Hurt Him. Hurt Him, To Save Him: Moulin Rouge! (2001)

This film is a mess.  A beautiful, cinematic, saccharine and unadulterated mess.  It is also a perfectly realized mess, something that could only come from the feverish mind of post-modern prodigy Baz Luhrmann.  While I am not a complete Luhrmann apologist, based almost primarily in his excessive appropriation of the misunderstood artist moniker, one that he claims is affirmed by his own vilification for 'ruining' classic texts.  While this is debatable, his visionary work Moulin Rouge! stands in a world all of its own, between its mash-up of classic songs into a GirlTalk like musical, or his near seizure inducing visual layering, everything Lurhmann offers his viewers is potent and pleasure inducing.  Between a haptic camera and quickened heartbeat at work in this film it is quite easy to lose out to the visuals of the film and overlook the very well executed, even if decidedly simplistic, story.  I have not seen all of Luhrmann's work and while I am holding out high hopes for Strictly Ballroom I am playing it safe in assuming that this is his current masterpiece.  Sure The Great Gatsby has an equal pacing, but problems like Toby MacGuire's acting and a hesitancy to go down a few of the darkest corners of the novel lead to a film that is not entirely perfect.  Moulin Rouge! is not perfect either, but damn if it is not as close to being such as possible.  I understand that the style of Luhrmann is not for everyone and I am willing to concede to this point of critique in some cases, simply attributing the frantic and overly referential nature of his oeuvre as a point of frustration.  In some cases, however, the critiques being mounted against this particular filmmaker are from individuals who also happen to think Quentin Tarantino is a consistently rewarding and masterful filmmaker, never seeing past his equally pastiched and kitschy veneer to realize he is doing precisely the same things in his films.  If critics and cinephiles alike are to concede to Tarantino being the bad boy of the post-modern styling, then it should also be extended to suggest that Lurhmann is in contrast its angst-laden rebel, the latter using culture in a far more curious and, I cannot believe I am saying this, far less pretentious manner.

Moulin Rouge! follows the experiences of Christian (Ewan McGregor) a struggling writer who has moved to the most rundown parts of Paris in hopes of discovering a space where he can blossom as a wordsmith, telling his disappointed father that his pursuits are purely inspired by the notion to understand the complexities of love.   The problem with Christian's noble aspirations is that he has never himself been in love.  Moving, however, into a dilapidated apartment, Christian immediately comes in contact with a variety of weird and wonderful characters including the squeaky voiced Toulouse-Lautrec (John Lequizamo) who is part of an acting troupe that is headed by the bombastic but keen Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent).  When they realize that Christian is indeed skilled as a writer they employ him to help compose a play, hoping that his prowess will convince local burlesque dancer and object of affection for many Satine (Nicole Kidman) to join in the production.  By using a combination of his poetry and his actual attractions, along with the fortune of being mistaken as a duke, Christian immediately attains the affections of Satine.  However, when the real Duke (Richard Roxburgh) emerges things prove troublesome as Satine is quickly required to avert her burgeoning desires for Christian and replicated them, if falsely, towards The Duke.  This is made all the more troublesome by Satine's suffering from tuberculosis.  The Duke an admittedly possessive man threatens to buy out the Moulin Rouge club from Zidler should Satine not agree to be his property, the worried Zidler agreeing immediately.  While Satine understands the gravitas of the situation, she and Christian continue to use the guise of preparation for the play as a means to further their relationship, stealing kisses and glances behind The Duke's back.  When Satine's sickness immobilizes her for an entire evening, The Duke assumes her to be galavanting with Christian leading to his final demand that he be removed from the picture entirely, in turn leading to Zidler telling Satine that she must end things with Christian.  However, when Satine does this, Christian refuses to accept this as a reality and crashes the final production one that is garish and almost nearly fatal.  Tragically, however, even when their love is rekindled, the reality of Satine's sickness causes her ultimate demise, though not before forgiveness is afforded to all involved.

