Moulin Rouge (Moulin Rouge! (DVD))

Member Name: sharktrager

Product:	Moulin Rouge! (DVD)
Date:	25/09/01 (52 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ewan McGregory, Nicole Kidman, some fantastic music and sets

Disadvantages: Absolutely none - I mean it!!!

MOULIN ROUGE is one of those rare movies where I come out of the cinema saying “WOW!”. It is the best movie I’ve seen this year and one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying something, because I’ve seen quite a lot of movies!!

The film stars Ewan McGregor as Christian, a writer who defies his father to go and live in Montmatre, and finds employment at the disreputable nightclub Moulin Rouge. There he meets a courtesan (that’s a posh way of saying ‘prostitute’) named Satine (played by Nicole Kidman), who he falls in love with. She falls for him too, but not before a humorous case of mistaken identity.

Satine is also admired by another man – a rich duke who holds the purse-strings for the first play to be performed at the nightclub, and who wants Satine for his plaything.

Satine is a consumptive and it is no spoiler to reveal that she does indeed die at the end – you are told that this is the case during the opening of the film. But does she die of consumption or of another foul deed? I won’t reveal that because that would spoil the climax of the film.

But to put the plot into words is to take away so much from the film, for it is indeed much more than a sum of its’ parts. For this is a modern-day musical, and should breath new life into a fantastic genre which has been much neglected of late. Rather than creating new songs for the film, the director Baz Luhrmann has chosen many songs which already exist and reworked them into the plot – so much so that very little of the plot is conveyed through conventional dialogue, instead it is through song.

I wasn’t expecting much from McGregor and Kidman’s singing voices but I was pleasantly surprised. Both of them can carry a tune more than adequately, and the most uplifting of all the songs (‘Come What May’) is lead by them both and truly does make the audience
‘feel good’.

But that good feeling is misplaced because of course there is a sad ending. So sad, in fact, that there were people all around me in the cinema crying with sorrow. I won’t admit to being one of them, but I was truly touched.

This is an absolutely fantastic film and I heartily recommend absolutely everyone to go and see it – again and again if you can. It’s hilariously funny, it’s touchingly sad, it’s got wonderful music, solid acting, brilliant set-pieces, and a fantastically stylish filming technique. See it, see it, see it!!!

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