Baz Jazz Hands: Moulin Rouge!

This is the third in my 2023 bi-monthly series revisiting the six feature films of Baz Luhrmann.

Moulin Rouge! (question mark optional) has been my uncontested favorite Baz Luhrmann film ever since I first saw it. That may not be saying as much as it seems like it's saying, though, because the only other Luhrmann film I'd see at the time was Romeo + Juliet, and none of the four I've seen since then -- including the one that was released before either of those films -- have been quite good enough to surpass it.

However, on this viewing, which is at least my third but probably my fourth, I am likely to be more critical of it than I have been on any previous occasion.

Does any film you've ever seen go on and on about love as much as this one does?

I have no doubt the intention is 100% earnest on Luhrmann's part -- nothing he does strikes me as cynical, and it's obvious in the way he makes movies that he's a romantic. But my my. A person could make a good drinking game out of every time the word "love" is uttered in Moulin Rouge (no question mark this time) and would be pretty toasted by the end of the 128 minutes.

The fact that it is 128 minutes, and yet I don't feel like very much happens in the plot, is another mild criticism I have of its tendency to go and on. I am never bored in any viewing of Moulin Rouge, but this time I noticed all the ways it could have easily been trimmed down more than I have previously.

It gets to that length because of its heavy reliance on its jukebox musical format, and I must say that I still think this format works extraordinarily well. In fact, this may be the first time I had ever seen a jukebox musical, and though some of the luster has worn off that form, it felt fresh and invigorating that first time.

My favorite moment/scene in the whole film is when you first hear Ewan McGregor break into Elton John's "Your Song," belting the familiar phrase "My gift is my song!" at the heavens and taking us aback. (And watch out, the heavens might answer back, since Placido Domingo plays the moon.) McGregor's variations on this song -- the emphasis he places, the notes that are changed -- left me romantically dumbstruck when I first saw this film, and still does today.

And in many movies, the "Your Song" bit would have been enough. But after a pause, McGregor's Christian follows Nicole Kidman's Satine onto the roof of the elephant she lives in (great set), and they continue romancing each other with popular music. In fact, he's got his little run of familiar lyrics, all of which feature the word "love" -- you know, "all you need is love," "love lift us up where we belong," etc. 

And then, after a while more of this, they do a duet of "Heroes" by David Bowie. The arrangement is great, and there's a delirious sense of the ecstasy of the filmmaking as the camera swirls around them and colors burst behind them, only they don't notice because they're lost in each other's eyes.

Taken individually, it's all good -- maybe I could do without the cutesy run of familiar lyrics by McGregor -- but by the time I got to the end of it, I realized we'd been at this for 15 minutes, when it could have easily been accomplished in five. And to gild the lily even more, "Your Song" enters Christian's narration after the sequence finally ends. When he's back at his typewriter, he gushes "How wonderful life was, now that Satine was in the world." 

Mercy, Baz. Mercy.

Don't get me wrong. The movie still gives me chills and speaks to every little bit of the romantic in me, not to mention the former stage actor in me, not to mention the guy who loves to see somebody really commit, not to mention the cinephile who loves to be bowled over by a spectacle. All this still really works in Moulin Rouge.

But I'm still thinking ... maybe it works better at an hour 40?

I suppose if shaving off 25 minutes would have made us any less invested in the Christian-Satine romance, it wouldn't be worth doing. Perhaps you need that slightly indulgent sequence between their two rooms to really live with the idea of these two falling head over heels for each other. Convincing us that two characters are in love is no small task for a film to try to accomplish, and Moulin Rouge does it better than most. So I guess I wouldn't trade it under any circumstances ... but I won't lie and tell you it didn't bother me just a little bit this time through.

Maybe I'm not the romantic I was in 2001. I've seen Moulin Rouge in approximately ten-year intervals, at obviously different stages in my life. (I also think there was a repeat viewing between 2001 and when I started keeping track of repeat watches in 2006, and even think it was at my friend Justin's house on a visit to Maine. But because I have no written record of it I cannot be entirely sure.)

The first time I saw it, I was heartsick after a relationship I was very hopeful about had ended. (It was a short relationship, but that didn't mean I wasn't hopeful about it.) So I think although I found it beautiful that first time, I also found it a little hard to take -- a little too painful at that time. If I did see it a few years later, by then I think I was in a more promising, longer-term happy relationship, so maybe by then I could finally fully embrace it.

In 2011, it was the first year of my older son's life, so my heart was very full at that time. And the movie found quite a nice home there.

