In the climax of Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!”, Nicole Kidman’s distraught Satine sings out a verse to her retreating lover, Christian, in a moment of affecting metatextuality. Satine, a courtesan at the famed Moulin Rouge is performing in a stage-production to kickstart her career from courtesan to actress. She is singing out, in character, in the show-within-the-film, but the plots of the fabricated stage-show and the actual movie have merged by this time. The grief is both Satine’s and the character she’s playing and she bursts into a reprise of the romantic duet of the soundtrack.
But like any good reprise, her version does not follow the same as the original. It’s slower, yes, but also shifts to different lyrics than the version we heard in happier times earlier. Now the thrill of that romance seems over. As Christian departs, she sings out, ‘Listen to my heart, can you hear it sing – come back to me and forgive everything!’ It’s the lyric, as much Kidman’s naked, earnest delivery that makes the moment work. And in those lines, that moment, and its ethos Luhrmann delivers – with clarity too open to dismiss – the emphatic vitality of what makes “Moulin Rouge!” the enduring classic that it has become.
When “Moulin Rouge!” premiered at Cannes in 2001 it was to a very different kind of world. Musicals were the stuff of Disney animation that had taken over the genre since 1989 when the Disney Renaissance began with “The Little Mermaid”. Live-action musicals were odd curios rather than a consistently considered part of popular cinema in English. “Moulin Rouge!” was initially set to premiere at the end of 2000, the start of a new decade – a clever nod to the fin de siècle setting of the film, which takes place in 1899/1900 – but it was delayed by six months. The delay was to allow Luhrmann, the hot-shot young director fresh off the success of his irreverent Shakespeare adaptation with “Romeo + Juliet” and his dance extravaganza “Strictly Ballroom,” time to work on post-production.
When it premiered, finally, in the middle of 2001 at Cannes – then in wide-release a few weeks later – response was positive, if skeptical. The ingenuity, operatic excess and its general recklessness was praised. Critics and audiences alike were intrigued, if not bowled over. Even the positive reviews seemed to come with the caveat, with a compulsion to point out that it was ridiculous, or unbelievable, or paper-thin on plot. Fun, but also not necessarily very lasting. Yet, the release would signal, implicitly and explicitly, a shift in media. It heralded a brief, tenuous rebirth of the musical on film, and its frenetic editing style seeped into cinema – and music videos – in specific ways. Its influence on popularising the jukebox musical on film and stage was not indistinct. But, 20 years after its release the significance of “Moulin Rouge!” is beyond its influence – for better and for worse. Its significance is inherent to its own awareness of the story it’s telling.
In the film, we meet Ewan McGregor’s Christian, the romantic protagonist, who is a mournful writer at his typewriter in Paris, 1900. He introduces us, despondently, to the story he will tell us about the woman he loved, the Sparkling Diamond of the Moulin Rouge – Satine, now dead. Christian’s story, explaining his grief, becomes our frame for the 1899 whirlwind tale of his move from London to Paris, swept up in the bohemian revelry of the city and the earnest, ill-fated, love that grows between him and Satine against the backdrop of the theatricality, commerce and sex.
The script, co-written with Luhrmann regular Craig Pearce, is an original musical, seemingly influenced by everything under the sun. from Puccini’s “La bohème” to Bollywood musicals, Ebb and Kander’s “Cabaret” to “La Traviata”. The anachronistic melodies – Madonna to Sting to Rodgers and Hammerstein to Paul McCartney – resist any notion of time-and-place and luxuriate in the idea of the physical Moulin Rouge as a kind of magic heterotopia where time does not exist, and anything is possible.
“Truth! Beauty! Freedom! Love!” Those are the edicts that propel Christian and his bohemian friends, and it’s clear that it’s the edict that drives Luhrmann’s interest in the metatextual reflexivity of the film. The film about a writer telling a story about a couple putting on a play feels like an endless case of a plot within a plot within a plot, but the central idea is straightforward – love and art can conquer anything. Even when it does not seem like it does. And it’s that sentiment that marks the film’s strongest literary influence, and the things that feels most instructive to “Moulin Rouge!” and its unwavering resistance of cynicism – Luhrmann’s understanding of the Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
In the pantheon of tragic lovers, the myth of Orpheus ranks high among the most tragic. Lyre player Orpheus is so proficient with his instrument that he wins Hades’ approval to rescue his dead lover from the underworld but his inability to be patient ends in tragedy when, disobeying the rules laid out for him, he looks back to ensure Hades has allowed Eurydice to follow him. His moment of doubt fates her to live in the underworld forever. The myth, with its awareness of the power of art, has been a constant allusion in art for centuries. But I’ve always winced at interpretations that seem to miss the value of it. Two years ago, I had a moment of clarity realising why “Moulin Rouge!” was the rare text to understand it.
What adaptations so often miss with Orpheus is the inability to adapt the tragic tale of yearning without ironic judgement. But for Luhrmann, the weakness of lovers is understood. They are only humans. There is a clarity and earnestness to the understanding and it’s that earnestness – open, unmaligned and generous – that defines “Moulin Rouge!” Christian’s innocence and naïveté become less noble if it is a cautionary tale. For that kind of openness to work, it must be sincere, and it must also be embraced without detachment or mockery. It’s an overwhelming ask of something in the 21st century and even as “Moulin Rouge!” and its aesthetic feel familiar now with so many imitators of its style, it’s the core of that sincerity that feels too distinctive to really be copied as more than a facsimile. Twenty years later, the naked honesty of its yearning and its earnestness feels radical, still.
While the ironic gaze defines so much of contemporary art, “Moulin Rouge!” is richer for its belief in itself. It believes in the ‘Truth! Beauty! Freedom! Love!’ ideals. With the exclamations. Without guile. Without qualification. It understands sentiment and sentimentality and it embraces that. Its ostensibly zany silliness is not a prevarication avoiding reality. For the casual looker, the notes of excess in “Moulin Rouge!” distract from the story, but that excess is its very radicality. What is love if it is not unencumbered? “Moulin Rouge!” gives its all with a belief that more really is more, and that doing too much is not embarrassing but ennobling.
It’s the magic of the movies, but it’s also a distinct celebration and affirmation that art can be a beacon for the characters within the film but in that metatextual plea of Satine the affirmation transcends the story to speak to us. Luhrmann, through Kidman asks us to listen to its heart, and Kidman’s performance – one for the ages – cannot be dismissed. You cannot help but give yourself over to the magic when the curtains close and say, “Yes, I believe. I believe. I believe.”
