Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "MOULIN ROUGE!"

In the Hit Me With Your Best Shot series we look at pre-selected movies and name what we think of as the best (or at least our favorite) shot. Anyone can play along and we link up. Next wednesday's topic is Fritz Lang's noir "The Woman in the Window".

But tonight, we celebrate Baz Luhrmann's "Spectacular! Spectacular!" which went wide on US screens ten years ago on this very day.

MOULIN ROUGE!

SHE'S CONFESSSSSSSIIIIINNNNGGGG!
She suddenly had a terrible desire to go to a priest."

We begin with a confession.

Though I was an early veritably possessed cheerleader for Moulin Rouge! since I beheld its genius on opening night at the Ziegfeld theater in NYC, though I saw it five times in the movie theater (a post '80s personal record), and though I named it Best of the Aughts when the decade wrapped, I hadn't actually sat down and watched Moulin Rouge! in full for at least five years. This wasn't intentional. I wrote about the movie so often from 2001 to 2005 that at some point I just put it on the shelf, afraid of breaking its spell. I worried, sitting down in the dark, the remote far from me as if I were back in the temple of the movie theater, 'would it still thrill?'

A silly question it was. From the first frames I was swept up. By the time Zidler and his diamond dogs came rushing at the camera (best shot!?!), a chaotic swishing mess of vibrant color, sexual promise and mashed-up music, I forgot to take any notes at all. By the time Satine, the sparkling diamond, descended from the ceiling onto the dance floor, I had completely blanked on the the "best shot" assignment. So, returning to skim again today, a decision: I would only choose a shot from the film's second half, which I haven't written as much about.

Moulin Rouge! famously borrows, sometimes with song and other times visually, from dozens of famous musicals but it's comic/tragic masks are not unlike the work of the great Stephen Sondheim. In many of Sondheim's most famous musicals, he starts out light and comic and you leave the theater at intermission for fresh air that you don't even need since you're already walking on it. Within seconds of returning to your seat, he's out to crush your heart. Into the Woods provides a famous and literal example: the first act, which is a play on famous fairy tales, ends with the "ever after" part. When you return for the second act you're left to wonder what comes next and that "happily ever after" part sure turns out to be a false bill of goods.

And so it goes with Christian and Satine's romance, which comes on, like the whole of Moulin Rouge!, in a heady hallucinatory rush of color, comedy and eroticism and then dives straight into tragedy after the (literal) romantic fireworks. Consider the juxtaposition of the shots above, one when Christian sings "I-I-I-I-I-I will always love you" (best shot!?!) and Satine is fully on board" and the much later shot of Satine, realizing she has to give Satine up singing "today's the day when dreaming ends" (best shot?!?) which she sings with her eyes glassy, not really looking at the caged bird sharing the frame, who we already know she feels a kinship towards (Someday I'll Fly Away). Both shots are audaciously clichéd, but that's how Moulin Rouge! plays it, boldly throwing ALL tropes at you and daring you to not reembrace them in a fresh dizzying form.

Zidler himself precipitates this vacant "you're dying"/ 'I'm already dead' staring and the longer I live with the movie the richer the Zidler/Satine relationship becomes. So for the moment, and there are roughly 100,000 shots worthy of the name "best" in the film, this is the one that absolutely kills. A slow cold zoom out on Zidler performing Zidler as The Maharaja (aka also the Duke) claiming Satine all over again. It drains the last life from our heroine. Art is imitating life and then life will imitate the art again.

She is mine. She is mine."

The cinematography by Donald McAlpine which so deserved the Oscars that year (sorry LotR), loves to shoot Nicole Kidman with blue light whenever she is bereft of love. Even in the "Elephant Love Medley" when she's first resisting Ewan McGregor she's lit in blue while he is glowing with warmer light right behind him. By the end of "Spectacular! Spectacular!", beginning with the exact moment when she coughs on stage, all the hot pink light which had been battling it out with the blue, vanishes to leave her like this.

She is mine. She is mine."

She always was... Zidler's that is. Christian was never able to steal her away, only playing with her in her gilded cage for that Summer of Love, 1899.

Madonna's classic "Like a Virgin" number is only used comically in the film, to mock the prostitute/john Satine/Duke relationship. But it could just as well have been used dramatically, with Satine in Christian's arms; thawed out, shiny and new. This beloved movie, ten years familiar, can still touch you for the very first time. It hasn't lost a drop of heart or magic in a decade's time. 

