The year is 1900. The Paris district of Montmartre unfolds before your eyes. A priest gravely tells you turn away from this village of sin. You do not. You reach for a young writer weeping at his typewriter in a gloomy bedsit. Here begins his tale, with the infamous line:
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
...I wonder what Nat
King Cole would have made of it.
For a long time, Moulin
Rouge was my favourite film. I was obsessed with it, to the point that I wrote
a review of it for school and got a pretty decent grade for it. The alternative
was that, or yet another analysis essay for Othello, so it seemed like a
no-brainer at the time.
I have been meaning
to revisit the film, and as it has been a decade (and a few months) since the review
was written now feels like the right time. My thoughts at 16 will be
written in bold.
The Cast:
Ewan McGregor –
Christian
Nicole Kidman –
Satine
Jim Broadbent –
Harold Zidler
Richard Roxburgh
– The Duke
John Leguizamo –
Toulouse-Lautrec
Certificate: 12A
Released in UK
cinemas: 7th
September 2001
The Plot:
Christian
(McGregor, Christopher Robin) is young and full of ambition. Against his
conservative father's wishes, he moves to Paris to pursue his dream of
writing about Freedom, Beauty, Truth and – above all – Love. There's one small
snag: our boy Christian has never been in love.
As luck would
have it, Toulouse-Lautrec and his
posse of bohemians love Christian's way with words for their play, which they intend to sell it to Harold Zidler (a zany
performance from Jim Broadbent) who owns the famous Paris night-club – you
guessed it – the Moulin Rouge. Christian catches the eye of Satine (Kidman, Big
Little Lies), a dancer with dreams of becoming a world-famous actress, and
he falls for her. But the course of true love never did run smooth, did it? Not
with a creepy Duke (Roxburgh, Van Helsing) desperate to claim Satine as
his own.
The Review:
2009: Although
this film is set in the 19th century, the music is incredibly modern
and suits whatever is going on at certain parts of the film, for example The
Police hit Roxanne is used to empathise the tension and passion as
Satine has to seduce the Duke, in order to persuade him to keep the ending of
“Spectacular Spectacular” while the rest of Moulin Rouge patiently wait for a
verdict.
2019:
Yes,
that was one whole sentence.
2009:
The Narcoleptic
Argentinean (one of Toulouse’s cronies) taunts Christian, as he explains the Tango
dance, using the words to Roxanne while some of the dancers subtly show
him that falling in love with a “prostitute” is a recipe for disaster. Mixed
with a series of shots, between Satine in the Gothic Tower with the Duke and
Christian walking out of the Moulin Rouge, the audience is dragged into the
situation as Satine is almost raped by the Duke and Christian is powerless to
rescue her… Also, Madonna’s song Like a Virgin is cleverly
slipped in while Zidler falsely tells the Duke Satine is “confessing her sins” He
makes the Duke believe that Satine has the butterflies and that she has gone to
a priest to be cleansed, therefore feels like a virgin around him. Expect to
hear Broadbent dancing around, wrapped in a sheet singing like a woman.
2019: Wow. El Tango de
Roxanne remains one of the most intense, spine-tingling musical numbers I
have seen. It may have helped that I was unfamiliar with the original version when
I first saw it (likewise the bizarre rendition of Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’). Moulin
Rouge revels in its use of familiar tunes to accompany the story. For some audiences
they are a joy, but for others they may be a huge and annoying distraction.
Case in point:
2009: …The unsurpassed scene
of Moulin Rouge is, no doubt when Kidman and McGregor are singing a progression
of modern love songs, arguing whether they should be together or not on top of
a giant building shaped like a beautiful, ornamental elephant.
2019: Ah, yes. The emotion
behind this scene is still palpable, and the ornamental elephant remains one of
the film’s greatest unconventional ideas. That is why people adore this film so much. It’s strange, ragingly post-modern, and McGregor and Kidman
have great chemistry. “Your Song” has never sounded quite the same
since Moulin Rouge had its cheeky way with it. An extra gold star for
the opera-singing moon, because why not? It could be argued that Satine needs more back-story. She’s a
dancer but wants to be an actress, and she has an almost father-daughter relationship
with Zidler. That’s all we really know about her.
2009: In my opinion,
McGregor suits his role incredibly well, a rather naïve character at first, but
he is changed dramatically in the end.
2019: Not quite sure what I
meant by that. How could he suit a role very well? The character is likeable, if
a little shallow, but McGregor certainly knows how to turn the emotion up to 11
when it calls for it. Also, how many people knew McGregor could sing before
this performance? The same could also be said for Nicole Kidman, who would go
on to sing the Christmas Number 1 with Robbie Williams.
2009: Richard Roxburgh
surprised me as the Duke, having only seen him as a villain in black, but he
still proved to be a character easy to hate.
2019: Yup. My opinion hasn’t changed
here; if anything, the Duke has only worsened with time. He uses his influence
over everyone to get want he wants – Satine is the unfortunate object of his
so-called affection, and she sees every facet of it. Considering the cultural
shift of #MeToo it does make one wonder how the Duke would be depicted if they’d
made it today. Would he be a weasel-faced little rich boy, or would he look
less like a conventional villain?
2009: Overall, this film
portrays Paris in 1899 in a very diverse light as appose to a dreary
stereotypical world – until 1900, nonetheless.
2019: With the music faded out
with the last of the colour, Moulin Rouge does not end happily, and it
jars. It dangles the fate of the characters, only to snatch it away as the
curtains close. That’s not a criticism, but a fond piece of frustration. While I
do not harbour the same unbridled glee when watching Moulin Rouge as an
adult, I still enjoy it as a slice of nostalgia.
Love it, or hate it, you can’t deny Moulin
Rouge is a film like no other.
2009:
I
give this film **** 4 STARS OUT OF 5
2019:
The Verdict: *** 3
STARS OUT OF 5
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