Plunging us into a half-historical, half-fantasy Paris in 1899, Luhrmann establishes a fairy-tale tone right off the bat. We’re introduced to a talented but penniless poet named Christian (Ewan McGregor), a celebrity showgirl named Satine (Nicole Kidman), the greedy and melodramatic manager of the Moulin Rouge nightclub, and a wicked lustful investor known as “The Duke.” Christian’s talent for song is discovered by the artist Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo), who urges him to compose lyrics for a new play that will star Satine and promote the Bohemian subculture creed of “freedom, beauty, truth and love.” Christian accepts, and is sent before Satine to have his lyrics approved. It’s love at first sight … at least for Christian. He has a nasty rival for Satine’s heart—the Duke. Will Satine choose the way of true love, and respond to Christian’s poetic overtures? Or will she choose the road to fame and fortune, selling herself to the loathsome Duke, who will then finance the play?
Most critics are bewildered and impressed by Moulin Rouge‘s adrenaline-rush spectacle. Some like the exaggerated style, which is one part melodrama and two parts Loony Toons. Others complain about a lack of cake under the frosting. Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune calls it “a rare picture that gets you intoxicated on the possibilities of movies.” In the same town, the Sun-Times‘ Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars, but also remarked, “It’s like being trapped on an elevator with the circus.” The U.S. Catholic Conference enthuses: “Luhrmann’s wildly creative blend of diverse music and visual styles is a madly paced triumph of artifice over substance in its gushy valentine to romantic love.” Michael Elliott at Movie Parables writes that Luhrmann’s “greatest accomplishment was not the technical prowess he demonstrated, but rather the way he extracted total commitment from his cast. As bizarre or extreme as the characters may have been, the actors threw themselves into their roles with utter conviction. This is the finest work I’ve yet seen from Ewan McGregor, and his singing voice is perfect for musical theater … strong, clear, and highly emotive.”
In other religious media, the bawdy humor and sexual nature of many scenes became a point of contention. Movieguide recognizes the “colorful and comedic cast of characters” and its “amazingly beautiful and elaborate set designs”, but protests: “The movie’s romantic worldview promotes erotic frenzy in the name of love.” “True to the reputation of the nightclub,” writes Preview‘s uncredited critic, “the patrons and performers partake of heavy drinking, drugs, and prostitution. The Can-Can dance is all about showing the women’s underwear, or lack of it, and other revealing costumes invite male stares while the female performers invite the men for later assignations.” This earns the film their rating of “quite objectionable.”
But Focus on the Family‘s Lindy Beam defends these onscreen shenanigans. “What else can be expected from a show set in a cabaret/brothel? No attempt is made to soften the showgirls’ job description; they make their living by getting men in bed. The clothing is scant, the dancing is seductive, and everyone is a commodity. Which is what makes Christian unique. When he and Satine first meet, he’s not even thinking about sex.” She argues that the film emphasizes the difference between sex and true love. She writes, “the film’s definition of real love hits the bullseye. [Christian] is willing to commit to her forever. If Satine can be pulled from her old lifestyle, Christian’s is definitely the kind of love that is powerful enough to do it.” She does, however, protest the film’s teenage marketing target as too young an audience for such sexy stuff.
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?
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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.
The U.S. Catholic Conference says, “The silly premise produces a few humorous moments and sight gags, but the muddled ending is forced.” Preview says, “Young audiences may find humor in the comical antics of Marvin acting out socially unacceptable animal habits … but older audiences will be bored by the sophomoric bathroom humor. Although Marvin risks his life to save his nemesis, The Animal needs to be housebroken.” At Dove, Holly McClure declares that “the amount of crude humor ruins the lighter moments in the movie.”
A few prominent mainstream critics stepped away from the groaning majority to defend it, suggesting that perhaps the detractors only saw what previous SNL-star flicks had prepared them to see. Reel.com‘s Tor Thorson writes, “What’s the difference between The Animal and every other lowbrow comedy this year? The Animal is funny.” Entertainment Weekly‘s Owen Gleiberman praises Schneider’s performance, claiming, “If anyone else had played this role, the joke might have worn out in five minutes. Schneider … seems as shocked by his inner animal as we are. The resulting movie may be ramshackle in the extreme … but it’s a good natured comedy.” Likewise, Susan Wloszczyna sticks up for the little guy in USA Today: “Instead of mean-spirited stupidity or a gush of gross-outs, Schneider … adopts a pussycat persona that engenders goodwill. This may be giving [him] too much credit, but the lad has found a way to temporarily halt the de-evolution of the silly comedy. The Animal may stoop to bathroom gags, but it stays out of the gutter.”
One even finds a glimmer of meaning in it all. Steven Holden at The New York Times calls it “the giddy antidote to The Island of Dr. Moreau. Half-concealed inside the farce is a timely fable about human behavior. A scene of a mob on a man-beast hunt suggests that humans at their worst are far more fearsome than any beast. In its goofy way, the movie addresses the moral contradictions of a world in which you have a growing animal-rights movement on one side and a mania for professional wrestling on the other. At several moments The Animal seems aimed toward an all-stops-pulled gross-out sight gag, but then it pulls back. Its relative modesty lends Mr. Schneider’s deft, ingenuous performance an unexpected glow of innocence.”