Upon doing some very basic research for this film, I discovered that Moulin Rouge! is often referred to as a jukebox musical.  This is a term often applied to musicals, specifically theatrical, that appropriate the songs of one artist into a larger narrative, notable examples including ABBA, Bob Dylan and The Beatles.  Yet, Moulin Rouge! is a bit more complicated than this and as Baz Luhrmann has suggested, he intended his work to be palatable to the MTV Generation of music listeners.  This claim helps to better ground the idea of the film, one that is both sporadic and hybrid in its musical composition, indicative of a TRL Top Ten, while also heavily visual, bowing to the music video generation, wherein how the music looks plays as much into the nature of the song itself.  Think about the seeming inextricable connection between Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball as a song and as a music video.  Of course, nearly every musical intends for the visual nature of the film to take precedence, but often does so in a linear and formalist structure, wherein Luhrmann rejects this for layering and subtext.  Indeed, the film begins by showing a stage, thus calling attention to the projected nature of the film, but within the film there are often extra layers of staging, whether it be the wonderfully lavish production of the play in the closing moments of the film or the various dioramas that appear either in possession of the characters or as spaces in which the characters occupy.  It is in this execution that Luhrmann's use of special effects becomes quite interesting.  For a filmmaker like Tarantino this is almost always used to emphasize a degree of violence, moving it from bloody to hyper-violent.  In contrast is Luhrmann's invocation of the cgi to achieve a degree of meta-theatrics, already at play agains the layering of music, this causes the film to work almost like a gyroscope always rotating and viewers attempt to keep focus on the center.  Indeed, when this is achieved it is often the most climactic moment in the film where everything comes to a jarring halt evoking emotion by stripping away the melodramatic elements.  Indeed, this is perhaps as post-modern as the musical can get, by working in the opposite direction from the hyper showy to the simplistic.  Moulin Rouge! really is quite a fascinating work of cinema.

Key Scene:  The Kismet-inspired final production scene is magical.

I am sure quite a few of my readers are opposed to Luhrmann for various reasons and may have already encountered this film in the past.  I would strongly urge you to revisit this film and consider it from a counter-structuralist standpoint.  It is as impassioned an argument for rethinking the language of cinema in the post-digital age as one can hope to find.

I May Have Lost My Heart, But Not My Self Control: Emma (1996)

It should have come to no surprise to me that in trying to include a particularly diverse set of films for my month of women in film that I would run into some less than stellar movies.  I had high hopes for Emma considering that it possesses a ton of actors for whom I think highly of, not to mention that it fancied itself, and even claims to exist within the same vein as Clueless, a film I caught up with last year to much elation.  While Emma is certainly a film that exists within the framework of satire, it is hardly on the same level as Amy Heckerling's masterpiece.  Of course, both are based off of the same Jane Austen novel, yet where Heckerling's film fully commits to the absurdity of the narrative, particularly its being situated within the madness of nineties valley speak, Douglas McGrath seems far too concerned with keeping some sort of artistic distance to truly do the narrative justice.  It appears that, despite all the clear mocking of gender divides and marital expectations which exist within the narrative, and to some degree the original text, Emma, the film, fails in its desire to necessarily exist within the romantic side of a romantic comedy.  This is all not to suggest that Emma is a terrible movie, this is far from the case, but simply adapting a novel of the same name, does not automatically place you on the same level as the magnificent satire that is Clueless.  I understand very much that this intends to be a period piece and desires to adhere to the stylistic limitations of the era, not to mention the social mores, but McGrath clearly takes liberties in making Emma, as a character, seem willfully ignorant and purposefully destructive of those around her, all in some blind ambition to prove that she excels at her rather arbitrarily chosen field of matchmaker, for which she holds mild success.  Nothing screams empowerment towards the female figure put on display and possessing of the narratives title and I am by no means suggesting that Jane Austen was the most ideal of feminist icons, yet, this film was made right on the coattails of Clueless, yet fails so desperately to find a fresh and realized voice in relation to its inspiration.  Tragically, Emma is a film that suffers the woe of attempting to cash in on the success of a previous film (think about all the terrible quirky films that emerged post Napoleon Dynamite) and the real shame lies in the fact that it could have been so much more.

Emma, as the title, and the clear reference to Jane Austen's novel suggests, centers on the life of Emma (Gwyneth Paltrow) a decidedly optimistic and assuredly aware young woman who fancies herself an expert matchmaker and knower of all things romantic.  Coming fresh off the success of a courtship she helped implement, she considers herself prepared to create another success story with the local town vicar Mr. Elton (Alan Cummings) and Harriet Smith (Toni Collette) a somewhat mousy, yet attractive woman with whom Emma is a good friend.  However, even with Emma's rather blatant direction, it is discovered that Harriet finds herself attracted to a town farmer named Robert Martin (Edward Woodall) to which Emma contests, thinking it is societal suicide on the part of Harriet.  Fully aware of her problematic meddling, Emma's family friend George Knightley (Jeremy Northam) attempts to dissuade her actions and when he realizes that Emma willfully ignores his suggests, notes that Mr. Elton has had his eyes on a woman from a family just outside of town, leaving Harriet to make a fool of herself in her attempts to attract the vicar.  Into the picture enters the young man named Frank Churchill (Ewan McGregor) much to the adoring eyes of Emma who becomes infatuated with his suave attitude and genteel charms, yet when Frank takes a liking to another woman, Emma's already crumbling assumptions of matchmaking worsen considerably.  Things become romantically intensified between Emma and George, realizing that they see each other more as platonic friends and after a respite on the part of George after a falling out between the two, Emma finds herself missing his presence considerably.  The two agree to marry, much to the initial rage of Harriet who eventually works things out with Mr. Martin and each couple is happily married by the films closing.