In 2023, I am happy and content, but perhaps being on the verge of turning 50 means that some of the emotions of my youth have dulled a bit. Enough, maybe, to roll my eyes a bit at the number of times the word "love" is used in a film, without a hint of irony.

But again, I say all this still feeling a rush of splendor over the sense of place Luhrmann establishes in that Paris of 1899, in that bohemian quarter of Montmartre where artists pursued earnest ideals and yes, love could blossom under the intoxication of it all. The movie is a master class on production design and setting the scene. If I had to choose a theme for a casino in Las Vegas, I might just choose Moulin Rouge. I don't say that, of course, to undermine or belittle it. If you haven't been to Vegas, I'll just say that you can dream yourself away into a casino that has been designed according to a great theme with all the details gotten just right. The snapshot of this Paris that Luhrmann gave us has that sort of potential. 

Okay, in August I will move on to Australia, which I have not seen since I moved to Australia. We'll see if I think more or less of the movie as a result.

The fight to finish a movie you've already seen

When I started Moulin Rouge, the second in my Monday night double feature, at 11:19 p.m., I knew there wasn't a very good chance I'd finish it before I went to bed. The movie is over two hours long, and even though I wasn't going in to work until 9:30 on Tuesday, sleep should overtake me long before the movie ended, even if I wasn't driven to bed by a practical need to wake up in the morning.

When I'd finished less than half (allowing for pauses) by 12:30 a.m., I reasoned there was some chance I wouldn't finish watching before the movie was due back the next night at 8. My Tuesday working hours would be 9:30 to 6, but I had to go to an event almost right after work.

Fortunately, my body clock is such that I was up by 7:45 the next morning, even though I didn't need to leave until 9:15. So I watched most of the rest of Moulin Rouge over my coffee and frozen waffles, with more pauses for things like showering and preparing the waffles.

But I still had around 20 minutes left when it was time to leave for work.

Game over? Not hardly.

At lunch time I drove to the library, and sat under a tree to watch the final act of the movie on my portable DVD player. The day had been busy enough that I was cutting it close, leaving only 40 minutes to drive to the library, watch the end of Moulin Rouge, and get back before my only other co-worker sitting on the help desk (we were operating two people down) would reach the end of his workday at 2:30. For my efforts, I was actually bombarded by one of the tree's acorns, right at a particularly tense moment of the action at the end.

You'd think a person would only go to this trouble if he'd never seen the movie before. But this was my third time seeing Moulin Rouge, first since 2002 or 2003.

It may seem silly. I mean, I know how the movie ends. There would have been worse things than missing the end on my third viewing, having certainly gotten the gist of the movie and seen my favorite parts already.

But not me. I'm a completist. When I watch a movie, I want to watch the whole thing. No matter how many times I've seen it.

Would you have done the same? Or would you have just returned it after the opening number of the terrifically named production of "Spectacular Spectacular," knowing that Christian changes into the costume of the narcoleptic Argentinian, throws a wad of cash at the presumably deceitful Satine, realizes that she was just trying to save him from being killed, dodges a couple assassination attempts and ultimately weeps over the body of his perished love?

Watching Moulin Rouge again confirmed a casually held opinion I have of it: It's one of the most romantic movies I've ever seen. Yes, I know that means I'm ignoring decades of cinema leading up to its 2001 release, and places me somewhat dubiously in a category I hate: People who think the movies began when they started watching them. But I have to be honest and say that how romantic I find a movie has to do with how much I was swept up in its spell. There may have been exceptionally romantic movies in the 1930s (Gone With the Wind is one), but if I wasn't specifically transported by their sense of romance, it's harder for me to recognize them as such, and that's just the God's honest truth.

But sweep me up Moulin Rouge did when I first saw it, and did again on Monday night/Tuesday morning/Tuesday afternoon. Its reappropriation of pop songs, its terrific chemistry between Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, its kinetic sense of whimsy, its lush set of an imaginary Paris in 1900, and its storybook bending of reality ... it's all just a delirious delight.

One reason I wanted to watch it again, however, was that I'd gotten a couple of its songs in my head from watching this season of American Idol. I wrote about American Idol a few weeks back, but was cagey about which contestant was the one my wife knew. Now I'll come forward with that info: It was Casey Abrams, voted off two weeks ago -- at least a week or two too early. But I'll save for later the discussion of how difficult it is to overcome Idol's vast network of country music voters.

Not only does my wife know Casey (his mother much better), but we ended up really liking his jazzy stylings, his stage presence, his ability to play almost any instrument, his playfulness, and the many things he could do with his voice. It was always possible that we'd like the guy but not his act. Fortunately, this was not the case.

