"You think that people would have had enough of silly love songs. I look around me and I see it isn't so."

"I hope you don't mind that I put down in words how wonderful life is while your in the world."

"Moulin Rouge" is so amazing, so unique, so fresh and so astounding that I don't think mere words could ever adequately illustrate the impact it has upon the viewer and, indeed, cinema itself. By crafting a scrumptious visual delight, a cinematic dessert that seems like a full course meal, filmmaker Baz Luhrman has simply reinvented the musical and, in fact, film itself. His vision is so bold and so distinctive that the ramification of it on film may very well be felt for years to come.

But Luhrman hasn't done this by creating something entirely new. Rather, he has crafted a cinematic and musical patchwork quilt that fuses together the very best in pop culture over the last 100 years. If ever someone needed one film which might encapsulate everything that has happened in the 20th century in art and music, in fact, "Moulin Rouge" might be the closest thing to it.

Cinematically, the film revels in amazing visuals that recall George Melies, Parisian nightlife, Toulouse-LaTrec, vaudeville, 40's musicals, MTV, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, Alex Proyas, and Luhrman's own impeccable pop culture style. The film is a wild amalgam of desperate influences which the filmmaker has somehow crafted together to create a stunning and engrossing masterpiece. You cannot take your eyes off of it. The film's beauty is magnetic.

Aurally, Luhrman also uses an amazing technique which welds together pop music from the last century in a curious and delicately beautiful way. Admittedly, pop music from the 70's is the most predominant artform here, but Luhrman also uses period music and 50's musical numbers to create a sort of collage of pop songs that forward the plot like a perpetual motion machine. Elton John, David Bowie, Madonna, Queen, LaBelle, Nirvana, The Police, The Beatles, and a plethora of other pop performers and songwriters find their work meshed together here to create an aural landscape that is new and familiar at the same time.

Like the ignorant children of suburbia that they are, the teenagers at the megaplex whom were in attendance when I viewed the film laughed at moments when the actors burst into familiar song. They thought Luhrman was creating a joke. They are imbeciles. Hardly anything about "Moulin Rouge" is intentionally or unintentionally funny. This is not camp. It's is breathtaking, poignant and ethereal. Luhrman's soundscape allows us to bathe ourselves in the emotions these pop songs contain and to resonantly and immediately feel the sentiment they stir within us. When Ewen MacGregor and Nicole Kidman sing a love song to each other that contains lines from Bowie's "Heroes," Elton's "Your Song" and McCartney's "Silly Love Songs," the immediate evocation of emotions and poignancy overwhelms us (as adults). We FEEL it in our hearts. These were the songs that we, as young people, swooned over, and connected to. When Elton sang Bernie Taupin's simple yet excruciatingly honest and poignant line "I hope you don't mind that I put down in words/How wonderful life is while your in the world," we understood that particular and exact emotion, that honest feeling. As pubescent children hearing the song for the first time, we were feeling the first pangs of such love ourselves.

When the characters in "Moulin Rouge" begin to pour out these words in song, all of those feelings rush back to us. The music is a resonant sensory touchstone which evokes the most basic and childlike feelings of love within us. Instant nostalgia, yes. But one that is not only reworked and made new here but also honored and exalted. By using these songs from our history, our own history as well as pop culture history, Luhrman creates an instant connection with the audience. We are in his palm because the sentimental feelings and emotive responses we are recalling become commiserative. It is universal.

If you love film, if you love pop music, if you love romance, and if you love love, "Moulin Rouge" will be one of the most magical film experiences you will ever have. Baz Luhrman has placed himself within the upper echelon of modern filmmakers who have taken cinema to the next level. And he has done this with heart, style, and amazing class. And with a reverence for pop music and pop culture that echoes our own heartfelt awe of it as well.

Silly love songs, indeed.

Note:

Also with Jim Broadbent and John Leguizamo.

Ewan MacGregor mined similar territory, in a way, in Todd Haynes "Velvet Goldmine."

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