Synopsis:
When a starry-eyed writer, Christian (Ewan McGregor), is swept into the sex and songs of the Moulin Rouge, he falls in love with the show’s starlet, Satine (Nicole Kidman), but when her hand is promised to The Duke of Monroth (Richard Roxburgh) in order to keep the Moulin Rouge funded, Christian and Satine must keep their love a secret or jeopardize the fate of their Bohemian musical, Spectacular, Spectacular.
Genre:
Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge is a musical, specifically a jukebox musical. A jukebox musical is a movie where plot is conveyed through the discography of famous pop artists.
The songs aren’t original to the film (with a somewhat exception to “Come What May,” despite it being originally written for a Baz Luhrmann’s film, Romeo + Juliet).
Moulin Rouge’s score is mostly composed of medleys, which are compilations of songs that fit together lyrically or musically. While there are a lot of romantic comedy undertones, Moulin Rouge best fits in the musical genre.
Mise En Scene:
During “One Day I’ll Fly Away”, Satine sings about the life she wishes she could have without the Moulin Rouge, hoping one day she can leave the club behind her. The graphic blocking depicts her in the center of her heart-shaped cutout, a metaphor for her being the object of desire to the men in her life and the heart of the film. The shape of the heart also mimics the look of angel wings, foreshadowing Satine’s death at the end of the film.
During “El Tango de Roxanne,” The Unconscious Argentinean tells Christian the story of a man and his sex worker lover, paralleling the dynamic between the main couple. It’s a relationship built without trust that ends in loneliness. Here, Mimi and the Argentinean mimic Christian and Satine’s shared love in their dance. The spotlight isolates them, making them the only ones in the world, but other men pull the Argentinean away, like The Duke is doing to Christian.
By the end of the number, a Christian walks through the Moulin Rouge alone, while everyone else has their own partner. Ewan McGregor’s performance is incredible, encapsulating the feelings of loneliness and betrayal.
During “Come What May (Reprise)”, Satine confesses her love for Christian, causing him to come back to her. This scene and Christian and Satine’s relationship closely parallels the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. At the end of the Greek tale, Orpheus attempts to lead Eurydice out of the Underworld and back home, but he has to lead her out without turning around to see if she is following him. Orpheus does turn around, and Eurydice is right behind him. Eurydice is now banned to the Underworld, never to be reunited with Orpheus until his death. The lovers do share a brief moment of love before Eurydice’s banishment, just like Christian and Satine before Satine’s death. Christian turns around and stays with Satine during this theatrical tradition produced number, which dominos into a horrific moment for the two as Christian loses the one person he ever loved in his arms to death. If Christian didn’t turn around, like Orpheus, he wouldn’t have to experience the tragedy of losing his love.
Color:
When the audience is first introduced to Satine at the Moulin Rouge, she is dressed in blacks, whites, and silvers, distancing herself from the other performers at the club. This creates a discordant color imbalance amongst the shades of warm tones the Moulin Rouge is built upon. Satine’s introductory color palette also allows her to blend into the bourgeois clientele of the Moulin Rouge, as she aspires to have status and wealth as an actress.
The color associated with the Moulin Rouge is red, often accompanied by shades of gold. Red is used as an associative color in the film as red evokes the feelings of love, lust, passion, and fury, all elements associated with the plot of Moulin Rouge. From the club itself to Satine’s hair, red pops up everywhere. With its red decor, the Moulin Rouge traps its guests in its lustful lounge. Gold is often associated with regality, which the club lacks. While the Moulin Rouge has status as being a popular hangout for the wealthy, it lacks funding to stay open, causing the Moulin Rouge owner, Harold, to use Satine to attract men with deep pockets, like The Duke. Red is also associated with death, due to the fact Satine has tuberculosis. While red is alluring, it is also alarming in Moulin Rouge and should always be taken as a warning.
“Hindi Sad Diamonds” has a beautifully balanced and analogous color palette. All colors used during this scene come from the cooler side of the color wheel, using blue, purple, and pinks to display the sadness Satine is feeling in this scene. It can also be interpreted as the cold exterior she’s had to construct to protect Christian.
Cinematography:
Nicole Kidman’s character Satine is referred to as the “Sparkling Diamond.” She is the center of desire during the film. When she’s first introduced, Satine is shot in very stylized and theatrical lighting, giving the illusion her character is translucent or shining. Director Baz Luhrmann said the intention of this effect was to give her a diamond or jewel-like appearance to her skin and costumes, making Nicole the desired, glittering, sparkling diamond that Satine is.
“Come What May” is the pivotal love song in Moulin Rouge. Christian writes it for Satine and him to sing, so whenever one of them sings the song, they will know their love will never die. During this scene, the stylized lighting and theatrical tradition of the Moulin Rouge disappears and a naturalistic lighting of the time period emerges, showing that Christian and Satine are each other’s return to reality. One might consider this chiaroscuro light due to the fact that only things illuminated in these scenes are Satine and Christian. The glitz and glam superficiality is absent, stripping back the over the top personality of the club. This illustrates that despite everything surrounding them, at the end of the day, the only thing Christian and Satine need is each other. They are the light in each other’s lives.