One thing I noticed a couple weeks ago is that Casey must have an affinity for Moulin Rouge. In consecutive weeks he sang "Your Song" for Elton John Week and "Nature Boy" for Movie Week. "Your Song" is memorably tackled by McGregor's Christian atop the elephant-shaped building where Satine lives (love that set design) in my favorite scene from the movie, and "Nature Boy" is pretty much the movie's theme song, as a line from the song is the movie's mantra, repeated several times: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return." For the record, Casey said he was singing Nat King Cole's original version of the song from The Boy With Green Hair, and no mention of Moulin Rouge was ever made.

Having already made the connection with those two songs, I was surprised upon watching Moulin Rouge this time that a third Casey song also appears. That's right, the song that probably got Casey the most attention, though possibly for the wrong reasons, makes an appearance in the beginning of Moulin Rouge as well: Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Two songs could have been a coincidence -- a third is something more than that.

Casey was noted for his unpredictability, but I guess he was a little more predictable than we all thought. (No less love for him, mind you.)

Maybe if he'd stayed on another week or two he would have tackled Jim Broadbent's version of "Like a Virgin."

I'm getting worse at this

Used to be, just a little bit of smart planning, and I'd be guaranteed to successfully execute a theatrical double feature.

You know, the kind where you pay for the first and sneak into the second. I do it -- I admit it. I've admitted it numerous times on this blog.

Starting at the beginning of 2011, though, I've now had three attempts in a row that were marred by some kind of bad luck or brushes with the law. At least the one this past Saturday was considerably less traumatizing than the other two.

Just to refresh your memory, the first double feature I attempted in 2011 was to see The Green Hornet and Blue Valentine. That one was kind of botched from the get-go, in the sense that I'd been intending to see Blue Valentine and Another Year, but when they switched which movie was playing in which wing of the building, I had to drop Another Year for a movie that was playing in the same wing as Blue Valentine. I successfully saw both movies, but I lost my wallet somewhere in the process. I ended up getting it back, but not for three weeks, and I'd already ordered a new license and credit cards by then, plus suffered about four days of depression related to the loss.

The second botch was at the drive-in, and it also involved The Green Hornet. We paid to see Battle: Los Angeles and The Green Hornet, knowing that we intended to switch theaters after Battle: LA to try to finish with Hall Pass and Red Riding Hood. But the "drive-in cops" (guys in golf carts) stopped us from entering the second theater, and in a panic of indecision, we simply left the grounds and drove home.

This past Saturday night I was supposed to see Water for Elephants and Hanna. I even cased the joint earlier in the day to make sure that the movies were playing in the same wing. This was no certain task because Water for Elephants was actually playing on three screens, only two of which were in the same wing as Hanna. But I timed things out perfectly so that my 8:00 showing of Water for Elephants would have led directly into a 10:00 showing of Hanna. I wouldn't be able to use the bathroom between movies, because the bathroom was on the other side of the ticket taker from me. But as long as I wasn't too desperate after the two-hour Elephants, I should be able to hold on for the 1:50 Hanna, especially since it would be starting immediately, with no downtime in between.

And it should have worked out perfectly. I even snuck in two cans of soda and other snacks in my skateboarder pants -- you know, the ones that are torn, too small and should be replaced, but are still useful because of their large additional pockets. My bladder was in fine shape at the end of Elephants and everything.

The problem was, this is a very nice theater, with lots of very nice but very attentive ushers. The screening room where I saw Elephants was the first in the wing, its door right next to the ticket taker. Perhaps to prevent the very thing I was trying to do, they had extended one of those cordons, the ones that recess back in on themselves like a tape measure, out from the exit of the theater to directly where the ticket taker was standing. So instead of just ducking off to my right as I exited, I would have had to go around the ticket taker, who would see me exiting this screening room and know I was up to something. With no time to adapt to this sudden realization, I just let the flow of the exiting crowd carry me out, and just like that, it was done. No second movie.

For a moment I considered trying to pull some bologna like just flashing a stub and walking back in with confidence, to get down to the Hanna theater. But part of having very nice, very attentive ushers is that you feel a lot worse trying to pull one over on them. It's one thing to see a second movie as a "crime of opportunity" that involves little to no consternation on anyone's part. It's another to actively deceive the theater staff in order to see a movie for free.

