Blast From The Past, part two. Hey Kent, remember when you said you could use stuff from your old website in case you didn't have anything new ready? The hell have you been doing these past two weeks?
I suspect I'll get my ass handed to me for this particular review. Like the Shrek entry, I stand by the sentiment, if not neccessarily the way it's expressed. Also, for some reason, I was really into using footnotes during this period (and I've never read any David Foster Wallace).
Fear of an Unironic Planet
I knew there was something wrong only a few minutes in. At first it was okay; the screen turned into a proscenium, complete with red curtains, and the music swelled as if coming from an orchestra pit. The credits started. Then, a little man appeared at the bottom, the conductor, and he proceeded to conduct in the most over-wrought way, drawing attention from anything that was on the screen. If I didn't already know what movie I was seeing, I would've missed the title.
The image of a conductor upstaging both the music and the performance he's supposed to be supporting is the perfect metaphor for Moulin Rouge, the worst movie I've seen in 2001. Director Baz Luhrmann is so concerned that you notice him, that he pushes aside everything else: the performances, the songs, the art direction, the story itself.
And he manages to do so with a single instrument: Jill Bilcock's editing. The movie begins with a flurry of movement, exposition, and editing, and it felt like an episode of The Monkees. Although hard to digest, it seemed like an appropriate way to get the story going. Unfortunately, the movie never lets go of this style and pacing, even when the story demands to be slowed down, as when Christian (Ewan McGregor) and Satine (Nicole Kidman) discover they love one another atop her funky, Indian-style apartment.
I don't think I've done justice to Bilcock's atrocious editing. Let me explain further: Hardly any shot lasts more than a second and a half. Furthermore, since any editing forces a viewer to re-establish the point of interest for a shot, Moulin Rouge forces the viewer to re-orient him- or herself every one and a half seconds. If the point of interest of each shot were kept consistent, this wouldn't be a big deal; unfortunately, the point of interest is wildly different each time, causing wear and tear on the eyeballs as they bounce around like that odd metal ball in Men In Black. And when you consider that the overall color of the shots will veer from light to dark in rapid succession, you have a recipe for a visual disaster. Honestly, there were times when I simply couldn't look at the screen.
If the physiological effects of the editing were deleterious, its artistic effects are just as bad. The unbearable lightness of Bilcock's editing results in every shot, every moment, every scene being rendered meaningless, and thus, the story uninvolving. If I can't see a character's reaction shot long enough for it to make an imprint, why should I care? If I can't figure out the physical space of this world, and where the characters are within it, why should I care? If the editing causes the actors' voices to become disembodied, unattached to anything physical, why should I care? If the editing tells me that no shot is more important than another shot, that all I'm supposed to pay attention to is the rapid succession of images, why should I care?
Ultimately, Moulin Rouge, a movie that is just as much about decadence as it is about love, is the most conservative movie of the year. How is that? Because nearly every artistic decision is made out of fear: The use of pre-established pop songs (sure, any soundtrack is good when you got Bernie Taupin, Kurt Cobain, and Sting, among others, working for you); the use of blurry, trailer-style slow-motion (you know the kind, used in previews of foreign films to make an otherwise unremarkable shot seem "important"); the inability of the movie to slow down and express real, human emotion, instead of a series of shots that simply propose it (or worse, put it in quotation marks). Two kinds of fear are demonstrated here. The most obvious kind is the fear of upsetting some imagined audience's expectations, resulting in songs we've all heard before, images we've all seen before, and a story we already know. But more importantly, it is the fear of sincerity that Moulin Rouge expresses most completely.
I had the fortune to view Annie Get Your Gun on DVD a few days prior to Moulin Rouge. While not the best musical in the world (another way of saying it isn't Singin' In The Rain), it was certainly enjoyable enough. After seeing Moulin Rouge, though, I found myself reflecting on Annie, particularly Betty Hutton's peformance of "Doin' What Comes Naturally". Her performance is over the top, even by theater standards; it is difficult, even painful, to watch, as Hutton mugs her way through the number [1]. Yet, I realized that the same quality that make it difficult-its sheer, intentional corniness-is also what makes it human. It isn't afraid to look stupid, it isn't afraid to turn some viewers off, it isn't afraid to be "uncool". It expresses its emotion sincerely, wildly, and without apology.
Moulin Rouge reveals itself as incapable of expressing sincerity, only irony. It can't be bothered to deal with messy emotions, only with surface images, images that are shown then taken away so quickly that they leave the audience nothing to hold onto. It doesn't care; it doesn't ask us to care. What does this movie care about? To put it another way, Why does this movie exist? I can't come up with a solid answer to this question-but thinking about it, I find myself continually drawn back to that distracting conductor.
[1] It should be noted that the corny nature of the performance is probably intended, in order for the 29 year-old Hutton to convince as a teenager, and to contrast the immature and raggedy Annie to the later, more mature and clean Annie.
Where we saw it: film | We deign to rate it: outta 100