Moulin Rouge! is a film that wants to be loved as badly as its hero does, and it is not always easy to love back. Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 jukebox musical romantic drama premiered at Cannes, where it competed for the Palme d’Or, and reached theaters in Australia on 25 May 2001 and North America on 1 June. It grossed $179 million against a $50 million budget. It won two Academy Awards from eight nominations, taking Best Production Design and Best Costume Design. It is also, at 128 minutes, exhausting in a way that feels deliberate and does not always feel earned.
Trailer, via 20th Century Studios.
Christian and Satine at the Moulin Rouge
The plot is a fever dream of Paris in 1900, told by a grieving writer. Christian, played by Ewan McGregor, is a British poet who arrives in Montmartre in 1899 to join the Bohemian movement. He falls in with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, played by John Leguizamo, and a troupe writing a play called Spectacular Spectacular. They bring him to the Moulin Rouge, hoping his talent will impress Satine, the club’s star performer and courtesan, so she will persuade proprietor Harold Zidler to let Christian write the show.
Nicole Kidman plays Satine as a woman who has learned to price everything, including herself. Zidler, played by Jim Broadbent, has already promised her to the Duke of Monroth, played by Richard Roxburgh, a wealthy and unscrupulous man whose financing would turn the club into a theater. Satine mistakes Christian for the Duke and tries to seduce him. He reveals who he really is. The Duke interrupts them, and Satine covers by claiming they were rehearsing.
The cover story becomes the show. Christian and the Bohemians improvise a tale about a beautiful Indian courtesan who loves a poor sitar player she mistook for a wealthy but evil maharaja. The Duke approves it and agrees to invest, on the condition that Satine and the Moulin Rouge are turned over to him. Satine says she is not in love with Christian. He wears her down. They kiss.
A Jukebox That Never Stops
The film’s method is to take pop songs and treat them as if they were always meant for this. The tagline — “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love…. and be loved in return.” — tells you the thesis before a note plays. The cast is deep: Garry McDonald as The Doctor, Jacek Koman as The Unconscious Argentinean, Matthew Whittet as Satie, Kerry Walker as Marie, Caroline O’Connor as Nini Legs in the Air, Christine Anu as Arabia, Natalie Mendoza as China Doll.
Moulin Rouge! is the last part of Luhrmann’s Red Curtain Trilogy, after Strictly Ballroom in 1992 and Romeo + Juliet in 1996. It is a co-production of Australia and the United States. Knowing that helps explain the film’s particular energy: it is a musical made by someone who does not trust the form to hold a room on its own, so he throws everything at the wall.
- Director: Baz Luhrmann
- Writers: Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce
- Runtime: 128 minutes
- Genres: Drama, Romance, Music
- Lead cast: Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman
What the Camera Buys and What It Costs
The praise the film received was for Luhrmann’s direction, the performances, the soundtrack, the costume design and the production values. That list is accurate. The production design and costume wins at the 74th Academy Awards were not a fluke. Every frame is packed, saturated and moving. The club is gaudy and glamorous and the film knows it.
But the same maximalism that makes the Moulin Rouge itself convincing makes the love story harder to feel. When every moment is the biggest moment, nothing gets to be quiet. Christian and Satine’s affair deepens during construction at the club while the Duke grows frustrated at the time he thinks she spends with Christian working on the show. That triangle should be the engine. Too often it is a plot the spectacle keeps interrupting.
The performances survive it. Kidman holds the center with a stillness the film otherwise refuses. McGregor is asked to be earnest and is. Broadbent gets the best of the film’s tonal swings because he plays Zidler as a businessman first and a showman second, which is the only reading that makes the Duke’s deal land.
The Ending the Film Earns
The frame story matters more than it first appears. Christian opens the film in 1900, depressed and grief-stricken over the recent death of the woman he loved, writing their story on his typewriter. That is not a spoiler; it is the film’s first fact. Everything that follows is a man reliving a year he already knows the end of. The film is not asking whether the love survives. It is asking what it cost to have had it at all.
That is a stronger idea than the execution consistently delivers. Ranking 53rd in the BBC’s 2016 poll of the 100 greatest films of the 21st century says more about how the film was received than about what it does moment to moment. Later critical reception stayed positive, and many consider it one of the best films of all time. The stage musical adaptation followed. None of that is wrong, exactly. It is the response a film this loud tends to provoke: people remember how it made them feel in the room.
Where It Sits Now
Here is the case against the consensus. Moulin Rouge! is a film about the danger of mistaking performance for feeling, and it is itself guilty of that mistake. Satine falls for Christian because he is not the Duke — because he is poor, sincere and writes. The film believes sincerity is the answer, then buries every sincere beat under another song, another cut, another costume. The Duke’s demand that Satine and the club be turned over to him is the sharpest thing in the script, because it is the one transaction everyone in the film understands.
The film’s defenders will say the excess is the point, that a story about a courtesan who cannot separate love from commerce should look like a marketplace. That is fair. It is also a defense that can cover anything. The 6.6 out of 10 from Metacritic is where this lands: a film with real images, a real performance from Kidman, and a thesis it states better than it dramatizes.
Score: 6.6/10 (Metacritic: 66/100).
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