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Moulin Rouge

Holly J. Hancock

Context:

When Moulin Rouge came to the theatres last year, the public didn’t quite know what to think.  But they knew they were seeing a rarity in the movies – something new.  Any success a contemporary musical film can glean in the box office would be worthy of note.  Not many but Madonna (starring in the screen version of Webber’s Evita) have had the guts to do a live action (vs. animation) musical film in the last few decades.  Though there have been some forerunners sacrificed to the public in the nineties (Woody Allen’s Everybody Says I Love You; Kenneth Branagh’s musical rendition of Love’s Labours Lost), Grease (1978) has been the only successful contemporary film in which its characters have periodically burst into song.  Though dance has come back, it is still confined to the dance and opera halls.  Saturday Night Fever, Flashdance, Billy Elliot, and Save the Last Dance all contain dance as their subject matter, but dance contained within the designated social spheres already found in real life.  We have still not broken away from naturalism[i].  Today’s audiences are too sophisticated for musicals. They want to be tricked into make believe.  If it’s not something as blatantly unreal as fantasy or science fiction, they either want to see “the way things are” or silly things as if they could happen.  Australian director, Baz Luhrmann may have found the missing key that has kept the musical locked on the island of Manhattan:  if the mass public is too sophisticated for musicals, then they may at least glance at a musical told in a sophisticated way. 

Within his trio of “red curtain” style films, Moulin Rouge takes its place as the boldest of the three – after all, he didn’t try to midwife a genre with the other two.  In an interview found on the accompanying DVD release of the film, Luhrmann gushes of his triplets,

“It’s audience participation cinema.  In Strictly Ballroom, the story’s predominantly told through dance.  In Romeo & Juliet, the thing that constantly reminds you that its not reality is that they speak a heightened language.  And in this film, it’s the fact that they break into song…it’s the opposite of most cinema!”

And in a day when anyone can make a movie with their Mac. Apple laptop, its about time the movies brought back song and dance.  This spoon-fed-entertainment generation was beginning to get bored.

Plot and Development: 

Unlike most musicals, Moulin Rouge seems to have a reason grander in scope than the occasion to sing and dance.  And though, technically, it is a jumble of flash and flurry, the screenplay by no means stutters at the main theme, but is happily burdened with a line excerpted from Nat King Cole’s hit, “Nature Boy”:  “the greatest thing, in all the world is just to love and be loved in return."  The haunting melody colors our minds in a perfect melancholy for tragedy as the hero begins to narrate the story of love found and lost.

In a stroke of youthful rebellion a boy left his father in London to be a Bohemian revolutionary.  He has an untried faith in love as the “greatest thing in all the world,” and a talent for expressing himself in innovative ways (which are, hilariously, the least innovative to the audience, as they are borrowed from twentieth century pop culture).  His talent finds him the proposed writer of a Bohemian play and in the room of the famous Satine, courtesan at the Moulin Rouge, and aspiring actress in his play.  Despite a hilarious case of mistaken identity, the two fall in love and become vulnerable to the sticky web of the Parisian underworld that is dominated by the bourgeoisie.  Their love goes through various tests and must be kept secret, but they have a song and they sing their love to one another when disheartened.  By the end, the obstacles prove so oppressive that their love song is sung publicly, in defiance of all their enemies.  As they sing to one another before all, their duet takes on the significance of wedding vows – and this just in time.  For though their love will “live forever,” the tubercular Satine will not.  She dies in her beloved’s arms.

Not only is the main theme reiterated to its own exertion, every twist in plot is handily foreshadowed in the Bohemian play that our hero, Christian, is writing.  But a simple plot is a good idea in a technically complicated film.  If the form is elaborate, it is of communicative necessity that the content be simple.  For what is done with the message is manipulated by the form of its presentation, and Mr. Luhrmann has fun with his cinema.

