2 of 5

Holly McClure at The Dove Foundation was apparently too bewildered to see any meaning at all. She describes Moulin Rouge as being like "voyeuristically watching a director film and edit on a drug trip. It's that weird and that annoying. What were the people who put this together thinking? This movie is going to bomb once the word gets out. Most men will hate it and women will be turned off by the lack of romance or character chemistry."

I, for one, don't fulfill McClure's prophecy. I'm not a guy known for liking musicals, but I laughed and cheered when I saw the film over the weekend. The high-spirited imagination, the surprising appearances of familiar songs (by Elton John, Madonna, David Bowie, U2, and Sting, to name a few), and the fearless romanticism swept me away. I'd agree with Elliott's claims, and say this film marks career highs for McGregor, Kidman, Broadbent, and Luhrmann himself. I got right back in line to take my wife and our friends! All of us, both guys and dolls, loved it. And for the record, at both screenings I saw women of all ages laughing, crying, and carried away on the movie's melodramatic tide.

Like the "silly love songs" it celebrates, Moulin Rouge is about idealism rather than realism. If it were any more down-to-earth, its enchanted balloon would burst; any heavier, it would come crashing down. Its unique magic lies in its ability to have fun and laugh at itself, thus avoiding sentimentality. You can sense Luhrmann winking at the audience even as he stuns us with fanciful sights and crescendos of sound unlike anything we've ever seen or heard in a movie theatre before. "Yeah, it's pop music," he seems to say, "but admit it … it speaks to you."

In my review at Looking Closer, I suggest that there's a deeper truth speaking to us in the story, whether the filmmakers know it or not. It's interesting that in the Moulin Rouge nightclub's labyrinth of the botched and the debauched, it is "Christian" love that perseveres and passes through fire. Christian redeems the unfaithful beloved. What a marvelous picture of how a follower of Christ should live and love—in but not of the world. And what a beautiful metaphor of God's relentless love, pursuing us in spite of our fickle hearts and our unfaithfulness. We all yearn to be loved the way Christian loves Satine, and thus the songs speak to us. But can we ourselves love so wholeheartedly?

Another week, another comedy starring a Saturday Night Live star. This week, it's The Animal. Rob Schneider plays a man saved by emergency surgery, in which his body is filled with replacement animal parts. Soon, he finds a whole new world of behaviors and habits taking over his existence as his internal animal organs fight for control. No animals may have been harmed in the filmmaking, but The Animal is taking a beating from critics.

next page... |  2 of 5

share this page

June (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45