Though many thought Nicole Kidman should have been welcomed into the Academy's good graces with 1995's To Die For, it would take six years until that early promise materialized in the actress' first Oscar nomination. Curiously, the path to such success went through a return to down under cinema that started to take shape with The Portrait of a Lady by kiwi auteur Jane Campion. This was also when Kidman began to challenge herself conspicuously by collaborating with true visionaries, picking projects based on who was behind the camera. That line of thinking took the actress into the dark reveries of Kubrick's swan song and, ultimately, the musical riot of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge!, which started shooting shortly after Eyes Wide Shut hit theaters.
As Satine, the cabaret's star performer, Nicole Kidman is at the height of her powers, delivering a feat of such off-the-charts star wattage it would have been inconceivable for the Academy to look away…
Spectacular, spectacular
No words in the vernacular
Can describe this great event
You'll be dumb with wonderment
So go the lyrics of "The Pitch," one of two partially original songs in Moulin Rouge!. Within the narrative, they serve as an attempt by Harry Zidler to convince the Duke of Monroth to invest in the titular establishment. Trying to make the best of a tricky situation, the club's proprietor weaves a tale of exotic showmanship, dreaming up a showstopper along with a cadre of colorful characters. Beyond the story's (un)reality, however, these words are an excellent place to start explaining Baz Luhrmann's lunatic vision of musical excess, a jukebox extravaganza so drunk on clichés it should all fall apart. But instead, Moulin Rouge! reaches the realm of romantic myth, outlandish but sincere, like pure emotion given celluloid form.
That shouldn't be too surprising once you consider what Luhrmann and Craig Pearce used as the basis for their story. Long before Hadestown swept the Tonys, the Orphean mythos had already been given a modern musical makeover through this kingdom of nighttime pleasures we know as the Moulin Rouge!. Such narrative foundations serve to support the filmmakers' indulgence of oft-repeated story models and shameless archetypes, giving it all the feeling of a primordial source. It also shapes the rainbow-colored hallucination into something of a fatalistic downfall into love's great tragedy. Indeed, the inevitability of its conclusion doesn't detract from the sentimental assault Luhrmann mounts against his audience.
If anything, knowing the end before we've heard the beginning pulls us further into the pits of mythology in opposition to narrative. Consider how we come to meet Nicole Kidman's Satine. Her introductory shot happens in theatrical shadow, during a flurry of other footage. It's a prologue in which the poet Christian is positioned as 1890 Paris' version of Orpheus. By that logic, his love shall be Euridice, and Zidler's house of vice is Hades' abode. Among these creatures of the underworld, she is the most beautiful, the brightest star in a celestial firmament made velvet dark. For those who want to possess her, profit from her, or simply love her, she is the sparkling diamond. And she is gone already, revealing the movie of Moulin Rouge! as a memory play on acid. Or should it be absinthe?
Oh yes, Moulin Rouge!'s first act is one hell of a trip, so swiftly paced it'll give you whiplash. Luhrmann and company spare no chance at quickening their viewers' pulse, practically shooting some ungodly stimulant into their bloodstream. Only it's an intoxication of strictly cinematic terms and techniques, from the garish cinematography to the busy design, from a raging sound mix to editing patterns of barely controlled chaos. Then, just as you feel that your heart is about to pop off, there's a kiss of quiet. It's time to properly meet Satine and start to understand her as a being of disruption within the picture's tale. Descending from the heavens in a rain of sparkle and strange silence, Kidman is a rhythmic variation before she gets a chance to establish Satine as a person.
But when Luhrmann finally reveals her face, how can one not fall in love? "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friends" is one of those star entrances that deserves to be studied in film classes, especially its opening salvo. Consider the playful seduction, how Satine is putting on a show for her patrons, and so is Kidman, projecting the coquettish premise of the number while revealing the pleasure that comes with performing for a crowd (or camera) that loves you. There are few acting beats more illuminating than the hint of a smirk in that ice-blue closeup. She's the cat that ate the canary, self-satisfied even before the song demands a heightened version of that expression. When it all goes crazy again, it's almost a relief. It's easier to breathe in euphoria than in a trance.
When Zidler conspires with his star mid-tune, we get our first glimpse into Kidman's plasticity in the role, how far she's willing to go in portraying the embodiment of Luhrmann's theatrical devices. Cartoon coquette to clown to vapid bombshell to schemer to temptress to a woman feeling earnest trepidation – Nicole Kidman plays it all in a matter of a few seconds, with her director underlining it all through a stolen moment of costume change. And as the star, again, stares straight at us and wonders if she'll ever be a real actress, your heart breaks for Satine but also for the woman playing her. Reading ungenerous journalists, critics, and tabloid columns from the 90s makes one re-appreciate this shot of vulnerability as possible flirting with meta-textuality.
Moving away from song and dance spectacle, Kidman takes Satine backstage before switching it up for some slapstick cum screwball. When you think about it, what Luhrmann asks of his leading lady is a challenge and then some. He practically has her somersaulting through a chronology of acting styles and movie genres. Once more, Kidman reflects her film, which feels hypermodern yet constructed from cinematic languages that date back to the art form's genesis. In a heartbeat, she serves Rita Hayworth realness with a Jessica Rabbit twist, goes full Lombard, and then personified record scratch post-modern ironic for a transition into no-holds-barred physical comedy. Just imagining how the actress might have approached this mess gives you a headache.