Existential 

Moulin Rouge breaks categories in that its audience cannot simply put on their genre feelers and mindlessly go along.  The film loves cognitive dissonance to such an extent that, at first viewing, one finds herself given strange categories for what she is seeing.  We know from the hero’s first words that it will be a tragedy, yet as soon as we are launched into his narration, we are whizzed from the exaggerated sound effects and erratic movements of a cartoon to a raucous and colorful night club.  But just as one begins to feel they are in a glorified MTV video, tragedy strikes.  The heroine stops breathing.  Silence is put to its full time-stopping power and though the gutsy heroine recovers herself and continues the story before our eyes, we have not recovered.  Instead we are given completely different vision for which to see the Moulin Rouge.  The sudden fall of this chanteuse from her high trapeze has occasioned a complete transformation of the viewer’s perspective.  We are given the eyes of Satine and, with them, those of the Bohemian artist; slave to the patronage of the Bourgeoisie.  Likewise, the mantra of “the show must go on” is made credible for future use as the final arm-twist of the plot; for in this scene we see the face of Harold Zidler move from utter concern to showmanship flair.  The smile of the underworld is a mask and all is illusion at the Moulin Rouge.  But though the scene of Satine’s fall gives the viewer the perspective to carry through the entire film, the cycling between tragedy and humor does not let up and this has led many to think that Moulin Rouge makes light of the prostitution, drug abuse and poverty it portrays.  However, as can be gleaned from the implications of its style, this is not a detail movie.  It is not just a mock-up of reality with a few inconspicuously placed symbols.  Everything is exaggerated, from the makeup, to the melodramatically caricatured expressions of the actors.  The costume and production designer Catherine Martin was awarded appropriately for her efforts.  But these efforts were not directed toward convincing the viewers that the world they are watching is real.  Its mood handy weather storms and extreme lighting create a highly stylized world.  From the first frame, the audience is not once, but twice removed from reality as it views a red curtain’s opening and a conductor’s melodramatics before a screen-within-a-screen.  This broad brush of a film is best interpreted with broad impressions.  Large contrasts are being drawn and if the viewer’s eyes do not go where the editing is taking them, they will not understand its message. 

Just as the heightened style of Moulin Rouge is a formal reaction against the smudging of the lines between illusion and reality (which can be an effect of naturalism), its watchers will find its content occupied with the contrast of illusion weaving with reality.  It is a film about the entertainers of the upper classes:  entertainers that did not live the joy they acted out before their patrons.  The reality of the character’s situations contrasts widely with the illusions they must weave for the upper classes.  And when that line is smudged, the audience is painfully aware.  For example, while the viewer is still reeling from the tragedy of Satine’s situation – evidenced by her fall – the story’s pace picks back up as Zidler finds her being dressed and recouped for her appointment with the duke.  Between her obvious faking of health and Zidler’s circus-ring-leader-bellowed, “…everything’s going so well!!” one almost finds herself groaning with the impending tragedy of it all. 

Such unexpected contrasts fill the montage of the film.  And these odd juxtapositions yield amazing dramatic power.  While Jim Broadbent gives a disarmingly ridiculous performance of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” for the Duke in the Gothic tower, the doctor is sticking his needles into the pathetic Satine while Christian is worriedly waiting in his apartment, in ignorance of both of the other concurrent events.  All this accomplished by pure soundtrack and slow motion, but its innovation holds merit worthy of an Oscar…or a quilter’s award.

Since Moulin Rouge is a musical, note must be made of its brilliance in placing song central in its world.  The hero is an Orpheus figure and the montage sets up the pacing brilliantly for his enchanting songs.[ii]  The first scene between Christian and the bohemian acting troupe builds in pace to an agonizing cacophony and when Mr. McGregor belts his first notes, the viewer feels the movie breathe for the first time.  From chaos to order in a few clear belted notes is a formal theme in pacing that repeats itself in the first scene between the two lovers.  Mr. Luhrmann’s irreverently low humor takes full advantage of the ridiculous contrast between the poetry reading of a young idealist and the seasoned seduction technique of a prostitute.  The acting in this scene is fully worthy of Ms. Kidman’s Academy Award nomination and Mr. McGregor’s portrayed naiveté makes his character fully worthy of hero status.  Through his looks of bewilderment at Satine’s orgiastic antics on the floor, the viewer begins to gather the same pre-indigestion feel that she had in the aforementioned scene.  Then our hero turns away and belts purity into the night…and all changes.  The spell of illusion is broken and real love has penetrated the lair of the seductress. 

Similarly, formal contrast is used with the lover’s duet.  It is the only original song in the score.  Everything else is arranged from borrowed sources and likely to be laughably familiar to the viewer.  Incidentally, this is not a case of “deconstruction,” though some critics have held so, as much as it is a case of “reconstruction.”  The songs are carefully chosen for the place they take in the context of the story.  But whenever the love song is sung by either of the lovers, every formal element applicable is employed to bring a feel of fresh authenticity.  As the plot complications begin to sweep up our two lovers, there are occasions for both Satine and Christian to bring the refrain “…come what may” in a relative key that would make any music theory guru sigh in ecstasy.  The change of key effects a sense of remembrance to the listener, and we get the idea that the lover singing is calling the lover listening back to recognition of their faithful – and therefore secure – bond:  a shift of key for a shift of emotion. 

