Spectacular spectacular!!

Above all things this is a story about Love!

Moulin Rouge is filled with moments that remain in my brain long after the film is over. This is one of my favorite films, which in itself would be reason enough to watch it. But let me tell you how we came to watch it Friday night. As anyone who's anyone knows, I love lists and along with lists go schedules and along with schedules go trains...but we are getting off point here. Another thing I love is formulating a reason for watching a movie. With so many films in the world, and even more than that in my personal collection, sometimes it's hard for me to decide what to watch. So I'll get myself on little marathons to eleminate some of the choice or at least to narrow it down (i.e the large number of John Wayne films recently consumed or the Stephen King festival). This dates back 4 or 5 years when we had Alfred Hitchcock month. Ali and I have come up with a new viewing strategy. We alternate choosing films, so I began with Cassandra's Dream, which we watched Thursday night. Friday night Ali chose Moulin Rouge, via the connecting tissue of Ewan McGregor. In the next few nights hopefully we will watch Dangerous Beauty, my choice, with the connecting tissue Courtesans. We are alternating choosing the films but the chooser has to have a connection to the previous film. It can be a cast or crew member, theme, genre, or any other reasonable connection. Silly old Dunkelbergers.

One day when I was bored, I came up with this idea of creating a Christmas present that I would send out to friends and family if I won the lottery and could afford to do this. I made a list of the 10 films I would most like to share, possibly my 10 favorites films, although let's be honest, there are probably 30 to 40 films vying for placement on that list and the finalists would vary depending on the day. So the gift would be these 10 films on DVD. They would come in a box set, the outer packeging of which I would design and have manufactured. Inside there would be a glossy booklet with an introduction and an essay on each of the films that I would write. Here is the list of films.

1. Hamlet (1996)
2. Moulin Rouge
3. Life is Beautiful
4. My Neighbor Totoro
5. Citizen Kane
6. It's a Wonderful Life
7. Annie Hall
8. Goodfellas
9. Sunrise
10. North By Northwest

Here is a first run at the Moulin Rouge essay that appears in the booklet in my head.

"THE GREATEST THING YOU'LL EVER LEARN IS TO LOVE AND BE LOVED IN RETURN"

When Ali and I were married, Alex was on his way. I said to Ali in our wedding vows that I knew that she would be the right person to help me teach our son how to love. One of the greatest struggles we have and one of the most important things we do in life is to love. Often when we are young we love too brightly so that we blind ourselves to all other cares in the world. Or we love too shallowly and dwell too much on the pleasures of love. This is a great movie and that is a great statement that comes from it. Because it should be the goal of each of us to struggle throughout our lives to learn how to love, not too much, not too little, and also how to accept love.

The great thing about Moulin Rouge is, not only is it about Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and above all other things Love, but it also captures the feelings of all of these things. There is something about the history and emotions behind the lyrics of the songs and the no holds barred, aim for the bleachers aspect of the visuals, that not only show that these characters are in love, but allow us to feel it as well. This is a production where everything came together in perfect harmony and created something that feels like more than a film. It is an experience. At times there are moments that feel like they have existed since the dawn of cinema, moments that feel like memories, like moments of deja vu. The first time you see them, you are not sure if you saw them in another film or if you lived them, but you feel you know them almost by heart. There are shots or scenes in this film that felt, the first time I saw them, as powerful and familiar as Julie Andrews spinning on a mountaintop at the opening of the Sound of Music.

The music is fantastic, there are times where certain songs become the soundtracks to our own lives. Moulin Rouge uses music in the same way, using for the most part existing songs, as we do in our own lives. Who doesn't have personal memories attached to songs? You're the Inspiration, We've Got Tonight, Lady in Red all bring back a flood of memories when I hear them, along with many others. Moulin Rouge uses songs to conjure up the memories of our own lives and to inform the story more rapidly or in a unique way. The Elephant Love Medley is a perfect example, for here not only is it an existing song our young lovers are signing, but snippets from at least a dozen songs, all of which we recognize and many of which every audience member will bring their own set of matching luggage complete with carry on tote to.

The cast is perfection from the leads Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, who look perfect and sound perfect, to the suporting cast, particularly Jim Broadbent as Harold Zidler and Richard Roxburgh as the Duke. But the person most responsible of the magnificence of Moulin Rouge is the co-writer and director Baz Luhrmann, a favorite since I first saw Strictly Ballroom over 15 years ago. It is his sense of style and creativity and asthetic that gave birth to Moulin Rouge, and before you roll your eyes, birth is the right word, for Moulin rouge is a living breathing work of art. It is also, above all things, a story about love. What worthier material could there be? It is, in two words, spectacular spectacular!

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