Note: Though the quotes above are real, beware of any you find attached to the movie’s promotional campaign. Newsweek‘s John Horn reports that David Manning, whose praise of The Animal appears in advertisements for the movie, does not, in fact, exist. He’s an invention of Sony Pictures to help market the film. Horn implies that moviegoers need to carefully seek out the sources of information on films before they buy a ticket.
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In What’s the Worst that Could Happen?, Danny Devito and Martin Lawrence play Max and Kevin, two small-time thieves in big-time trouble. Sometimes the title says it all.
“Sluggish and dull-witted, director Sam Weisman’s flimsy narrative is mostly a snore with a few cheap laughs,” posts The U.S. Catholic Conference. Movie Parables‘ Michael Elliott says, “This comedy is stale and flat, its interesting premise wasted by the all-too-obvious and formulaic treatment of the filmmakers. It is a silly little story and none of the actors give anything close to a notable performance.” Phil Boatwright at The Dove Foundation claims, “Nothing the two male leads and the supporting players do on screen could possibly be misconstrued as acting. The director has a muddy visual sense, reducing characters to caricatures and giving the asinine plot a rhythm-less pace.”
Two critics had ethical gripes with the film. Preview predicts, “The film should make a quick trip to video.” Their critic frowns at “condoned adultery, premarital sex, occultic fortune telling, and an abundance of foul language. Unfortunately, the story implies neither Max nor Kevin suffer remorse or consequences for their actions.” Focus on the Family‘s Bob Smithouser agrees: “This comedy has some funny moments, but they get lost in a sea of ignobleness. The movie tries to pass off antiheroes as people we should root for, making excuses for poor character by painting the antagonists as being just a little bit worse. It’s moral relativism in action.”
Still Cooking
Pearl Harbor‘s popularity plummeted over the last week, suffering nearly a 50 percent drop in box office intake from its opening week. Perhaps the bad reviews are making an impact. The movie is taking flak for its dull plot, while others claim the film is lying about historical events.The New York Times‘ John W. Dower believes that Pearl Harbor sets itself up as “a paean to patriotic ardor and an imagined American innocence.” This, he claims, is greatly misleading. “Take, for example, the Doolittle air raid that provides the setting for the film’s climax. This was a truly bold and heroic mission that … also culminated in the death of five crewmen in crash landings outside Japan and the capture of another eight … three were executed … and a fourth died in prison. Pearl Harbor makes no reference at all to these criminal executions.” He points out discrepancies in the film’s focus on Japanese attacks and American endeavors. “When Pearl Harbor is bombed … the camera follows the explosives to their human victims—and then dwells there, interminably, amid the carnage. Although the Doolittle raid killed about 50 civilians, including some schoolchildren, we never see this or hear of it.” He also protests its failure to inform audiences of how the U.S. laid waste to more than 60 Japanese cities, along with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “The death toll from the atomic bombs alone was nearly 100 times that at Pearl Harbor,” he reminds us. The implication is clear. Director Michael Bay is contributing to a disturbing trend: Americans are being entertained and inspired by half-truths that encourage prejudice and give us credit we do not deserve.
Side Dishes
Peter T. Chattaway of The Vancouver Courier recommends an alternative to Pearl Harbor: the acclaimed documentary Startup.com, which tells the true story of an Internet venture from its genesis to its collapse. Like Pearl Harbor, Chattaway writes, “it too is a story about two men who share a childhood dream of glory, only they hope to achieve it by creating a Web site that will generate lots of revenue. And it too is about the strains that threaten to destroy their friendship, but instead of a girl, it is their very own company—the dream that used to keep them going—that comes between them. In an age when movie studios pummel their audiences with special effects, there’s more conflict, more catharsis, and more layers of meaning in the emotionally painful confrontations between these two friends than there could ever be in any mere love triangle or pyrotechnic orgy.”Going Back for Seconds
I recently asked readers what films they revisit and find continually inspiring and challenging. I’m not talking about getting just a good feeling—a television commercial can give you that. E-mail me with the titles that come to mind; I’d like to share with others those titles that lead you to a deeper understanding of truth and a greater apprehension of beauty.Several have responded in detail, and I’ll share their words here from time to time. Clive Camm quickly responded, recommending the Three Colors trilogy— Blue, White, and Red—by Krzystof Kieslowski. “They highlight important themes,” he writes. For example, “Freedom is not found in escape or hiding. Life is richest in community. And, watching Red in particular, there is no such thing as coincidence. I’m left with the sense that life is orchestrated; how we react is our choice.”
Three Colors are among my favorite films of all time, and I heartily second Camm’s endorsement. Kieslowski’s films are energetic spiritual explorations. He follows his characters through strange traumas and watches what they learn. In Blue, Julie (Juliette Binoche) tries to run from her life after her husband and daughter are killed in a car accident; she finds, however, that starting over is difficult to do, and sometimes the only way to freedom is through responsibility. White tells the story of a Polish barber who leaves France and returns home after his wife leaves him. Along the way, a despondent stranger persuades him to carry out a rather shocking task that leads him to re-evaluate the value of life. And Red, as Camm says, tackles dilemmas of freewill and God’s control of the world. It also explores the consequences of becoming jaded to the world’s evil, and the benefits of living with a spirit of hope. The trilogy is best watched in this order, for the benefit of Red‘s conclusion, which ties all three together.
Next week:Swordfish, Evolution, and more recommendations from Film Forum readers.
Jeffrey Overstreet is on the board of Promontory Artists Association, a non-profit organization based in Seattle, which provides community, resources, and encouragement for Christian artists.
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