The Christian Faith: 

Some viewers of Moulin Rouge will not stay after the first few minutes precisely because it will make them feel like they are in a bordello.  Though there are purity of mind issues that cannot be ignored if Christians are to be sensitive to one another’s sensitivities, it must be countered that Mr. Luhrmann does not treat his subject amorally.  He goes for an emotional effect, but puts it in cognitive categories for the viewer – though the order of the two projects are more unexpected than one would sometimes like.  Some movies will, in pretense of “objectivity” present images in such a manner that they are not put into a determinable direction within their narrative.  But Moulin Rouge is not one of these movies.  Most every element contained is either definably minor or definably major. And all the majors are tied into neat little bundles by the end.  The film’s subject is a brothel; no one argues that.  But the characters are spending all their time trying to escape from or transform their context.  From the very first scene between Zidler and Satine, we are given view of their dreams.  Through this huddled and rushed bit of dialogue and Satine’s fall from the trapeze, Luhrmann makes a B-line for the character development of the personality most vulnerable to shallow objectification:  the prostitute.

As for positive dialogue concerning the film, it is admirable that in the world of the Moulin Rouge, battles are fought over whose story gets to be told.  “Truth” is one of the four values of the bohemians in this film, while in our world, we keep insisting that no one’s “personal” story has to have anything to do with anyone else’s.  It is here that Moulin Rouge wields its mightiest ax to the cynic-become-relativist mindset.  Though the movie is no epistemological analysis, it is a meditation of sorts on belief; but belief of a certain kind:  specific, yet universally recognized belief.  When the acting troupe asks Christian if he believes in “truth, beauty, freedom and love”, they are assuming to know enough of the four words to all share allegiance in them.  And of love, what true relativist would make claim of anything to be “the greatest thing in all the world”?  Yet Christian spouts it again and again – and he is not spurned for it; rather, vindicated.  This brand of proselytism could surely never be swallowed by today’s audience members…be it for anything but a concept so abstract and obliging as the noun “love.”  The concept receives little more than one qualification throughout the unfolding of the plot; but one is all that is needed for its place within the plot.  “Love” is faithfulness – a faithfulness that is given specific portrayal in this film.  The irony of the beloved being a prostitute only serves to bring more focus on the event in the Gothic tower wherein Satine maintains, at great cost, faithfulness to her Christian; and the ensuing violence of the scene tragically, but nobly, transforms her from prostitute to rape victim.  Yet an even more powerful device within the story is the role served by the lover’s secret duet. 

“Come what may” serves as the lover’s vows of faithfulness to each other.  Though introduced in the story as a secret code necessitated by the villain’s domination over Satine, by the end of the movie the song comes to its full fruition as Satine and Christian’s public, though unexpected, wedding vows.  By this final scene, Christian’s proclamation of his belief in love as the “greatest thing in all the world” has run its course from public pronunciation of belief to personal internalization as an authentic value, and back to public proclamation as testimony. Between his initial profession of love as “the greatest…”, and the final proclamation, love has become incarnate between he and Satine.

The value of love as “the greatest…” is a parallel value in the Judeo-Christian faith.  The Hebrew Shema declares, “Hear oh Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.  Love the lord your God with all your heart, and all your strength and all your soul (Deut. 6:4,5).”  But the decalogue (Ex. 20:1-17) makes more clear that part of loving God is loving one’s neighbor.  Roughly half of the ten commandments are exhortations in loving God; half in loving neighbor.  In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul (Rom 13:9) echoes his Lord in summing up obedience to “the law” of God in the law of love and Jesus virtually equates the two in the Upper Room discourse (John 13-17). But it should be noted that this connection of goodness with love is missing in Moulin Rouge.  There is no explicit mention of “goodness” in the bohemians’ dogma of “freedom, beauty, truth and love” (and this in marked contrast to the classical trinity of “goodness beauty and truth”).  Yet, at the same time, the treatment of the characters who use the word “sin” is in an unfair monochromatic; as if only mean, old cronies use the word “sin.”  In the Judeo-Christian faiths, goodness and sin are matters of love and lack-love.  And in the Christian faith, the supreme example of love was shown in the death of Jesus Christ – which was necessitated by our sin.  In the absence of “goodness” as an expressed value in Moulin Rouge, the film fails to rise out of the false dichotomy drawn by seculars between love and holiness.  But perhaps the film could be instructive for pre-evangelistic dialogue.  For if non-Christians do not see “goodness” in the company of “love”, we cannot expect them to understand “love” in the company of “goodness”.  We must be ready to speak about goodness in terms of faithfulness to a beloved, recognizing that we – like Satine – waver in our ability to be faithful.

God likens himself, through the prophet Hosea, to a man who marries a woman of prostitution.  Time and again she leaves him.  Time and again he takes her back.  The first time I saw Moulin Rouge, I walked away thinking of the character Christian, “poor naïve boy.”  But Christian was the vessel through which Love enchanted the underworld.  Seen in that light, perhaps we could just take the last three letters off his name.