Until this point, the movie is entertaining fluff. There is slapstick in the actions of the characters, in McGregor’s narration, and in the erratic movement of Luhrmann’s camera. I liked the way “Rouge” reduced the Bohemian lifestyle to its essential elements of young men shouting self-important things to each other while filled with expectations of the future. Leguizamo and Oscar-winner Broadbent are stand-outs, diving into their roles with glorious aplomb. A lot of grins come from goofy caricatures of men in tuxedos and prostitutes painted almost like clowns. In both “Rouge” and “An American in Paris,” the leading ladies are faced with one question: is love real and, if so, should I throw away financial stability for it? But while “Paris” has its woman answer that question once and for all, “Rouge” has its woman answer the question three times. Three times she must choose love over money, and the plot must run over the same ground three times, and the stakes involved must increase themselves three times, and director Luhrmann must treat us to the same songs and camera angles three times. Worse yet, somewhere along the way, “Moulin Rouge” loses the playful focus of its first half and descends into drawn-out melodrama in which the violin players are practically trimming their left-hand fingernails with their bows (I’m trying to be clever; what I mean is that the string section never stops screeching out high notes).
There’s a lot to like in “Moulin Rouge.” The art direction ranks alongside such recent visual delights as “Blade Runner” and “The Fifth Element,” with its velvet nights and golden city, all packed with more purple, black, and red than the dashboard of my wife’s Volkswagen. The costumes, which mix period design with pure imagination, are equally charming. The performances are solid all around and the actors are all better singers than we would have expected. But the characters are written as caricatures who, while funny in the slapstick, do not stand up to the pressure of the melodrama’s increased intensity. They sing well, but by the fourth or fifth time we hear Kidman and McGregor sing (and sing and sing and sing) “how wonderful life is now that you’re in the world” I was annoyed.
Luhrmann’s camera and editing style is all energy with never a second to rest. I enjoyed it—for a while, and then his cinematic bag of tricks became tiring. By the third or fourth time we’ve flown from the door of the Moulin Rouge, through the rotating blades of its decorative windmill, and up through the window of McGregor’s hotel across the street, I was getting impatient. I liked the first time special effects were joined with the genuine visuals to create a Paris whose buildings fold back like pages from a book; I liked the first time Luhrmann’s camera whooshed through the streets, up to the Rouge’s front door, through the foyer, then into the audience. But as the story stalled on Kidman’s indecision I could no longer wonder at what I was seeing for the third or fourth time. Even from the beginning, Luhrmann’s style is not for everyone, and some may find its endless motion nauseating. My wife feared she was going to throw up after the first half-hour; she described it as “Blair Witch with color.”
Unlike most musicals, “Moulin Rouge” has little original music of its own, instead relying on pop hits from the last fifty years. There is much to be admired here, especially in the way Nirvana’s “Smells like Teen Spirit” is melded into a fugue with four or five other songs during dizzying brothel choreography. This is clever, for a while, but by the end of the film the music is either whimpering and soppy, or a song’s chorus is belted out at full blast like it’s being played by two orchestras and a techno band at the same time. Luhrmann, composer Craig Armstrong, and music arranger Marius DeVries should realize that energy only seems energetic if there is calm in between. Without calm, the energy just becomes noise. Not every symphony has to end on a fortissimo and not every sentence has to end with an exclamation point. This sheer, overwrought volume drained “Moulin Rouge” of any emotional punch and, for me, replaced it with frustration.
WHAT MY DAMN WIFE THINKS: “’Moulin Rouge’ tries be all genres all at once and ultimately fails at all of them. It’s part screwball comedy, part music video, part melodrama, part tragedy, and all tiresome. If I’m supposed to care about the characters, they can’t be one-dimensional paper cutouts from every other movie with this plot. A few good elements helped it along - impressive art direction, generally good performances, and Jim Broadbent - but these didn’t add up to enough to save it. Turning up the style to almost unbearable levels doesn’t improve the substance. Two stars.”
Finished March 4, 2002.
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