Moulin Rouge!: Musicals Chasing Authenticity

             In 2009, SNL premiered a comedy skit “High School Musical 4” as an imagined follow-up to the Disney Channel musical movie franchise. This skit imagines Troy Bolton, the singing basketball star of the movies, returning for the ceremony for the next graduating class of East High. The students enthusiastically welcome Troy with an impromptu musical number, one which he quickly dismisses--he has important things to say: “No one sings at college. And from what I can tell, this is America’s only singing high school."

          The graduating class is aghast, but there's more. Not only does nobody sing in the real world, but also his East High education has left him entirely unprepared for life after high school. Sure he knows to "accept himself," but the real world expects him to know things like the capital of Texas. "I'm a year out of high school and my life's over," he laments. The skit ends with a thawed Walt Disney entering the stage and telling Troy he was never meant to grow up anyway and that this is where he belongs, not the real world.

         Snark seems to be the modern response to the optimism of what was once Hollywood’s most bankable form of film. The selling point of musicals was their ability to use song and dance to frame the world as a colorful, fantastical place. But what some describe as fantastical, others might describe as artificial. Jane Feuer, professor at the University of Pittsburg, describes this quid pro quo of the genre.

Singin' in the Rain (1952)

"Part of the reason some of us love musicals so passionately is that they give us a glimpse of what it would be like to be free. We desperately need images of liberation in popular arts. But the musical presents its vision of the unfettered human spirit in a way that forecloses a desire to translate that vision into reality. The Hollywood version of Utopia is entirely solipsistic. In its endless reflexivity the musical can offer only itself, only entertainment as its picture of Utopia."

    In short, East High is not the real world. Troy Bolton should never have attempted to cross over, and we should never expect him to. He must linger around the musical hallways of East High forever. Always singing, never growing up. Never facing the world as it really is.

Such is the quiet insecurity of many a musical lover: We enjoy watching Judy Garland and Gene Kelly dance into each other’s arms in time for the curtain call, but we know that it’s naïve to expect our own romances to work out so neatly. This of course brings up the question, what then is the use of these “images of liberation?” Are musicals good for anything other than a distraction for the masses? A trap for suckers too idealistic for their own good?

            Enter Moulin Rouge! This 2001 musical film, directed by Baz Lurhman, repurposes famous pop songs from the twentieth century into a two-hour melodrama overflowing with spectacle and emotions. The film’s protagonist, Christian, is an eternal idealist who sounds like he could be fresh out of East High himself. When he declares “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return," you don't hear a laugh track. You might find yourself moved by his unflinching reverence for love and happiness, if you can suppress a snigger.

    Like SNL’s skit, Moulin Rouge! functions as a response to that unwavering idealism that feels straight out of the 1950s, but Moulin Rouge! thoughtfully dissects the assumptions, motivations, and history of the musical format, including its enthusiasm for romanticism. By embracing rather than ignoring the harsh reality we live in, Moulin Rouge! crafts the best defense of musical idealism and finds a use for these “images of liberation.” We need musicals not despite the state of the world but because of it.

             

A Quick Introduction for the Uninitiated Reader

            The story is told with a frame narrative: our main character, hopeless romantic Christian (Ewan McGregor), reflects on the events of the story a year after they have transpired. He recalls coming to Paris to take part in the artistic revolution and quickly finding himself part of a troupe of bohemian performers. They recruit him to their mission to have their stage show, Spectacular, Spectacular!, performed on stage at the famed cabaret, the Moulin Rouge, owned by Harold Ziddler (Jim Broadbent). When pitching the show, Christian finds himself in the presence of courtesan and cabaret star, Satine (Nicole Kidman). Christian’s poetic gift and boundless idealism woo Satine, and they fall into a forbidden romance.

        Christian and Satine attempt to hide their love from the world, especially from the rich and powerful Duke (Richard Roxburgh) to whom Satine is promised. As the charade grows more dire, Christian and Satine find themselves being torn apart by forces stronger than even that of true love, including a grave illness that silently eats away at Satine, and Christian's inescapable jealousy.

            Christian, the eternal idealist that he is, is something of a proxy for musical protagonists from the golden age of musicals, the clay with which the movie crafts its attitude toward musical idealism. The film’s thematic conflict is between Christian and the ideals he espouses. Turns out the path to true love entails more than dancing and fireworks, and even the sincerest love is not beyond the grip of tragedy. 

