Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Moulin Rouge!

Lift your skirt up for Moulin Rouge! It turned ten years old last week (it was released in Australia on 24 May) and that means it's been ten whole years of deep affection for Baz Luhrmann's extravagant, revolutionist movie musical. I saw it eight times at the cinema and would happily see it again if it, like other classic musicals, was rereleased at anniversary intervals (hello Astor Theatre). To say I was "obsessed" would be putting it mildly. I hailed it the no. 2 film of the decade and it would have been an east no. 1 if David Lynch hadn't thrown his hat into the ring in the same year with Mulholland Drive.

When the mission came to choose a "best shot" for Nathaniel Rogers' Hit Me With Your Best Shot project at The Film Experience I quite obviously found it a daunting task indeed. Visually, Moulin Rouge! is one of the grandest films you'll ever come across. A large amount of the film's enjoyment hangs on Catherine Martin's art direction and costume design (Oscar winners, each) and the cinematography, editing, make-up, visual effects, etc, and how they all connect via Luhrmann's astonishing directorial vision. The film is obviously much, much more than the visuals, but this is a feature dedicated primarily to what we perceive as aesthetically pleasing so we'll stick to that path.

The first shot that I considered was the moment Kylie Minogue enters the picture as "The Green Fairy", a hyper hallucinatory after effect of drinking Absinthe. Minogue's appearance at nine minutes into the run time is like a eyebrow raising dare to the audience - "Can you handle this? Here's Kylie fuckin' Minogue!"


And then but mere seconds later - "Oh, I'm sorry. You're not a fan of Kylie Minogue? HERE ARE TEN MORE!"


It's as if Baz Luhrmann dared himself to out-camp Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet combined and commits himself to it like it's going out of fashion.

There are whole lot of micro shots within this opening "Welcome to the Moulin Rouge" montage sequence that would be worthy contenders for the title of "best shot". One of my favourites is the following of Lara Mulcahy's Môme Fromage swinging around with her bosom, only partially housed within the hot pink polka dot cancan dress, sticking out like it's on a platter and her face giving of the expression of unbridled sexy frivolity.



The next shot I considered was this one of just romanticism - and yet, it's one of the very sort of shots that the movie's "haters" would point to as a reason why it's awful. As the lights pop up all over Paris to the tune of Ewan McGregor's voice, it's a gorgeous moment that continues Luhrmann's determination to throw as much at the audience as possible. It's followed mere seconds later, however, by a far more personal and simple shot of Nicole Kidman reacting that is sublime.



There's something about this shot of six bald-headed men in tails sitting around a piano during the "Come What May" number that I really like. I used it in my Black & White Friday entry for Moulin Rouge! and it looked better in black and white so I'm not using it as my "best shot". Still, I do like it for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Perhaps its just the pure oddity of the scenario that does it for me?


"The Show Must Go On" is perhaps the film's most underrated number. It's exclusion from the soundtrack certainly didn't help, but I think it's Kidman's finest vocal work and is filled with amazing shots like the ones below.




And, really, who can't love this shot from the "Come What May" climax?


The "El Tango de Roxanne" sequence is filled with potential best shots. How about these two, which I absolutely adore (Caroline O'Connor... I wish you'd return to the silver screen!)



But the "Roxanne" shot that I very nearly went with was this one. In fact, I had decided upon it until I revisited an earlier scene just to make sure and in fact found one I'd realised I was silly for not chosen before. Just look at this shot and you'll surely understand why I was so close to hailing it as the best. That deep rich navy blue surrounded by a pool of black, Nicole Kidman's face bathed in light, but silhouetted by a lacy curtain that's accentuated further towards the bottom, adding a lovely visual flair. It's a truly astonishing image and it reminds me of this wonderful poster for The Barefoot Contessa, but upon further thought I'm glad I went with the shot I eventually used because, if anything, this one shot is too dark for a film like Moulin Rouge!


A film like Moulin Rouge! needs to be represented by something brash, bold and bright. Something that's as in your face as the film itself. While the following shot, of an unknown actress' undergarments, would perhaps be seen as a crude and throwaway shot - nothing more than one out of a thousand shots that Luhrmann and his editor Jill Billcock throw at the audience amidst the Moulin Rouge introductory sequence that is such a sensory overload - but I think it represents so much about Luhrmann's movie. It is brash, it is cold, it is bright. It's colours leap out of the screen, the sex oozes from the frame and its imagery is shoved in the audience's face. Hit me with your best shot? Here it is:

Five Shots: Mirrors

Five Shots: Red Shoes

Review: Prime Mover

Prime Mover
Dir. David Caeser
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 90mins

David Caeser's latest film is Prime Mover - his first since Dirty Deeds in 2001 - and it is a movie that could have really been something special, but instead turns into yet another crash coarse through many things that are wrong with Australian cinema. What makes this example even worse is that it starts out so strong, but I can't help but feel that Caeser just didn't have the balls to go through with what he started, which was a crowd-pleasing, fantasy-laden and touching movie.