In “Your Song,” Christian tries to sell Satine on his and the Bohemian’s musical masterpiece; however, Satine, under the assumption that Christian is The Duke, is mesmerized by his words. Satine is enchanted by Christian, and to achieve this, cinematographer, Donald McAlpine, used a medium shot slow zoom-in to a close up on Satine’s face as she is seemingly hypnotized by Christian’s song.
Editing:
After Christian and Satine were caught by the Duke, the two masked their rendezvous as a late night rehearsal for their new musical, Spectacular Spectacular, in hopes that the Duke will invest in their show. The scene’s high-paced and fast moving, creating this stylized disjunctive editing. The use of quick cutaways succeeds in portraying the idea that none of the characters have a grasp on what this musical is supposed to be. The Bohemians are trying everything out and seeing what sticks throughout the inharmonious shots, meshed together to glamor and bullshit the Duke into investing in their fabricated show.
At the end of “Rhythm of the Night,” Satine makes her ascension during her finale, but it is interrupted by Satine’s fainting and losing consciousness. It’s revealed later that Satine has consumption, or tuberculosis as it’s more commonly known today, but the audience is unaware of this fact. The suspense of what is going to happen to Satine is heightened through the use of a metric montage in the editing. The cuts between shots are decided on Satine’s staggered breathing pattern, hearing her hoarse breathing while seeing everyone’s confused and concerned looks.
Rhythmic and tonal montage fuse together during “El Tango de Roxanne,” a song filled with betrayal and deceit. Christian becomes suspicious and paranoid about where he stands in Satine’s life, as she is the center of his world yet she must give herself over to The Duke. The violin’s in “El Tango de Roxanne” help the audience understand Christian’s emotional derailment as he doesn’t know what to believe as they become more staccato-like, stringy, and thin. The orchestra builds at the end, full of emotions, anger, and treason, when The Duke turns on Satine and lashes out against her.
Sound:
The Green Fairy is the embodiment of absinthe in Moulin Rouge, the Bohemians’ drink of choice of. She has a very soft, soothing voice, similar to Satine, but when things take a drunken turn of confidence, Ozzy Osbourne dubs over with some ADR to create a contrapuntal sound. The image of a gorgeous, petite lady does not match the speech and tone of Black Sabbath’s rock god, Ozzy Osbourne. It’s played for comedic effect (and more so a quick cameo), but it is just one of the many ways that Baz Luhrmann uses sound to invoke feelings of either hilarity or drama.
Moulin Rouge uses their sound effects very cleverly. From the whoosh sounds in “Spectacular, Spectacular” to dazzle The Duke to Christian’s typewriter’s click being used a parallel sound to show the progression of his novel. The best example of a parallel sound (effect) in Moulin Rouge is when Satine first descends in “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” and there is the sound of a chandelier swaying to accompany her. It evokes this feeling of delicacy and status as the untouchable starlet presents herself to the club. Even the parallel sound gives Satine the “Sparkling Diamond” effect.
Moulin Rouge is a musical. That being said, do the Moulin Rouge characters know they’re in a musical? Sort of. The music of Moulin Rouge would be considered diegetic sound because the characters are singing pop music to express feelings or advance the plot and can actually hear the songs, but Moulin Rouge isn’t exactly the story unfolding for the first time. Christian and his friend Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec are telling the story to the audience as Christian is writing a manuscript about his time at the club, so technically, they are allowed to tell their narrative however they see fit. It just so happens that musical storytelling was the way to go.
Narrative Structural Analysis:
Moulin Rouge would be classified as a postmodern film. While it does follow a somewhat traditional three act, seven plot point, and progressive structure, it uses songs to propel the story forward, has unequally distributed acts, more than one central character, and has a tragic ending. Act I of the film is 55 minutes long when a standard Act I ranges from 15 to 30 minutes. All of the seven major plot points are portrayed through song, even the character’s dramatic circumstances are presented in a song with Christian’s being found in “Nature Boy” and Satine’s in “One Day I’ll Fly Away.”
The rest of the plot points can be found in musical numbers. “Rhythm of the Night” is the catalyst because Satine mistakes Christian as The Duke, and the big event is at “Your Song” and “Elephant Love Medley” where Christian and Satine fall in love and in turn have to hide it from the club, ending Act I. Act II opens with a late midpoint at “Come What May” when The Duke finds out about Satine and Christian. The crisis happens at “El Tango de Roxanne” and “The Show Must Go On” when The Duke plans to kill Christian, so Satine lies to Christian and tells him she doesn’t love him.
Act Three opens with the showdown at “Come What May (Reprise)” and Satine and Christian get back together, The Duke is defeated; and Satine dies from consumption. Christian’s self-realization is as stated at the end of the film, “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return,” as he returns to a shell of the man he was before the film begins after he loses his world, Satine.
Conclusion:
Moulin Rouge is the perfect pop song infused postmodern movie musical. It breaks the boundaries of film, while paying homage to the traditional narratives.
Moulin Rouge takes a love story seen a million times before and gives it new life, allowing audiences to fall in love with the darling Bohemian couple as soon as Ewan McGregor opens his mouth in “Your Song.”
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