MOULIN ROUGE review

This review above all other things will be about my pure unadulterated love for MOULIN ROUGE.

And what is it to love MOULIN ROUGE?

Within this magical incantation that Baz Luhrmann has just cast upon me lies a love story that exhibits the truth about tragic love, the beauty of doomed love and the freedom of transitory love.

You see, LOVE, is the central and most powerful theme of the film. It is in the emulsion popping the colors out at me, swirling those lit chemicals about that rectangle we call a silver screen and by the time I walked out… I was in a daze… a daze where all I wanted in the world was to grab my kitten and turn directly around and see it again… but this time with someone who makes me want to sing.

MOULIN ROUGE and the story between Ewan and Nicole isn’t just a love story, it is a LOVE ANTHEM. A cinematic sonnet de amour carried out on absinthe and opium all for your dining pleasure.

This isn’t an attempt at a love story set in a dramatic period (coughpearlharborcough). This will be a LOVE STORY that resonates hard and often in the souls of quite a few lovers around the world.

Why will MOULIN ROUGE succeed where all the recent musicals have failed?

First off… The movie is spilling over with fun… about the time you’re high on absinthe watching green fairies with Ozzy Osborne’s voice… well… if you are not gigglingly appeased… I weep for you… But for me it began before… When the narcoleptic Argentinean fell through the ceiling with a strange alcoholic opium addicted shrill dwarf…. Oh wait, could it have all started with the push through the theatrical (stage) created Paris of models and cardboard and stage design joy with the hundreds of details per shot that my eyes missed… and missed… and missed, but those that I caught I was in love…. No… nix that… It began with the curtain parting. That’s when I knew. You’ll see.

Secondly… These songs… how they are sung… how they fit…. How they are choreographed… well… DEAD ON PERFECT. I’ve talked about the music before, but folks… It comes so quickly, so breathlessly pumping adrenaline straight to your brain that… you want to sing with them. You feel compelled to just stand up in the theater… eyes fixed on the girl you love and just SING… SING so many songs…. Songs instead of sweet words, singing those goofy wonderful giddy songs that we all feel are so corny, but damn if it isn’t played at the right moment, with the right light and with the right person… if Fireworks don’t launch and scream in the night. These are those songs, in that context and better… more magical than you’ve seen them used before. The medleys… Remember when you first discovered MP3s… Remember when you loaded up that Winamp with 500 songs and you invited friends over and just prompted song after song after song that you just hit them with… and remember how y’all sung through the night, and as each new song was prompted… usually before the repeat of the refrain began, you’d play the next tune and your friend would start laughing as y’all began singing that new song? THAT’S THIS MOVIE! This isn’t a compilation tape… this film constructs a language all it’s own for the audience that knows these songs… AND THAT’S EVERYONE OF YOU READING THIS.

Third, Pacing… this movie has all the concussive thrust of an action film on steroids, but with so much more on the ball. Here we have LOVE…. Passion, Sacrifice, Romance, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE… Did I say this movie had love in it? Well, there is so much… so fast…. So real… that I just can’t get over how I want to have a relationship with the film itself. The way this movie flowed and moved it felt like it was actually flirting with me. The film was pinching my cheeks and batting its eyes at me. It licks its lips and does everything but undress you. The movie isn’t a wet dream… but it’s the primer for calling that girl in your life… Or that boy…. Or whatever…

Fourth…. LOVE… This film gives you the entire works on love. The thrill of it. The joy of it. The danger of it. The inconvenience of it. Every single wonderful tumultuous moment of love boiled into a 2 hour love fest that… makes you drunk on love… drunk and ready. It’s a shotgun of love… hole at the bottom, popped top and a froffy mouth spilling over with sweet words and songs about love. There’s a lot of folks out there that don’t believe in love, that don’t understand it…. That don’t understand what it is that love does to you. This film won’t help them, finding someone will… then this film helps them.

Fifth… The Audience was putty in my screening… they were being manipulated by Stromboli, but via the latest in remote control devices. There were gasps of love and sigh of joy… there was that specific delighted laughter throughout… Delighted laughter is very different from HA HA funny… Delighted laughter has a smile and heart and misty eyes behind it. And that’s the sort of laughter in the film… When Ewan hits Whitney’s signature "IiiiiiiiiiiEiiiiiiiiiiiEiiiiiiiii Will Always love Yooouuuuuuuuueuuuuuueuuu!" Well first, there was an explosion of Delighted laughter, followed by partner eye exchanges and that shoulder thing where they squeeze their shoulders closer to their head and then squanch down in their seats smiling… How do I know… I noticed it 3 seats from me… and echoed on the backs of many heads… ELEPHANT LOVE MEDLEY… Is simply as classic a moment of movie musicalness as I’ve seen. And I have a major musical fetish.

Lastly… This isn’t like any of the musicals you’ve seen before. This isn’t Andrew Lloyd Webber… this isn’t Rodgers and Hammerstein… No Stanley Donen here… This is BAZ LUHRMANN. And he isn’t better or more of a genius… he’s just adding to the collective language of what makes the musical a transcendent perfect cinematic medium.

Today was a great day for me. I bought Geek Headquarters… I own it now… and I didn’t pop champagne… I didn’t have the BIG DINNER…. There was no confetti or party… I watched MOULIN ROUGE and damn if I wasn’t drunk, sparkling, high and in love by the time it was said and done.

This is not a summer film in the typical manner… Got a black eye from PEARL HARBOR? Angry at the world because of all the CGI… Want to see a film that remembers above all things that cinema is magic… See MOULIN ROUGE… It is everything and more that I look for in a movie I’ll not only see repeatedly in the theater, but at home and at revivals years from now.

Ewan… Nicole… WOW. Baz… BEAUTIFUL. Fox… YES!