The film suffers from its confusion about whether it wants to exude modernity or embrace the traditions of the period in which it is set.  Of course, this is not entirely McGrath's fault as he had similar ideas to that of Clueless, but was simply late to the game, yet the execution of the film is problematic.  As it stands, Emma is decidedly a film about logical men navigating the spaces of ill-conceived plots on the part of desirous women, particularly Emma who seems to think herself of creating love in even the unlikeliest of places.  While she claims at multiple points to be concerned with notions logical behavior, her concerns seem far more tied to economic safety and advancement than anything that could be defined as logical.  In fact, she deals with situations illogically for the most part, avoiding contact and forcing men tied to religious devotions into the marriage pool.  The film seems, initially, to be doing so with some sense of irony which should allow viewers to distance themselves from Emma and critique her actions, yet when viewers are asked at points to empathize with her and feel bad for her situation, it comes to the forefront that she is intended to be a likeable protagonist, and a problematic one at that.  I hate to keep drawing comparisons to the better Clueless, but in that film Silverstone's character is detached from the situation and capable of commenting on all the terribleness existing within her life and interactions, where as Paltrow's Emma is as wide-eyed and ignorant about her involvement in her own oppression and terrible life choices as she is about her ability to create love.  Emma wants to be really hip and cool in what it is trying to say, unfortunately, it never achieves the success its predecessors filmically and textually managed to do so.

Key Scene:  I don't know, I guess the dancing is nice...

This is an outright pass for me, I cannot think of any legitimate reason why you should feel obliged to check it out yourself.

The Chair Is Not Gay, Obviously: Beginners (2010)

I recall having a conversation with a friend and filmmaker who discussed the issues of many indie comedies lacking a heartbeat.  He stated that while many films were visually stunning or narratively advanced they still lacked that life that separates a good indie film from its lesser competition.  Mike Mill's critically acclaimed and extremely personal film Beginners is an movie with a steady and very apparent heartbeat.  I can foresee this film becoming a timeless classic on the study of family and self-acceptance in the face of midlife existential malaise and I am also imagining that it is going to rake in nicely at whatever awards ceremonies it is involved.  This film along with Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture are bringing me back around to the world of independent cinema that I had ruled lost with the new millennium.  Beginners is a fresh, quirky and real study of life as one person experiences it and is a touching cinematic reminder of how fleeting a person's life can be and that they should live said life to the fullest with the fewest illusions possible.  I would be hard pressed to find a more bittersweet collage of images, than what Mill's offers in this film.

Beginners, though non-linear in its narrative, is a relatively simple story.  It begins with the thirty-eight year old Oliver (Ewan McGregor) packing the final belongings of his late fathers house.  This act alone leads him on a reflection of his own relationships with both of his deceased parents. The film, and Oliver's reflections, paint his mother Georiga (Mary Page Keller) out to be a depressed and drugged out woman whose relationship with her son and husband are distanced and meaningless, leading Georgia to act out in public to spite them both.  It would appear as though Georgia's actions are selfish and loathsome, until Oliver is told in another flashback with his aged father that he had, in fact, married Oliver's mother despite being gay.  This confession on the part of Oliver's father Hal (Christopher Plummer) leads Oliver to question everything he has understood about his life, including his own relationship with his dad.  Fortunately, for Oliver he is able to rekindle his relationship with his dying father purely out of providing support for him and accepting his lifestyle change as a desire that had lingered long before he arrived in the world.  Tragically, Hal does die and Oliver is left to clean up what remains, acts that range from dumping out his father large amount of medicine to caring for his telepathic dog.  Oliver seems content to graze through life unattached to those around him with only a dog as a companion, until he runs into a mute girl at a costume party who hits on him by writing notes.  This woman, Oliver discovers, is a French actress named Anna (Melanie Laurent) and her lack of voice is due solely to a case of laryngitis.  The two begin a head on collision of romance and therapy that leads the two down a confusing path of love and fear, which seems doomed for failure until a last minute change of heart makes Oliver realize that he cannot live his life in fear like his father did, because to do so would be to dismiss a chance a true love, even if such love is momentary.

