Media Essay Moulin Rouge

Media Essay – Moulin Rouge

The first thing you notice as you watch the film is the play within a play opening. It starts as Christian starts to tell the story in a non-diegetic way and then zooms in on him in an unsaturated light (pathetic fallacy). The narration then changes to diagetic sound as Christian types out the beginning of his story. The screen switches to a montage of vibrant, violent “Red Curtain Cinema”-like visions, using close up camera shots, and then moves to the main flashback, and the Moulin Rouge (the play within the film). Baz Luhrmann uses all of these very vibrant and colourful scenes very well to catch the audience’s attention at the beginning of the play.

In the rest of the first half, Christian’s non-diagetic narration continues to help create a mood for each scene, usually in the more sad scenes. This helps to create one of the most used cinematic techniques in this film, Pathetic fallacy. This is where the scene, music, and/or voiceover match the mood of the main character of that scene. This, for example, is used at the beginning where Christian is huddled in his dark, unsaturated room, grieving over Satine.

Also in the first half, Baz carries on using flash backs and forwards. This could just be to have two plotlines, as this creates depth, and a slightly more complicated plot for the audience to be thinking about in parts with not much happening.

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The main characters, Toulouse Lautrec, Christian, and Satine are all introduced very importantly and exaggeratedly. Toulouse, singing on the rooftops, in black and white (possibly use of pathetic fallacy as he begins to tell the sad story of Christian); Christian, again using pathetic fallacy, huddled in a cold corner of his room; and Satine, descending from the ceiling of the Moulin Rouge, as though she were an angel. All of these characters have their own sterotypes. Christian, the young actor, handsome and a brilliant singer, doesn’t understand the underworld and gets lost (referring to the influence of Orpheus.) Satine, the beautiful woman, sleeps with the rich men but unfortunately falls in love. Then finally, Lautrec is the typical fun loving, very pleasant bohemian revolutionist. I think the Baz Luhrmann used the interesting real life historic character of Toulouse Lautrec because, for one, he was very famous at his time for all of his works of art, and two, of his famous interest in the Bohemian style culture of Montmatre.

I think that in this section, Baz engages the audience using a lot of excitement and the pathetic fallacy of Paris in general, in that whenever Christian is confused or happy, there are lots of vibrant colours and flashing images, which catch the eye.

Some of the song lyrics in the “Moulin Rouge” have an effect on the audience. For example, when Kylie Minogue sings: “The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music”, and “Freedom, Beauty, Truth and Love”. The first sentence makes you remember your childhood when watching “The Sound of Music” and so you’re happy. The second line makes you feel patriotic, and proud, the way it’s sung, especially when it’s sung by Kylie, who we all know and again, remember from our childhood.

Possibly the main thing about the play is the “Orphean Structure”. The tale of Orpheus is of a man who went down in to the underworld, and overcame dangers to retrieve his love. You definitely notice this as the first 20 minutes of the film goes on. Christian, goes down in to the Moulin Rouge (the underworld) and finds Satine and immediately falls in love. Sadly Satine is taken by the Duke (almost like the devil) and so becomes another obstacle of Christian’s.

In Conclusion, I believe that the first 20 minutes of Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!” are very successful in capturing the audience’s attention. I think this is because of the many cinematic techniques e.g. the large amount of pathetic fallacy, the very gritty camera settings and scenery, and the well-placed different camera shots. This film is much different to other films from the genre e.g. Hairspray, or Grease, because of it’s Red Curtain Cinema style. It’s outrageousness, and different moods make it far more interesting than other films will always be different.