The other thing I did wrong was that I reversed my usual philosophy about which movie you're supposed to see first. Because there's always the chance that you won't see the second movie, for one reason or another ("too tired" could always be a reason), you should see the movie you're more interested in first. In order to do that with Hanna, however, I would have had to go to a 7:30 Hanna and a 9:55 Water for Elephants. That would have left me with a good half-hour of downtime, during which I would still have been torturously prevented from using the bathroom. What's more, the extra time would mean I'd have to dodge people cleaning theaters, etc.

Fortunately, I liked Water for Elephants enough that I didn't mind it being the only movie I saw. Sure, the presence of Robert Pattinson sent off some warning flares. But I also know he's trying to move away from Twilight and forge a serious acting career, so I didn't expect this movie would be aimed at teenage girls. At least, not only at teenage girls.

The beauty of Water for Elephants, in fact, is that for the first time in a long time, I didn't know what to expect. I hadn't heard any review of it, in part because there was no new Entertainment Weekly this week after last week's double issue. I hadn't even heard any buzz, positive or negative. All I knew was the footage from the ads, which made me think of three different films for which I have decent to high levels of affection: Moulin Rouge!, Big Fish and Australia. If Water for Elephants could fit into the same category as those films, we'd have a winner.

But I didn't know. It's so strange to go to a movie not knowing anything about whether it's supposed to be good or not. Just by our immersion in the cinematic world, we film fans usually have a pretty good idea whether a movie is getting praised or panned, even if it hasn't come out yet. Therefore, seeing it is always a matter of living up (or down) to those expectations, of exceeding (or failing to exceed) them. It was quite refreshing to come into a movie with no expectations -- except for those I could glean from my own analysis of the trailers.

One thing that struck me about Elephants was that it made me feel like I'd never seen a movie about the circus before. Surely that isn't true -- I can name a few off the top of my head. But one of the things this movie does well is that it gives you a supposed insider's look into the business of circuses, and has a couple compelling storytelling techniques to assist with that. For example, one of my favorite sequences was when Pattinson's character is led through the train carrying the Benzini Brothers circus, by the inevitable salty old character who takes him under his wing. Director Francis Lawrence didn't achieve it all in one take, but it still had a similar feel to Martin Scorsese's famous shot in Goodfellas, where Henry Hill is led through a microcosm of the underworld (you know, the restaurant scene). Did I just compare Water for Elephants to Goodfellas? Yep, I think I did. Another scene involves the wonder and awe of seeing a 1930s big-top erected from the ground up, accompanied by just the right score. In these ways, Water for Elephants is something of a "circus procedural," I guess you could say.

But what I really liked was how grandiose it was. Not only the big-top, not only the menagerie of animals, and not only the amazing titular elephant, named Rosie, who makes you love an elephant like no movie has ever made you love an elephant. But just every piece of the cinematography. There's a scene where Pattinson's Jacob and Chrtisophe Waltz's August climb atop the train as it chugs through the American countryside, and view that countryside while walking the length of the train. The whole scene is bathed in this glorious moonlight and just looks gorgeous. I love seeing someone work on a big canvas like this.

The epic quality of the movie was also mirrored in the central love triangle between the vicious August, his beautiful but fearful wife Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) and Jacob. This is old-world movie stuff, with Jacob as a righteous hero, Marlena as an imprisoned soul desperate to escape, and August as a hissable villain, whose treatment of human beings and animals is equally malevolent. Waltz is brilliant again, after his obvious brilliant turn in Inglourious Basterds, and then taking (the again aforementioned) Green Hornet off. In fact, something about the whole production was so giant and old-world that it reminded me of another movie: Titanic. Similar love triangle, similar story told in flashback from the present day. Similar impact? No, but you're talking about the second-highest grossing film of all time, so that's asking a lot.

Compared to the four films I mentioned, I found it to be not as good as Titanic or Moulin Rounge!, almost as good as Big Fish, and better than Australia. That's not saying much for those of you who didn't care for Australia, but I did, so it's good praise from me.

And a word about the director, Francis Lawrence. I had him pegged as a total genre director, as he'd previously helmed Constantine (which I liked at the time, not so much in retrospect) and I Am Legend (which I liked a lot and still do). Turns out that branching out into epic period stuff looks good on him. He really had the feel for it.

And it's not for teenage girls. It's a movie that should speak to the romantic that exists in most of us, but it also has good substance. Ever been curious about how a fringe circus survived during the Great Depression? What desperation will drive men to do? Water for Elephants wraps that in there, too.

Okay, enough shilling. Let's just say that it was nice to walk away from my single feature, feeling as satisfied as I might have felt if I'd seen two.