The most dramatic, romantic and thrilling show of this year has come to town: The Moulin Rouge. Starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor this musical romance has an intense storyline, mind blowing special effects and inspirational scripting and acting performances.
The story is told by Ewan McGregor who plays Cristian, a young writer and poet involved in the bohemian scene in late nineteenth century Paris. He falls desperately in love with Satine, known by punters as the ’Sparkling Diamond’. Satine is a dancer in the hedonistic vaudeville of downtown Paris and it is against the unwritten rules to fall in love. Everyone knows she is falling for Christian including herself. He is becoming a threat to her career and livelihood of performing. Her life is beginning to take a turn for the worse and no chracter in the story can predict the way her tale will end.
One of the many feelings you get whilst watching this original film is that it is going to be huge. With two famous actors both putting their singing voices to test for the first time, it is stunning to hear how beautiful they are. Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor both performed the songs themselves and they show an amazing confidence in doing so. On the topic of music, this musical has mainly taken songs from the twentieth century and adapted them masterfully to fit in with stage acts of the nineteenth century. For example, the song ’Smells Like Teen Spirit’ by alternative grunge band, Nirvana was performed by the colourful, extrovert characters in the movie and then blended down into Whitney Houstons ’I Will Always Love You’. It is amazing that the musical directors were capable of doing this at all, let alone in a film set in such a distant era. It seems that delibarate lack of continuity in films has become fashionable and is being used in an original way.
Nicole Kidman really shows her acting ability as the sensual Satine. Satine and Christian go through trauma, happiness, desperation and true love amongst other things ’all in the name of love’. The screen chemistry remains astoundingly strong and gives the viewer a buzz to watch the acting. The makeup and costume is beautiful and very fitting for a show set for the stage. The costumes are extremely extravagant, psychadellic and memorable. It makes watching the film give you a feeling of over-indulgence. I left the cinema feeling that I wasn’t able to open my eyes wide enough in order to catch all the exciting things on-screen. The camera angles are also original and breath-taking. The film is like a thriller, as the scenes move from one drama to the next.
To me though it sounds strange, the writing of the film is like a combination of many Shakespeare plays. There is the tragi-comedy that Shakespeare uses to portray love and disaster as one and the same. Moulin Rouge also has the play with in a play like Shakespeares ’A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. There are characters similar to the witches of Macbeth and also those strikingly similar to Falstaff of Henry IV and V.
The film is certificate twelve, but I wouldn’t recommend it to children as it takes a lot of keeping up with.
The film is thick with colour and drama, dense with love and heart break and heavy with energy, enthusiasm and song. There is nothing light hearted about this musical in general, despite some very comical moments.
You need energy to watch it- it is certainly not lighthearted. It’s a film of no genre as it fits into them all, romance, tragedy, comedy and thriller. So for thrills and spills get on down to The Moulin Rouge...