Yet, no matter how much her sheer range might impress, nothing compares to Kidman's ability to articulate the miracle of falling in love. Watching her react to Ewan McGregor's take on "Your Song" – full-hearted to the point of ridicule – is as revelatory as her kooky courtesan routine is hilarious. Damn you if you don't believe in these kid's passion. Can't you feel it burning the screen? From then on, that shall be an underlying note to Satine's story, even during the pitch and a later surge of animal terror at the hands of the Duke. Like the underpainting of a great mural, the idea of love informs how we see all the other colors on top. It also changes the film going forward, pinning its wildest gestures in a deep well of emotion. You're always aware of what's at stake.
It's that quality of Satine as disruption re-emerging, as if she were the one setting the tone of the film rather than a player responding to its metamorphosis. That being said, the polyvalent nature of Kidman's work shouldn't make one read it as a mere exercise in tone-setting and register-switching. The very core of the playacting revelry gives us access to the psychology of this Euridice by another name. As played by Kidman – and most apparent when Satine is trying to talk herself and Christian out of love on top of an elephant - the sparkling diamond dons so many masks one starts to assume there's nothing beneath. Or maybe her true self is the juxtaposition of personas rather than some base truth. Satine herself might be lost within it all.
Kidman, on the other hand, is never lost. Like many a great performer, for all that she might project the spontaneity of the heart's resolve, our Australian star maintains control. The mask slipping is always perfectly communicated, as is the instant when, whether she's aware or not, Satine stops playing a role and just 'is.' These glimpses into interiority are the treasure she guards like a greedy dragon. But, of course, even the mightiest monster vacillates. And when it does, magic happens and Satine is as wonderfully fake as she is real. In other words, her performance is that "Diamonds" shadow of a smirk writ large, functioning as the architectural structure keeping the high-wire act of Moulin Rouge! from falling into oblivion.
That's why, when the Duke strikes and Satine becomes aware of her cursed fate, the ensuing breakdown hits like a sledgehammer to the solar plexus. It's also the reason Nicole Kidman's not-so-robust vocals work so well. The mechanisms Luhrmann deploys are enough to contextualize and re-imagine the high energy numbers, like "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," "The Pitch," and the early acts of that Bollywood-esque show within a show. In more emotionally naked set pieces à la "Elephant Love Medley," "El Tango Roxanne," and "The Show Must Go On," the small spots of weakness are folded into the feeling and the fragility. Apologies for such anodyne sayings, but Kidman acts her songs more than she sings them, weaponizing these melodic spectacles as an integral part of the characterization.
Which brings us to "Come What May" and the end of Satine, of Moulin Rouge!. The first time we experience the song, Luhrmann stages it in montage, establishing its conception as a promise of secret devotion between lovers. After Satine lies to Christian to protect him, breaking his heart into smithereens, he crashes the Spectacular Spectacular premiere, bent on getting answers from her. Lost in fire and fury, he humiliates the woman he loved in front of everyone, reducing her to tears so convulsive one starts to wonder if Satine is about to expire that very moment. Earlier, Kidman used her physicality for farce. Now, she leans on it to give a full-bodied impression of someone consumed by despair, so wrecked that death doesn't even look like the most terrible conclusion to her story.
For all its froth and folly, Moulin Rouge! dramatizes the end of innocence, the naivete of youth shattered by life's cruelty. As Christian walks away, that is Satine's state though, like her film, she holds on to the dream of love. Unlike in the ancient myth, Euridice beckons Orpheus to look back at her, sealing her fate within the story's frame. Had he left, Satine would have never died to his bruised heart, forever out of reach and immortal as ideas always are. But he returns and sees the real Satine. Through his eyes, we do, awed and devastated in equal measure. Through his eyes, we see her die. Still, Luhrmann would never be so dour as to leave it there. Instead, he makes it all worth the pain. He decrees that beauty shall outlive flesh, reside in memory and humanity's imagination. In the tragedy of death, Satine is the goddess eternal.
You need not be a child of the revolution to believe. You just need to see the light return to Nicole Kidman's teary eyes as Satine belts out her plea and sings out the last remnants of hope. That will be enough to make you a convert. It's enough to make a romantic out of even the world's greatest cynic.
Previously in the Nicole Kidman TFE Tribute:
- Introductiom (1983-1989) - Early Australian films
- Billy Bathgate (1991) – her first Golden Globe nomination!
- Malice (1993) - when Kidman met Sorkin
- To Die For (1995) - her first Golden Globe win!
- The Portrait of a Lady (1996) - a Campion experiment
- Practical Magic (1998) - comfort food cinema
- Eyes Wide Shut (1999)- Kubrick. Cruise. Kidman
The year of 2001 was a big one for Kidman. Besides Moulin Rouge!, she also starred in a gem of early-aughts horror. Let's meet The Others.