 

18 Children of the Revolution
Visit these fine blogs for more on this "Spectacular! Spectacular!"

• Victim of the Time "vibrant infatuations"
• Film Misery Christian, trapped
• Amiresque the blue eyes of Moulin Rouge!
• Cheap Seat Reviews thank you for curing him of his ridiculous obsession with love!
• Intafada afternoon delights
• Movies Kick Ass the camera loves her
• Film Actually "You're daying, Satine"
• Being Norma Jeane Midnight in Paris?
• Stale Popcorn "brash. cold. bright"  You can can can.
• Mosaical Musings "Roxanne... you don't have to put on the red light."
• Ahora Satine and her beauty.
• Derrek's Tumblr "romance on a grandiose scale"
• Moved by a Screen Dream Christian in agony
• Antagony & Ecstasy when in doubt, go puerile.
• Serious Film love/hate relationship: best and worst shot.
• Awww, The Movies couldn't possibly choose one.
• missemmamm "smoldering temptress?"
• Sketchy Details a sunny moment via "Come What May"
• Sorta That Guy a love that will live forever!

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A Quickie With The "Four Whores of the Apocalypse"

You have to have noticed by our hastily slathered wallpaper that we've entered MOULIN ROUGE! WEEK. Baz Luhrmann's "Spectacular! Spectacular!" went into wide release ten years ago tomorrow! (Tomorrow night we'll have a "hit me with your best shot" episode celebrating the movie and at least a couple of other posts, this week, too.)

So to get us in the mood...

"Harold Zidler... and his infamous girls. They called them his Diamond Dogs.

Also known as "The Four Whores of the Apocalypse." Can you even choose a favorite?! Everyone should vote! Don't be a wussy bystander; risk it all on that chaotic dance floor.

poll by twiigs.com

And in related 10th anniversary polling. Remember "Lady Marmalade", their intro music?!

Who was it for you at the time: Mya, Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim and P¡nk? And is your answer the same today, ten years on?

4 Things We Didn't Get Around To Saying This Week...

Which we really meant to. It was a sorry week in time management. So... Let's cover them right quick now.

1. The cast of Moulin Rouge! will be reunited on May 3rd on MTV for the 10th anniversary. The movie's exact anniversary is kind of confusing, so I'm choosing to celebrate the 10th anniversary on June 1st which is the date it went wide. May 30th through June 3rd is MOULIN ROUGE WEEK!

2. Congratulations to Darren Aronofsky for his Venice Film Festival Jury gig. I've always said that artists aren't necessarily the best judges of art so you can't really tell if a brilliant person at any one particular thing will have any brilliance at recognizing the brilliance in others within that same thing (hi sentence. You are too long). Nevertheless, it's always interesting to see which film luminaries the prestige festivals choose and who their jury ends up being.

3. I would pay good money for a way to watch old sitcoms with the laugh tracks removed. Why is this not an option? I literally can't watch anything with a laugh track -- with one or two exceptions -- it just takes me right out of what I'm watching.

4. It was 18 years ago this week that the death of Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow was proclaimed "negligence" That was such a sad creepy movie story back in the early to mid nineties but me and my friend Kevan, who I went to every movie at the time were really obsessed with the movie.

I have a soft spot for the movie (it's set in my hometown on a holiday I always had to explain to people "Devil's Night" once I left Detroit) though it's not exactly a great movie. And I love Brandon Lee in it. So I've been sad to hear about the rethink these past couple of weeks (to star Bradley Cooper?). Although technically a revival of this franchise isn't at all sacrilegious because it's a resurrection myth and there's no reason why the Crow can't keep raising the dead, you know?

Reader of the Day: Victor

Reader Appreciation Month wraps on Thursday but I hope y'all know The Film Experience appreciates you year round. We'll have Weekly Reader Spotlights for April because I'm having too much fun with it to quit at the moment. Today Victor in Brazil.

Nathaniel: Do you remember your first movie?
VICTOR: First moviegoing experience I actually recall - my mother told she had taken me before, but I don't remember - is Aladdin, when I was 8.  I really think it kind of had some deep effect in me, because if there are two things that I love they're musicals and animated films. I still know the lyrics of almost every song in in Portuguese and in English.

I can sing The Little Mermaid in Norwegian and English, so I feel you.
I grew up with the Disney musicals from the late 80's and early 90's. But First Movie Obsession, with capital M and O, was Moulin Rouge!. And that led me to The Film Experience.

Yes, we were all "Truth, Freedom, Beauty, but above all things Love" CRAZY for awhile there with that Bazmark classic. What's an Oscar injustice topic that gets you riled up?
Where can I start.... in general, I kind of hate every single Oscar that comes with "SORRY, YOU ARE GREAT AND WE ARE LATE!" written on the plaque, because every Oscar given as a career achievement award or a "sorry, you lost last year" award just increases the problem. Its like a freaking logarithmic progression, because every time they award someone for the wrong reasons (every reason other than "best perfomance") they make the situation 10, 100, 900, 3000, 50000 times worst.