    The thematic tension from the movie comes from not knowing whether or not Christian will maintain his poetic world views after colliding with reality: Is there something to Christian’s boundless idealism, or is he just another sucker who has seen The Sound of Music one too many times?

         We can only get so far into this discussion before talking about the movie's "over-the-top-ness." If you ask someone who loves the movie to describe it in one word, you might hear them call it "vibrant" or "bold." If you ask someone who hates this movie to describe it in one word, you might hear them call it "gaudy" or "excessive."      

    This is a world where Christian Satine leaping from the window of her hut (a hut shaped like an elephant, incidentally) and into the clouds hanging over the Parisian night sky feels like a natural progression. Compare this movie to the Les Miserables film adaptation. That film tries to integrate the musical experience with a familiar reality. Everything there is grim and harsh, captured in unflinching realness. Moulin Rouge! is not that movie. 

    Moulin Rouge! has the plasticity of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and it’s also an Othello-scale tragedy, occasionally in the same scene or even the same moment. And it’s that elasticity that leaves the entire buffet of human emotion on the table. The reason you can vacillate between these extremes of the human experience in this film is because it trains you right from the start to go from zero to sixty and back again. And the other reason is that Moulin Rouge! revels in the form's innate performativity. The film goes out of its way to tell the audience that the film they’re watching is not “real." This is all staged.

              So, if it’s not “real,” does that automatically mean it’s “fake?” Is the entire film, and the foundation of musical storytelling, one big joke on the audience? These are questions that musicals have been asking for a long time. 

Crash Course in Musical History

Shall We Dance (1937)

            When a person thinks "musical," what probably comes to mind is the Hollywood extravaganzas of 1930s and 40s when the genre was at its apex creatively and financially. It was during this time that audiences would flee to the cinema to escape from the unforgiving landscape of reality. For a world shredded by World War II and America’s Great Depression, an afternoon with Fred and Ginger waltzing into the sunset was a breath of fresh air, and musicals fueled the discouraged public with much-needed optimism. That's something I feel we really need to establish: Hollywood musical as a form of entertainment rose to prominence during a time of heavy distress, for America specifically and the world at large.

            Those early musicals also set the standard for the basic narrative template for musical films. The storyline is usually concerned with the lives of storytellers or performers striving to perfect their craft. Parallel to this is usually a love story with two young lovers who the audience knows will end up together by the curtain call. At some point, the romance of music rubs up against the harsh reality of life, forcing our protagonist to question his or her ideals as a performer. By clinging closer to their romantic notions of art and love, the protagonist comes out triumphant, the lovers are united, and art is affirmed as the panacea for all things sad and dreary. This is the template of most classical musicals, Singin’ in the Rain, White Christmas, Showboat, and many others. These kinds of films are affirmative of musical idealism: you can always count on singing to bring you out on top. 

Hello, Dolly! (1969)

         But musicals as an artform started to lose their footing as reliable business gambles once the nature of moviegoing, and even the structure of film studios, started to rearrange drastically. Moreover, societal upheaval in the 60s and 70s left the population questioning and challenging many institutions in and out of Hollywood, and what was more questionable than the notion that you could sing your life’s problems away? Audiences started to reject the promise of the musical and only knew how to relate to it through irony.

Audiences in the following decades affirmed their superiority over these classical musicals with counter-musicals like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Pennies from Heaven. These films distinguished themselves aggressively from their classical predecessors. Naturally they couldn’t be optimistic and dreamy—audiences today were too mature for such nonsense. Newer, cooler musicals were dark and violent, and the bubble that once deflected seedier content from musicals was popped. Rape, drugs, murder, prostitution, capital punishment, and so on were fair game now.

    Plot-wise, these anti-musicals would often follow the same narrative starting ground as their predecessors and only diverged in the final act, typically eschewing the standard happy endings for more downbeat “realistic” endings. Cabaret, for example, concludes with our leading lady undergoing an abortion as she sheds ties with the man she knows can never be happy with, this in itself a metaphor for her surrendering herself to the inevitability of the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany.

Eventually, these revisionist-musicals lost their novelty and died off, yet even in their wake traditional musicals never got back on their feet. They haven’t gone away completely, but movie musicals today are a rarity. Hollywood usually only premieres one or two a year, nothing at all like the near monopoly they had in their golden age.

    Moulin Rouge! enters the stage in an era where musicals are kind of the odd man out. All Hollywood knows is that last time it tried playing the musical game, it didn’t go well. As a result, anytime Hollywood does approach the genre these days, it approaches it with a lot of caution and reserve, which is sort of like going river rafting dressed in business clothes because you're not actually in the mood to get wet ... 
          So Moulin Rouge! has a sort of shared heritage with the sincere musicals as well as the cynical musicals, which begs questions of which form of musical has the stronger influence on its output or even which form ought to. Plot elements like a lead character who sells sex to stay alive are features of revisionist musicals, yet the film still leans toward the ideology of classical musicals. When Christian proclaims "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return," there's no laugh track or snide comment about "okay, but can you tell me the capital of Texas?" Such idealism is presented as a legitimate thought worthy of the audience's contemplation. 

That is what makes Moulin Rouge! such a unique entry, it allows itself to have it both ways: edgy and self-aware, yet also boldly sincere. The film pulls it off partly because of Baz Luhrman's masterful direction, but also because it probes at the bedrock assumptions of the musical genre: can love really save the day? 

Musicals, "The Curtain," and Authenticity

           Part of why we even bother to sort things into "genre" is to see patterns in the art we create and figure out what that all means. Those can be recurring story beats, those can be visual similarity, but spend enough time with them, and you start to figure out what that code is. 

The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)

    We go to westerns, for example, to reflect on the American legacy. These films often feature a weathered but determined sheriff or rancher as this stand-in for the American spirit, and his victory over the outlaw represents the working classman's triumph over the forces that threaten the nation's survival.
    For musicals, it's mostly about why people choose to entertain themselves. Musicals like to dazzle audiences with spectacular displays while also giving these audiences the tools to ask ... why? It’s no coincidence that stages, entertainers, and curtains are recurring characters across musicals of all eras.   

The Pirate (1948)

            The idea of “performance” connotes fabrication and playing pretend. It’s not incidental that a genre featuring an elevated and sanitized worldview is stuffed with reminders that this world is staged, and we the audience are participating in this ritual with the understanding that this is not a photorealistic picture of how life works: people don't sing in real life.

    Cynics will sometimes tell themselves that it took a whole lot of new age cynicism for musicals to figure this out. But Cabaret didn't introduce this viewpoint, it just really went to town with it. There are reasons why musical films were usually about music, about performance. This primes the audience to engage with the dialogue about the entertainment and its modified picture of the world. It allows the audience to acknowledge how this reality is shaped into one where people bursting into song isn’t odd, a reality where the essence of a thing is more important than the literalness of the thing. (This is also a reason why animated musicals work so well but ... we'll have to have that discussion another day ...)

         Plots of musicals usually take advantage of this feature by exploring some kind of untruth--often one partially aided by the use of and likened to a stage/screen performance--and following the unraveling of that distortion. Singin’ in the Rain follows a group of movie-makers struggling to keep their business together after the innovation of talking film throws them for a loop. 

    The studio presents itself as an institution founded on “dignity, always dignity,” but watching them teeter between various states of chaos we see just how these filmmakers are anything but dignified. In front of the curtain, they are picture of prestige. Behind the curtain, they are a bunch of clowns. Eventually the cast realizes the image they are presenting to the masses comes at the expense of, ironically, their dignity, and the film’s resolution comes when they decide to drop the charade, fittingly by raising a curtain. 

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

      But it's also a bit of a fallacy to assume that this curtain was there to disassociate from the heavier or darker aspects of reality. Again, the heyday of musicals spanned America's Great Depression as well as World War II, and many of these films directly incorporated this setting into their storylines. 

    One underseen musical from this era, Tonight and Every Night, saw Rita Hayworth playing a headlining performer in a London theater keeping its lights on even as the bombs are dropping. The film has Hayworth at a crossroads deciding whether she's going to continue her run at the theater or follow her beau as he's taken over seas to assist in the war efforts. She resolves to go with him, but after two of her friends and fellow performers are killed in an air raid, she decides to stay with the show after all to help keep the theater open as a sanctuary for all those who have lost and grieved during this time of turmoil and despair. 

    The film concludes with Hayworth's character reprising the show's title song in the place of her friend. She performs this song with a smile, but up close we see the tears falling from her face, portending a reserve of despair beneath her gaiety. But she isn't lying or even disassociating, this is a conscious choice she is making to create spaces of light and happiness for those who feel broken. This is another underdiscussed component of the musical experience: the special solemnity that emerges when you blend real-life heartbreak with on-stage fantasy.

           Films like Singin’ in the Rain and Tonight and Every Night are still affirmative of the benevolence of the curtain. Perhaps we need to peek behind it sometimes, but the curtain has a reason for being here, and it’s not like it was hiding anything that bad to begin with. This is where the revisionist musicals are different. They hate the curtain. They'll never forgive the curtain for telling them Santa Claus was real and want to make sure no one forgets the curtain offers only false hope and empty promises. Anti-musicals were unique not for acknowledging "the curtain" or "the performance" but for calling it "a lie." To revisionist musicals, "the performance" is the entire pretense that musical optimism is anything but fluff.

So how does Moulin Rouge! feel about its curtain? What does the film say is or isn’t real? 

            Our introduction to the “kingdom of nighttime pleasures” is colorful, explosive, and enticing. Our first sequence within the Moulin Rouge is a rapid-fire of quick-cut shots of vibrant images of ecstatic dancing and celebrating. It's like the camera wants to capture every possible shot of the Moulin Rouge at once. Every conceivable pleasure is on stage ready for consumption. 

However, we discover this advertisement of limitless indulgence is a fraud the moment we step behind the curtain. The off-stage area is cramped and colorless, viewed through claustrophobia-inducing closeups. This veneer of excitement is merely coating over a desperate and underfed skeleton of existence. Satine and her terminal illness winds up becoming the sort of focal point for all this. She embodies the suffocating sickness that underlies this whole façade. There’s a lot in the way of cinematography and editing that likens her to a wilting flower, or else a bird in a cage.

            From this disconnect, we can also see why the performers at the Moulin Rouge are so eager to put on their façade of glamour and excitement. The patrons aren’t the only ones who are thrilled by the ecstasy of their performance. These performers live in poverty and desperation, and they are just as much in need of a distraction as the audiences they perform for. Yes, their world is all style and no substance, but style is all they have. The closest thing they experience to real happiness is the imitation they put on for the patrons of the cabaret. No one needs “images of liberation” more than those creating the images. 

    But they also don't know how to relate to these images, this performance. The movie pounds the indulgent fantasy dressing so aggressively that it almost passes as ecstasy or liberation, but really it comes from a place of despair and surrender. This is a world that doesn’t believe in real happiness, so it surrenders to this facsimile, and it bites at the hand that dares to get its hopes up. 

    When Christian and Satine decide to break the rules and fall in love for real, they are met with resistance from Zidler and the other patrons of the Moulin Rouge. This ultimate act of rebellion--to fall hopelessly, entirely in love--makes real waves among the bohemians because they do not believe in that which they celebrate. And this is where the film really starts to delineate between truth and illusion--and where dreamers actually fall in this equation. 

    This denial, this refusal to embrace the hard things about life and to hide in your fantasies, that winds up having more in common with the attitudes of this revisionist perspective. That sweeping romanticism, “We could be lovers just for one day” attitude that Christian brings, that emerges out of something more mindful, and more timeless. It is also the attitude that the story grills the hardest.

         Early on, Satine tells Christian up and front “I’m paid to make men believe what they want to believe.” She's referring explicitly to her work as a courtesan, but it also echoes the function of entertainment itself. Satine is, after all, introduced in a dazzling spectacular number flying over the audience in a swing. In this way, the film compares the experience of being entertained to a love affair with an exotic courtesan. Satine uses this performance to feed fantasies as vivid as any stage show to the men who pay for her service. A key piece of the plot features her engaging in such a performance with the Duke, whom she must convince she is desperately in love with while she's carrying a love affair with another man. 

    But something also worth remarking upon is that Christian and Satine are almost made counterparts to one another. Both of their professions have them spinning fantasies--making people believe what they want to believe--Satine with her work as a courtesan, Christian with his gift of music and lyric. While the characters spend the most runtime warning Christian about not falling for her game, Satine is sort of falling for his spell, buying into the fantasy he is selling her. It's not a fantasy of pleasure or indulgence, but of freedom and beauty. There is certainly a risk for Christian to believe in Satine's performance-- that this woman who packages and sells love could ever really be in love with a lowly poet like him--but what about the leap Satine takes with Christian and his promise of true, lasting love?

       What we find out is ... Satine and Christians' love is no performance. Satine carries her love for Christian even when they are not together. She will eventually bite back at Zidler for trying to take her away from this love. In one of the most charged moments of Kidman's performance, Satine exclaims, “All my life you made me believe I was only worth what someone would pay for me! But Christian loves me. And that is worth everything!” Contrast Satine’s “off-stage” behavior to what we see behind the curtain of the performers of the Moulin Rouge. Whatever Christian does or does not see, we know that Satine’s love for him is not a performance. The only time she is lying to him is when she pretends that she doesn't love him, which she is only able to do because she fears for his life.

In Moulin Rouge! "the curtain" is a device used to mask a deep-rooted aching. Those most invested in this performance try to fill that void with imitations of ecstasy, but they can't escape the emptiness of their reality. The only thing real in this world is the love of Christian and Satine. It's no wonder why by the film's finale, the cast of the Moulin Rouge have embraced Christian and Satine's love, or why the spectacle they build in tribute is the most vivid they have yet created: this is the first time they've sung about anything true and lasting. The “eat, drink, and be merry” lifestyle of the performers is paper-thin, but the capacity for genuine love is real, and it's worth singing about.

Does Love Save the Day?

When the Duke learns the truth of Christian and Satine’s love affair, he vows to have Christian killed. Broken after learning that she is dying, and desperate to get Christian out of the Duke’s warpath, Satine untruthfully tells Christian that she has chosen life with the Duke and that their romance was ultimately a performance, just as he feared. This devastates Christian, and he confronts Satine on stage on the opening night of Spectacular, Spectacular! Tossing a handful of money at her, a declaration that he too saw their love as just another one of her services, he proclaims “Thank you for curing me of my ridiculous obsession with love!”

         As he turns his back to leave, Satine sings their secret love song, a promise they made to one another that whatever performance they must give, their love for each other is true. Christian, his heart softened, joins Satine’s duet and embraces her on the stage. The Duke aggravates his attempt to kill Christian. The performers, masking it as a part of the performance, thwart the Duke and proclaim that Christian and Satine’s love will prevail. But just after the curtain falls, Satine succumbs to her illness. Before dying in Christian’s arms, she tells him to write their story. “That way, I’ll always be with you.”

         The film has two “endings,” one that happens onstage and one that happens behind the curtain, and they diverge wildly. In one, the story ends with the lovers overcoming all obstacles and reaching their happy endings. In the other, the story ends with Satine dying tragically. On the surface, it seems like the film is instantly setting up the two “endings” as contrasts. Having Satine die on the very stage on which she was singing triumphantly the minute the curtain falls, that seems like a jab at classical musicals. It's like a confession that it's only on stage that happy endings are possible. 

There's a branch of critics who cite this feature as evidence that Moulin Rouge! takes a more revisionist perspective on musicals. I respectfully disagree. The way I see it, the film’s onstage ending proves that Christian and Satine’s love is stronger than the Duke. The ending behind the curtain proves that their love is stronger than something else.

The film begins with Christian telling us that the woman he loves is dead, and we are reminded of her fate ... basically every twenty minutes. The film never really lets it be a point of tension whether or not Satine is alive by the end of this story. That's not the question we're hanging onto. The first time I watched this film, I actually remember being on edge all through the climax because I felt that what they were building toward was Christian rejecting Satine only for him to find out about the Duke's threat after Satine had died, and we'd get this deeply tragic ending where Christian has to live knowing that Satine's last memories were of him scorning her. And so the fact that they are able to slip in a moment of genuine reconciliation, even elation, just before Satine died was one big sigh of relief.

          This is also where Christian's character arc comes into play. The moment when Satine starts to sing their song, Christian is faced with a choice. He can respond with the broken cynicism he feels in that moment, giving in to his worst suspicions. Or he can respond with the hope and ideals he proclaimed to live by and trust that there’s more to the story than what he can see. This is the final test of his character and the true strength of his ideals. By singing along with Satine, he proves to himself that his love is not some child’s coping mechanism, and when they sing together they prove to the Duke that their love is stronger than his hate.

The worst possible outcome here wasn’t Satine dying—that was always going to happen—but rather Satine dying without them rekindling their love. Whatever happy ending they did get, they got it by clinging to their ideals and believing in love above all things.

            In a director’s commentary for the film, Baz Luhrmann says the following about the ending, "He learns a more mature notion of love, and that is not the youthful notion of love. He learns that love cannot conquer all things . . . So while he’s been scarred, and it’s not the youthful effervescent love, it’s love that will live forever . . . it’s the transition from the more reckless, youthful, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ kind of love to a kind of more spiritual, a more mature kind of relationship to the idea of love, and ideals." 

    Craig Pearce, screenwriter, adds, "And the important thing for Christian’s journey is that even though he discovers that love doesn’t conquer all that he accepts that, that he doesn’t give up on those ideals."

    Christian is literally a part of this bohemian train that revels in these expressions of love, but he is the first among this troop to really believe in the fantasy they are painting, and all against their warning and even reprimand. For that, Christian arrives at the end of this film bruised and worn, but he is also more whole. What's more, he has proven his commitment to those artistic credos he advocates for. The integrity of his bohemian ideals, and those of all dreamers like him, are validated as he holds onto the woman he loves while she dies in his embrace. In this movie idealism wins, not because singing stops tragedy from befalling Christian and Satine, but because in choosing to believe in love, Christian and Satine get to hold on to the one thing that tragedy can’t take away from them.

Curtain Call

      One sort of phenomenon I have observed with fellow lovers of this movie is that even though the tragic element of the story in some ways its centerpiece, you almost forget about it when you're not seeing it play out on screen. Like, you're almost surprised when Satine dies in Christian's arms, as she has every time. That's because it's not really the devastation that lures you back to the movie, it's that soaring feeling of freedom leading up to it. We accept "You have to carry on without me, Christian," but we revel in "the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return."

    In this way, the movie has a lot in common with a movie like Titanic. The devastation of the story is built-in to the experience and even the title, but it's that sense of elation that you carry with you, and that's what draws you back to the Moulin Rouge. That elation has more power than the devastation. That's the power of storytelling. That's why we return to stories with tragic endings. That's what a romantic poet has to gain by sharing the story of the love he lost. That's why a world without music owes it to itself to sing.

          For ages we have used musicals to ask ourselves how we can sing in a world so susceptible to tragedy. Perhaps now we’ve moved past the all or nothing mentality, and we can learn to approach the matter with nuance. Opening your heart as Christian does leaves you vulnerable to disappointment and heartbreak, but that comes to all of us, even those among us who don't care for Fred and Ginger. When you choose to approach life’s tragedies with optimism, you give yourself some power over these losses.

          Maybe it was a good thing that we as a society did experience that phase of reality-check style musicals, but what are we as a society if we are unwilling to view life through the eyes of color and hope? Or if we abandon our ideals the moment they are questioned? Behind this curtain we hate for promising a vision that can never be translated to reality, there is a testament to the human capacity to create, hope, and love despite whatever’s happening off-stage.

Only my 78th plug for Singin' in the Rain

            Musicals give us the chance to see life through the eyes of hope and brightness and endow even our darkest moments with light. When we try to escape into that world entirely and shut out reality altogether, then we find ourselves out of touch with life, like Troy Bolton in SNL. But that’s not to say there isn’t a place to use this idealism, even as wholeheartedly as Christian does. Maybe the classical musicals were on to something. When the world didn’t naturally offer any bright spots, they made their own.

            We often talk about this worldview as something to grow out of—taking off the rose-tinted glasses and such—as if shirking from vulnerability and optimism wasn't our natural response to hardship, and as if overcoming that weren't a truer mark of growth. We talk about this idealism as something childish and immature, but to endure the bitter storm of an unforgiving reality and still come out singing, that’s one of the most mature things a person can do.
              --The Professor