Set in the rural New South Wales town of Dubbo, Prime Mover again casts Suburban Mayhem's terrors Michael Dorman and Emily Barclay as young lovers. He dreams of being a trucker and idolises the likes of William McInnes and Ben Mendelsohn, fellow truckers who stop by the repair station he works at. After the death of his father, Caeser regular Andrew S Gilbert, he sets out to achieve his dreams by purchasing a big rig and marrying his pregnant gypsy girlfriend Barlcay. It is here that the hyper-fantastical visual flourishes, sweet exchanges and wild inventiveness gives way to miserabalism, drug abuse and dark violence.


As the credits began to role - thankfully - I thought to myself that I must have been so foolish to have thought that after the opening passages that Caeser could have, seriously, been on the verge of making a quasi-Strictly Ballroom for a new generation filled with optimism and an open heart. Whether Caeser felt it beneath himself to make a movie that was filled with hope and sweetness instead of darkness and woe, I'm not sure, but Prime Mover is a big example of why audiences don't go to Australian films. Single mothers living with their abusive mothers, prescription drug users being hauled by their collar and bashed by mobsters or self-destructing losers might be an honest representation of parts of Australian society, but, by and large, people don't want to see them on the big screen.

I'm all for seeing tough depictions of Australian life at the cinema if the movie had actually been good, but it just isn't very well made. Barclay is great as per usual, but other than that performances are weak, especially Mendelsohn who quickly becomes a ridiculous villain. Cinematography is flashy, but quickly becomes repetitive, meanwhile the flashes of visual effects are wonderful, they all but disappear when the film's darker side takes over. That the movie suffers from tonal issues goes without saying.


Prime Mover is just such a disappointment because, at least initially, it felt like it was trying to be something that Australian so rarely is. How discouraged I felt to be slumped in my cinema seat mere minutes later and knowing exactly where it was headed. He may be maligned by some, but Australian cinema needs more creative people with the guts of Baz Luhrmann, but what we have here is a film that is afraid to go to the next level and instead steps backwards into cliche. D+

Black + White Friday: Moulin Rouge!

Sorry for the lateness, but as I originally wrote, yesterday was a very long day and so here I am doing this now. Voila!


It's is probably not at all surprisingly to learn that I spend a lot of my day thinking about Baz Luhrmann's Australia and then yesterday I had a hankering to rewatch (for the millionth time) Moulin Rouge!, the film that gave birth to what will likely be an entire lifetime of devotion to the man and anticipation of every single project he will ever embark on. However, upon rewatching it last night, I decided to take a different tact with Moulin Rouge! in this "Black+White Friday" series. Most of the other movies I have screencapped for you guys have had me trying to turn the original into something else, something classical that I think the originally was going for (see, for example, The Others and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), but while it would be easy to do this for any musical and say "let's see what it would look like if it were made in the heyday of the Astaire and Rogers!" it is impossible to do that with Moulin Rouge! It could never have been made in any other time, by any other person or in any other way, which is why it's such a case of bravura filmmaking.

So, instead, I merely found a bunch of moments that I thought would look nice in black and white - there are plenty - because to try and drain this or this of colour is both silly and a crime against humanity/cinema/life/etc, don't you think?


Upskirt shot! How rude. But seriously, what an incredibly shot.


Proof positive that Nicole Kidman would've been a star in any generation. Not every actor can look so classic in both colour and black and white, but she does it. But, then again, we already knew this, didn't we?


This shot has always made me chuckle. Something about it makes me think it should be in a horror movie about a brood of bald men who come together on Halloween to steal the souls of children (or something to that effect).


One of the (many) film posters I have saved onto my computer is one for the 1954 film The Barefoot Contessa (here is an alternate version of the one I have, I can't remember where I found it unfortunately) and it wasn't until I took this grab that I realised how similar the two shots are. Hmmm.


This moment reminds me of Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary. Strange, but true.


Oh Kerry Walker, bless you. And as an aside, I actually think this scene is Kidman's best in the entire movie and perhaps one of the purest in the film. A lot of people think the musical scenes only work in this movie because of the production Luhrmann puts behind it, but this tiny moment shows there's true power in it and that Kidman actually does have a good voice. I am indeed quite interested to see how she handles her next musical, Nine.


"The Show Must Go On" is routinely one of my favourite unappreciated moments from the film and I remain adamant that it is Kidman's strongest moment vocally. I do have a random question for all you Oscar-philes out there. How long was it between nominations for a musical performance? Surely Kidman's Best Actress nod in 2002 was the first for quite some time, right? Anybody know? I could try and research it myself but, ugh, effort!


How cool and retro-horror is this shot? Answer: Very.


Funny story: I once received an e-mail from somebody claiming to be Lionel Haft (who plays The Duke's manservant "Warner") - and who would fake that, honestly? - who was angry at me for ripping apart his performance in the terrible schlocky Aussie crapfest Solo. I mean, it doesn't top receiving an e-mail from Rena Riffel (another true story), but it still amuses me.


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