Moulin Rouge

Moulin Rouge film review

Moulin Rouge is a film about a wannabe bohemian writer who meets a courtesan at the Moulin rouge, they instantly fall in love yet they cannot be together because of ‘the Duke’ he is a jealous man that has lots of money and wants to keep the courtesan to himself. The film Moulin Rouge has been made many times but the one that this review is about is the Baz Luhrmann 2001 edition. The cast includes Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman and Jim Broadbent.

The film is a musical and therefore has a lot of music in. The film starts of with Toulouse-Lautrec singing a song about a man who came to France and fell in love with a dying woman. This is a very powerful beginning because it is a song about death, which within itself is a powerful and emotional subject. This starts works very well because it drags the audience member into the story and gets their mind wondering about why there is a crying man with a small man singing. It sets the story in many ways; one way is the background images, these are used in a very clever way; at the beginning of the song there is a picture of the Moulin Rouge ‘red windmill’. This is clever because it shows that the film is set around the Moulin Rouge. Also the camera/green screen work during the song is clever because it ‘flies’ through Paris to the flat where the man is crying. This gives you a sense of travel. Another thing to make the story stand out is Toulouse himself, he is wearing the costume that he wears at the end of the film. The thing that makes this film special is that it is a story that is being told after is had happened, i.e. it is a book that is being told as it is being written.

Throughout the film there are songs, these are fit into the film in a very clever way. The songs have been cut up and put together to make a medley that fits into the storyline, i.e. a lot of Elton John’s songs are used along with Queen and other bands. This is clever because it adds a lot of dramatic effect to the...