary, and all of his 14+-teeny-bopper-bimbo-simple-minded audience has fallen for this frothy, foamy, glittery,red-curtain whirl of a pop-video movie. I think that Bazza and co made a considerable attempt at moving the audience, but in the end i just found their endeavours to be melodramatic, artificial and so very calculated. People are supposed to pity Satine because shes a whore who wants to 'fly away' from the Moulin Rouge. Why would she want to do that? At the Moulin Rouge, she is the complete star, dressed from head to toe in finery most 19th Century whores could only dream of, with her own private boudoir, luxuries and a host of men who will pay hundreds to spend time with her - furthermore, she gets to choose which of these men she sleeps with. What more could she possibly want? Freedom? She and her tacky 'bohemian' friends prove that they have all the freedom they need. In fact, they have so much freedom, they are dumbfounded by it, and don't know what to do with it other than take drugs, dance to orgasmic music and create ridiculous barriers for themselves so that they can weep into their red velvet curtains about how supposedly bleak and tormented their lives are. Apparently the inhabitants of the Moulin Rouge are 'creatures of the underworld who can't afford to love'. I have never heard such nonsense in all my life - considering the fact that such a teary-eyed, rosy-cheeked sob story is coming from a bunch of circus performers who spend the entire movie giggling, grinning and drowning in a blissful, decadent, non-stop party where there is an abundance of their definition of the word 'love' aka corseted sex or whimpering shining-eyed whims of 20th Century pop-song valentines day tag-lines. I couldn't find any philosophy, any depth, any art or anything original in this movie. The visuals were rather superb, especially the Hindi-Influenced "Spectacular, Spectacular", but the plot was bland and it was an infuriatingly patchwork montage of other peoples songs, musical work, operas and tragic story lines. The performances were very deliberate, thespian...almost as if the actors/actresses knew exactly how startled and boggle-eyed the more approving members of the audience would be. It was like watching a bunch of people who were in love with the idea of their own performances, and spent most of the movie flirting with their own images in the lens of the out of control cameras. Beauty, Freedom, Truth and Love are handsome things to have faith in, and I adore the romantic, unconventional history of the 1900s theatrical scene in Europe, and that is probably why this movie makes me so mad. I feel it has hijacked and raped history, 20th Century rock and roll, and the very elements of Parisian Art, and then dressed these things up to a sickly sweet Dame-Edna-Extremity. This film is an excuse for actors and actresses to have some fun dressing up in major flamboyant burlesque outfits and producing a soundtrack of their panto-party for all the world to witness. At the worst I found this to be an overpowering, alcoholic, destructive, emotionally-and-spiritually shallow joyride which makes nothing but attempts. As a final note, I really expected The so-called 'bohemians' {or should i say in their case 'bwo-hwemi-ans'} to see something out-of-the-ordinary and inspiring once they drunk the famous poet-pushing-dream-inducing liquor Absinthe...but instead, all they saw was Kylie in another one of her Dolce&Gabbanna-John-Galliano-Encrusted-Twinkling-Show-girl costumes singing an Andrew Lloyd Webber number. Good Grief, how useless is absinthe? What does one have to drink in order to see something REALLY inspiring?