Moulin Rouge

by Ariana.

How much is too much? And why do some directors manage to create such influential and enjoyable melodrama in a world which is obsessed with realism and living in the age of 'the common man'? I'm not talking about jerks like Michael Bay or James Cameron, or the manipulatorus ultimatum, Steven Spielberg...but respected Auteurs who don't need to lie about history or just pull your heartstrings...the few artists who can pull it off!

Baz Luhrman has managed to out and out break every rule of the Dogme'95 movement. "Moulin Rouge" has high melodrama, lots of props, manipulative camera shots, no improvisation, not much script development, manipulative use of music, and of course only the best big-film 35 mm stock in the Big Musical tradition.

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What is amazing in the Scandinavian film tradition is how fully one can be manipulated by the melodrama of reality. The other night I was watching Dreyer's "Gertrud", which is a turn of the century period film. To evoke the era, Dreyer only used instruments and what sparse music one would have heard in Scandinavia at that time. A world where people played cards or sang lieder for each other's entertainment. Mostly, there is silence...and that silence evokes all the feelings of malais and distraught, and the questioning that must have haunted people surrounded by the silence of that time. It is fascinating from today's overstimulated technologically advanced society where couples fight to obtain and keep intimacy, to view a time when couples suffered from being glutted with too much intimacy. What I always find amazing about Dreyer's films are that at first they are a little dry and cerebral and then suddenly you begin to worry that you aren't taking in every second enough, that there is so much going on in such a subtle manner, with even what might be called a minimalist storyboard...at the end, it's like finishing a great book, or attending the Opera. A BIG experience..but it comes at you so quietly, so calmly,...I suppose that in itself is very lifelike.

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The films of Germi, Fellini, Bertolucci, Zeffirelli and Luhrman are also big and Operatic and engulfing in the same manner and ALSO use all the manipulative techniques to pull in the audience. It doesn't surprise me that Dreyer's films are masterpieces, so much as the fact that Luhrman's or Zeffirelli's works are also original and brilliant. That they use all the studio techniques which often times make films laughable or at best cultishly campy, but they aren't...that they work? That they don't become "Valley of the Dolls" or "West Side Story"...how can you put on a big show nowadays for such a jaded audience and still use musical pieces, and escapist costumes and have the audience-that is an indie-audience, an educated audience with high expectations walk out fulfilled?

Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge is his biggest masterpiece yet. It is the biggest budget the Australian filmaker has had and he treats the audience to a show so big it's beyond Science Fiction or even the Bond series mixing present and past, life and fiction, and even a few editing techniques which if not done over the top would be considered Bad FILMMAKING? Anyone who has seen one film by Franco Zeffirelli can see the man knows no excess. When he directed Carmen for the Met, the stage was so overloaded, rumours had it that the bull he wanted to use ON STAGE had to be sedated from fear of the crowds.

Given, this style of filmmaking may not suit everyone's taste, but just as not everyone enjoys Hitchcock or Tarkovsky, anyone who knows cinema must recognize their genius. Is the secret in knowing your art? Or knowing yourself? Or just making what you want to see? Or is it, as my mother always said,...know all the rules, THEN you can break them.

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