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 Synopsis Reviews  From the Foreword by Baz Luhrmann Table of Contents  Baz Luhrmann Catherine Martin Baz Luhrmann Sue Adler Douglas Kirkland Mary Ellen Mark Ellen von Unwerth |
From the Foreword by Baz Luhrmann Moulin Rouge is the third feature in a style we've dubbed the 'Red Curtain' trilogy. A theatricalised cinema style we launched with Strictly Ballroom, developed with Romeo+Juliet, and intend to complete with Moulin Rouge. The 'Red Curtain' style that defines our filmmaking thus far comprises several distinct storytelling rules and parameters. A simple even naive story based on a primary myth is set in a heightened interpretation of a world that is at once familiar yet distant and exotic. Think of the world of ballroom dancing in Strictly, the postmodern Verona Beach in Romeo+Juliet or the luminous underworld that is the Moulin Rouge. Finally, each of the 'Red Curtain' trilogy has a device which awakens the audience to the experience of watching the film rather than putting them into a dream state. In Strictly Ballroom the key scenes are told through dance. In Romeo+Juliet it was Shakespeare's heightened 400-year-old language. In Moulin Rouge, our ultimate 'Red Curtain' gesture, the audience are awakened by the experience of music, song and dance. "A musical" I hear you say. Yes, perhaps a pop opera or a people's opera or a comi-tragi music film. An attempt at re-inventing an old tradition in a new form, dangerous, full of risks, if it works the naming of genre will happen later. Moulin Rouge, with a plot born of the Orphean myth and moulded in the likeness of a tragic 19th century novel, Dumas' Camille or Zola's Nana, is set in a heightened interpretation of end-of-century Paris seen through a very con-temporary lens, a shockingly operatic, high pop, high camp kind of lens. It's our own Moulin Rouge, with an ecstatic refit of what was originally a very raw and shocking dance, the can-can. Our Moulin Rouge, in which we hope to recreate for audiences now the thrill of what was sensationally seedy to the punters then. That is: big, sexy, straight off the boulevards and illuminated by that modern miracle the electric lightbulb to excessively kitschy effect. The nightclub of your dreams. A place where you could dance, watch a show and have sex with the participants—or at least be teased by the prospect of such. That's the experience myself and Bazmark collaborators, both old and new, have sunk our collective creative energy and wit into making real. To be clear, the whole stylistic premise has been to decode what the Moulin Rouge was to the audiences of 1899 and express that same thrill in a way that our contemporary moviegoers can relate to. |