This film is sweet and beautifully shot, but what is perhaps the most captivating element of the film is its ability to seriously deal with contemporary issues without loosing its artistic edge.  Beginners clearly has an agenda, particularly its concern with reminding viewers of the unfortunate struggles gay Americans face prior to the new millennium.  In freeze frames, Oliver reflects on notions of beauty, politics and family between two years, often using the 1950's and 1960's and a comparison to the year of 2003 in which the film is set.  Through this duality Mill's makes it quite clear that for a character like Hal to have been openly gay would have meant his public banishment and a life of solitude.  The fact, that he had to hide his own sexual desires until his last months alive are tragic and a character like Oliver helps viewers to comprehend how truly baffling such a ridiculous demand was for people living fifty years ago.  More than this though, the film is also a beautiful observation of the seemingly limitless boundaries of love.  As I noted earlier, the character of Georgia is painted rather bitterly and shown to be pathetically lost in her own world of ennui.  However, in a very touching scene Hal reminds Oliver that he loved his mother and she loved him, their being together was an act of friendship and loyalty.  She know of Hal's sexual preference, but agreed to marry him regardless, because she knew the social consequences if he were to remain unmarried.  This moment helps Oliver to comprehend much of his confused youth and he grows to respect his mother, as well as the obstacles his father continued to face even in his dying days.  Oliver also comes to realize that he cannot expect happiness to emerge through finding his father love, but instead in supporting his decisions while searching for his own source of happiness, a feat that appears to happen in the films closing shot.

This movie is magical and heartbreaking.  I am standing behind this as one of the best films in this award season and cannot recommend it enough.  Buy a copy and share it with those you care about.

Choose Your Future, Choose Life: Trainspotting (1996)

Danny Boyle is one of my favorite directors, hands down.  I thoroughly enjoyed 28 Days Later...and find his other works to be equally impressive.  However, I had for some time failed to watch his early film Trainspotting.  This has changed and Trainspotting has only increased my admiration for the British filmmaker.  An early film made in an era of rebellion, Trainspotting is glorious in its degradation.  It  The Sex Pistols revisited, in a culture less malleable and certainly more fucked up.  It really has no American equivalent, because it is certainly too funny to parallel Requiem for a Dream, but certainly serious enough not to be Clerks.  Trainspotting is its own self-righteous, self-loathing and self-effacing multi-character study that will make viewers question their own moralistic understanding of drug culture.  Danny Boyle is like Guy Ritchie, but with more soul.

Trainspotting follows the exploits and misdirection of  a group of Scottish heroin addicts awkwardly led by Renton (Ewan McGregor).  The film's narrative seems illogical, irrational and unconnected which helps the films feel, after all it is about drug addicts.  What a viewer could draw from the narrative is that Renton is attempting to get clean, while his cohorts continue to push their drug habit upon him.  After an expertly crafted withdrawal scene, it appears as though Renton is freed from the clutches of his addiction.  However, word comes to Renton and his friends that there is a huge drug score that needs to be pushed into London and his buddies are the perfect people to get it done.  Renton agrees to lead this sale, and after a few more hits of heroin, they trade drugs and walk away with a rather large sum of money.  In a moment of despair, Renton realizes that his friends are far from close and that taking the money for his own is a far more logical decision.  Renton is shown alone leaving his abysmal past for a promising, drug free future.

The film captures a very hectic but important moment in the United Kingdom and Europe as a whole, that being the rise of the urban world.  It is a much funnier, less abrasive, La Haine, or like I noted earlier Guy Ritchie with a message.  It manages to catch the desolation and disillusionment of working class Europe in a short and sporadic film.  The inability for higher authorities to comprehend or reprimand the actions of Trenton and his pals assume a truth about Europe since the nineties, particularly in providing them government assistance.  Furthermore, despite being a rather detailed and concise film, particularly Trenton's affection-lacking relationship with his parents, the film ignores minority voices.  Sure the film is set in Scotland and it is rather minimal in its ethnic diversity, but the film is unbearably white, even when the crew travels to London.  This is a minor aside, but one worth noting.  Besides this, the social vision is masterful.

This is a film meant for blu-ray...trust me.  Watch it and love it.  Trust me.