Holadem
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2000
- Messages
- 8,967
Moulin Rouge SUCKS!
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Holadem - I liked it.
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Holadem - I liked it.
After spending the last few months defending everything from "a.i." to "Ghost World" against the many nay-sayers, I finally get a chance to unload on a film!
And I've loved those discussions Rich! Always very insightful, and I've always come away with more knowledge about the film than when I started (so I know I'm about to get flattened because you're infinitely more well spoken about these things than I). But I think you're selling this one short. Cornball? Yea, OK, I'll give you that, but the beauty is that this movie KNOWS that it's cornball. It revels in it. And the use of pop songs. Yes, that's mass-culture appeal, but lyrically I thought the choices were flawless. Song after song, verse after verse, the words fit as if they were written specifically for the movie. That's no small feat to play homage to pop culture while at the same time serve the needs of the movie.
Smells Like Teen Spirit? I wouldn't have thought that could ever work, but in context the verses used were absolutely appropriate. I felt that way throughout the movie.
I'm not going to say that I'm a "fan" of musicals, but I don't dislike them. Some I like, some I don't... like any genre. I would't take the replies in this thread and extend to the conclusion that this "is in fact a musical for people who hate musicals." I know enough people who really do LOVE musicals who also liked this one to know that that statement just doesn't hold.
I can't think of another movie in recent memory that has evoked such pasion or distain (maybe A.I. to a certain extent), but I think partly that -is- the sign of a good movie... one that clearly effected its audience in some way. Loved it or hated it... there really isn't much in between.
-Steve
"It's rare that people feel so polarized about a film."
True. And I remember one film that polarized many people back in 1968. Now, of course, it's regarded as one of the signature achievements in film. It will be interesting, though, to see what the consensus is regarding Moulin Rouge in, say, ten years.
It will be interesting, though, to see what the consensus is regarding Moulin Rouge in, say, ten years.
That would make for an interesting thread. How much time needs to pass before the "consensus judgement" on a film is reached.
Part of me is convinced that people who dont't like the film need to get a heart transplant, or a soul lift, or something.
Hey now, that sounds a little bit like a personal dig (but my skin is thick enough to withstand it!)
So, "Moulin Rouge" fits your definition of "soul", then? To each his own, for sure, but I've never considered kitsch to be soulful - and this barely rates as kitsch. Or is it a reflexively postmodern collage of pop culture detritis? Again, this would be... soulful?
And, FYI, soul oozes from my pores like the oily acne-juice of an adolescent. Indeed, if I was anymore soulful, Marvin Gaye himself would surely rise from the grave to reclaim his fairly allotted share. (I've already heard from Otis Redding.)
But no one has even responded to my main question - do all of you even think "Moulin Rouge" is a better musical than either "Hedwig" or "Lagaan"?
Rich, apologies if I came across as being judgmental and mean. I tried to qualify my remark with the sentence after the one you quoted.
I was just joshin' ya - no offense taken, whatsoever!
And I don't think we necessarily need to define "soul" or what is "soulful", but only because I don't think that's what "Moulin Rouge" was shooting for. Forgive me for using this all-too-malleable term, but it's too "postmodern" for that.
It's certainly true that I didn't get caught up in the love story, didn't find it believable or true. I didn't even feel the tragedy of Satine's demise. For me, the characters had all the depth of cardboard cutouts, and were little more than cliche's: the consumptive heroine, the starving poet, the moustache-twirling villian. There's nothing wrong with riffing on the old cliche's and stocking them straight out of central casting, but I didn't feel that any greater depth was even attempted. For me, what this film lacked most of all was an emotional core. And it's hard to be soulful and heartfelt about ciphers such as these.
And while Lurhman plundered the history of the Hollywood/Bollywood musical, he didn't use any of his relics in an interesting way (IMO, of course). I'm thinking, for example, of his quotation of "The Sound of Music". When McGregor launches into "The Hills are alive..." to the amazement of all around, what sort of epiphany was that exactly? My response was, "yeah so?". I couldn't help but think of the way Lars von Trier used referencs to TSoM to much greater effect in "Dancer in the Dark".
In "Dancer", the opening scene is of a community theater rehearsal of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, where the heroine, Selma, is playing the part of Maria. It's a marvelous scene as Samuel, the director of this little community production - a role performed by the film's choreographer, Vincent Paterson - jockies his amateur actors about the stage as best as he's able given the limited talent at his disposal. He gamely attempts to coax a viable version of My Favorite Things from his performers, and the scene plays as both a hilariously spot-on riff on the travails of a community theater production and equally as a glimpse behind the scenes of the shooting of the film, itself. Indeed, it plays so naturally, that one wonders, at first, which it might be.
(Especially when Selma remarks to Samuel, "You're sweating", and Samuel responds, "I know. I'm excited, though. I can see it all happening". But then he pulls a stagehand aside and whispers his concern, "I think she sings funny. And her dancing isn't that great either." Which, of course, is both true and well beside the point. It also serves as an acknowledgment - or perhaps a warning - that the film is striving for a wholly different aesthetic.)
And, throughout "Dancer", the effect of these quotations is profoundly different than the original. Von Trier wasn't simply larding well-known lyrics into some never-ending medley. Rather, he inverted them, or used them to create a wholly different subtext. For example, Selma's gut-wrenching reprise of My Favorite Things, sung in a prison cell as she contemplates her looming execution, is imbued with a gravity and depth that Rodgers and Hammerstein could never have foreseen, and perhaps could not have imagined. But it is as much a tribute to their brilliance, as well as Bjork's, that it achieves such devastating effect. It wasn't merely a quotation. It was a complete inversion.
And I cannot stand the pace (or lack thereof) of "Moulin Rouge". It's as though Lurhmann feared that if he let things slow down for a second, that the audience would realize that there's simply no there there. So, everything is shoveled out at breakneck speed to the point where it resembles the product of a thrash-metal band stuck in 4/4 time at 200 BPM with a single (loud) dynamic. No peaks, no valleys, no dynamism whatsoever, just a constant stream of white noise. It's as boring as a static shot and as wearying to the eye as ticker-tape. It simply does not breathe and thus does not seem alive. It's wallpaper in motion.
If it weren't for "Elephant Love Medley" and "Come What May" - and Ewan McGregor's surprisingly appealing voice on both - this movie would be nothing but torture of the most excruciatingly bland kind. But even the brief moments that flicker to life in those two duets can't save this big lumbering fiasco, all thumbs and left feet, from failing even as spectacle alone.
In my opinion, of course!
Think William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet set in Miami, with ALL of the original dialogue, then you'll get a sense of how the movie is. Pretty good movie, and Clair Daines is certainly beautiful.Moulin Rouge! said:Quote: