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. In this skit, Troy Bolton, the singing basketball star of the movies, returns for the ceremony for the next graduating class of East High. The students enthusiastically welcome Troy with an impromptu musical number which he quickly dismisses. Troy then imparts a grave admonition to the wide-eyed graduating seniors: “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. Troy continues to detail just how brutally he was pummeled by reality once he stepped out of the bubble of his perfectly choreographed cotton-candy haven and into a world that does not appreciate him singing about his feelings in his apartment at night. 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 or 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 veneration 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 in frame narrative, with the main character, hopeless romantic Christian (Ewan McGregor), reflecting on the events of the narrative a year after. 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." 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. 

    This world is electric and colorful. 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. Yes, this kind of thing would never happen in real life, but 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.” 
              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 his or her romantic notions of art and love, the protagonist comes out triumphant, the lovers are united, and art is affirmed as a panacea for the hardships of reality. 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)

         Musicals as an artform started to lose their footing as reliable business gambles as 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? From the other side of Watergate, this whole idea seemed childish. Audiences just weren’t buying it anymore. And so musicals became less a symbol of America’s hopefulness and more a dartboard for all societal frustrations over the dumpster fire that is real life.

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.

Cabaret (1972)

    Plot-wise, these anti-musicals would often follow the same narrative starting ground as their predecessors and only diverge 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, it approaches it with a lot of caution and not a lot of sincerity. “Don’t force the audience to believe in the power of music too much. If we can just let them laugh at musicals for being so silly, then they won’t be scared off!”
          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 a large part of 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? 

"The Curtain" and Authenticity

            In addition to having similar aesthetic and narrative features, genres tend to center around certain discussions and topics, and they come with built-in tools that aid in these conversations. Western films comment on the American legacy, and they often feature a weathered but determined sheriff as this stand-in for the American spirit. The sheriff’s victory over the outlaw represents America’s triumph over the forces that threaten the nation's survival. For musicals, much of these discussions relate to the nature of staged entertainment. It’s no coincidence that stages, entertainers, and curtains are recurring characters across musicals of all eras. Musicals like to dazzle audiences with spectacular displays while also giving these audiences the tools to dissect their relationship to these performances.       

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 assign these built-in caveats as features unique to more modern "enlightened" musicals, like we only discovered that musicals are performances this morning. But Cabaret didn't introduce viewpoint, it just really went to town with it. There are reasons why musical films were usually about music. This gives these films a chance to engage in meta-textual dialogue about the format of entertainment including 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 and where the essence of a thing is more important than the literalness of the thing. 

         Plots of musicals usually take advantage of this feature by exploring some kind of untruth, often one partially aided by the use of a performance that is likened to that of 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 masses perceive them as a company 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. 

        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? Let’s take stock of the main performances within the show.

            Let’s start with the performance of the Moulin Rouge itself: 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.

After Satine faints and is rushed off-stage to recover, we discover that the corners of the Moulin Rouge that aren’t on display are not so electric. The off-stage area is cramped and colorless, viewed through claustrophobia-inducing closeups. Peeking behind the curtain almost always occurs in tandem with Satine's illness overtaking her, and so this entire backstage world is associated with sickness or malnourishment. This veneer of excitement is merely coating over a desperate and underfed skeleton of existence.

            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.          

         The most significant performance is the one Satine gives in her love affairs. Early on, she tells Christian up and front “I’m paid to make men believe what they want to believe.” This refers most 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. After all, Satine can use 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 in their ability to spin desirable fantasies--to make 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?

         Satine carries her love for Christian even when they are not together. She will eventually bite back at Ziddler for trying to take her away from this love. In one of the most charged moments of Kidman's performance, Satine disavows her life of pretending in favor of the substance she finds with Christian. She 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 an act of performative deception.
              And this is perhaps the most compelling thing the film has to say about the nature of truthfulness in performance. Of all the performances within the film, this is the most honest: Satine truly does love Christian. The only time Satine ever does deceive Christian is when she pretends she doesn’t love him. Of all the facets of musical storytelling, the only one the film asserts is completely honest is that of true and lasting love. 

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 and why the spectacle they build in tribute is the most spectacular they have yet created: It's 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 intimate 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 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 film begins with Christian telling us that the woman he loves is dead, and we are reminded of her fate throughout the film. Whether or not Satine lives at the end was never really an item of tension for the audience. That's not the question we're hanging on until the very end. The first time I watched this film, I 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 where 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.

Watching Satine die, heartbreaking as it may have been for Christian, was still a tender mercy. 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 Lurhman says the following:

He [Christian] 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 in fact ideals.

Craig Pearce, screenwriter, adds to Lurhman's remarks:

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.

            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 death. 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 we’ve trapped ourselves in for decades, and we can learn to approach the matter with the nuance employed within Moulin Rouge! Opening your heart as Christian does leaves you vulnerable to disappointment and heartbreak, but we are all subject to this regardless of how we feel about 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 is a testament to the human capacity to create, hope, and love despite what’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. For Christian, staying true to his ideals means looking beyond his immediate pain and insecurities and remaining loyal in the face of adversity. 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