It always comes back to certain years, right?

Giving Nicole the Oscar in 2002 for The Hours, because they liked her so much in Moulin Rouge!, makes Julianne Moore a loser for the crown jewel of her career. And Renee Zellweger, who lost in 2001 and 2002 and was snubbed in 2000, who we liked so much in Bridget Jones and Chicago, just shows up in 2003, gives the worst supporting performance of the year (or maybe the decade, or maybe ever?) and walks away with an Oscar just because she lost. See how it grow exponentially worst? 

The math is perplexing, I'll grant you that.

Did Jessica Lange really won her 2 Oscars for Tootsie and Blue Sky, or did she win for Tootsie because she couldn't win for Frances and won for Blue Sky because she had lost several times and they didn't want to give a 3rd one to Jodie Foster in less than 10 years, before she was even 35. I could give you a hundred examples.

It is perplexing math, always snowballing. What does your moviegoing diet consists of these days: theater? dvd?

Theater not so much, because its wasteland season in Brazil; the Oscar movies have come, gone and I've seen then all and the summer movies haven't arrived yet. Right now in Brazil, the biggest hit in theaters is called Bruna Surfistinha, the story of a middle class girl that becomes a low rate hooker, than a high rate hooker who blogs about her "job" and latter publishes a book, her memoirs of her life as a former prostitute. NO THANK YOU! - but I have to admit, i read the book.

So nowadays I'm most on a DVD diet. Recently bought and still sealed, all on the line to be rewatched: The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Rose, Some Like it Hot, All About Eve (special edition), Moulin Rouge! (definitive edition), Nightmare Before Christmas, Death Becomes Her, Dogville, American History X and Beauty and the Beast (special edition with soundtrack!).

You're quite the collector. Okay. Five movies you think ought to be required viewing for all people of the Earth. Go!

Five. Just Five? I'll go by genre, ok. Musical: Cabaret; Comedy: Some Like it Hot; Drama: Sunset Blvd. ; Horror: Rosemary's Baby; Biopic: Amadeus. Sorry, really sorry to leave you out: Michael Nichols combo Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?/The Graduate and my beloved Moulin Rouge!

Reader of the Day: Dominique

For today's reader interview we have the lovely movie-mad Dominique who lives here in New York.

Nathaniel: Do you remember your first ever moviegoing experience?

DOMINIQUE: The first film I remember seeing in theaters is Disney's Beauty and the Beast. I would've been a little over 5. My dad had been reading an abridged version of it as a bedtime story and so I kept wondering how they could make a whole movie out of a ten-page picture book. I guess I assumed the film would be pretty short or something. Naturally, I was blown away and it remains a favorite film of mine until this day.

When did you start reading The Film Experience?

I think it was around 2007.  I'm attracted to how unpretentious the site is. All the writers and collaborators seem to genuinely love film and I can feel that in every article. I also love random features such as First and Last or April Showers/May Flowers... Just little tidbits of cinephilia that are always refreshing. Also I'm an Oscar nut.

Have you ever dressed up as a movie character for Halloween? 

I am a Halloween lover and have been dressing up as pop culture characters for the past few years: Mia Wallace, Becky from Sin City, Holly Golightly, Joan Holloway, Sherrie from Rock of Ages and this year Lisbeth Salander.

Want Pictures! Which film genre do you think needs a little time out and why? And the inverse: What kind of movie do you wish they'd start making more of?

I'm not sure what genre needs a time out. I'm pretty open to everything and I think some great filmmakers can convince me to watch something I assume I won't like. If anything, maybe certain filmmakers need to take a little time off. Tim Burton, anyone? (Here's another reason I will keep reading this site: no one managed to describe why I hate Eyesore in Wonderland quite as well as you did, Nathaniel.)

What I want to see more of are good musicals. I have always loved musicals and I am thankful to live in New York where I always have the opportunity to go see something great on (or off) Broadway. But what about in film? Is Burlesque really the best we can do? It was silly, but it was no Moulin Rouge! and that's what I want more of. Something epic. If the godawful Glee can remain this popular, can't musicals have a comeback with a film that's actually good?

I'm a film student and they always tell us to make the films we want to see. Two years ago I wrote and produced a musical comedy short and my thesis project which I will be shooting later this year is a dark musical. So at least I'm trying to work on the problem.

 
Best Wishes... sincerely. Let's end with your three favorites actresses. Who they be?

Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck and Kate Winslet. Of course, ask me any other day and my answers would probably change.

I just love women who don't take shit from men. And then seduce them.