Uma das melhores obras dos últimos tempos foi praticamente ignorada pela academia em 2002

Por Rodrigo Gianesi

Eu, particularmente, não gostava muito de musicais até assistir “Moulin Rouge – Amor em Vermelho”. O filme de Baz Luhrmann mudou completamente meu conceito sobre musicais e me deixou mais aberto para esse tipo de filme, que passei a adorar. O filme conta uma das mais belas histórias de amor já vistas no cinema, foge completamente do que se espera de um filme hollywoodiano, com um roteiro quase revolucionário, longe da intenção de agradar a grande massa. O musical foi completamente injustiçado pela Academia no Oscar de 2002, ganhando apenas o prêmio de melhor direção de arte e de melhor figurino. Perdeu o prêmio de melhor filme para “Uma Mente Brilhante”, filme mais fácil de ser “digerido” pela grande massa por ser mais convencional e conservador, e nem sequer concorreu à melhor trilha sonora, canção original (uma triste injustiça com a maravilhosa “Come What May”) e direção.

"Spetacular, Spetacular"

“Moulin Rouge” conta a história de Christian (Ewan McGregor), um poeta boêmio que acredita, acima de tudo, no amor. O poeta se apaixona por Satine (Nicole Kidman), a mais bela cortesã do Moulin Rouge, um clube noturno e bordel de Paris. Como qualquer boa história amor que se preze, os dois enfrentam obstáculos para poderem ficar juntos. Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent), dono do Moulin Rouge, recebe o patrocínio de um duque (Richard Roxburgh) para produzir uma peça teatral no clube (“Spetacular, Spetacular“, escrita por Christian e estrelada por Satine). A condição que o duque impõe, porém, é que Satine seja dele, e apenas dele. Caso contrário, a propriedade do bordel passaria para o Duque. Com esses empecilhos, Christian e Satine têm de esconder seu romance, genialmente inserido disfarçadamente na peça em questão.

Mesmo com o grande número de músicas no filme, elas não o tornam cansativo, como acontece com muitos musicais. A grande sacada de Luhrmann foi de utilizar obras que variam entre músicas atuais e obras mais antigas ao invés de apenas compor novas canções, com exceção de poucas, como a já mencionada “Come What May”.

Química entre Nicole Kidman e Ewan McGregor é perfeita

A sintonia entre McGregor e Nicole Kidman é inexplicável. Em nenhuma cena a relação dos dois parece forçada ou piegas. As cenas do casal são muito naturais, apesar da intensidade dos sentimentos envolvidos nelas. Grande destaque para a maravilhosa (e triste) cena final do filme. A frase de Christian, “Obrigado por me curar da minha ridícula obsessão pelo amor”, dirigida à Satine, deitada no chão, rebaixada e chorando, arrepia até as pessoas mais insensíveis.

Moulin Rouge! – Amor em Vermelho (Moulin Rouge!): 2001, Austrália, EUA. Direção: Baz Luhrmann. Elenco: Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, Jim Broadbent, Richard Roxburgh. Roteiro: Baz Luhrmann e Craig Pearce. Duração: 127 min.

Notas:

Rodrigo Gianesi [10] Ronnie Romanini [10]

Média parcial: [10]

Okay, I admit it. I am a fan of monster movies. If you were to point out the quintessential staple of monster films you would have to look to the stable of creatures that populated the Universal Pictures horror films of the 1930s.

The films that made the likes of Boris Karloff (Frankenstein, The Mummy), Bela Lugosi (Count Dracula) and Lon Chaney Jr. (The Wolfman) household names. How can anyone forget those performances?

What made those films of the 1930s so impressive and magical were that they were about the monsters themselves. We learned about the curses, the damned and the beast within. Even if they were alien to us we still felt something for them which is strange since we are talking about the Prince of Darkness here.

When the end of the Universal Monsters arrived the studio started teaming up their creatures with classic “monster mashes” like “Frankenstein vs. The Wolf Man” and “House of Frankenstein”. The latter is still a personal favorite.

With the emergence of “Van Helsing”, Universal is looking to bring back a long dead monster franchise in a big new way.

Like the monster mashes of old, “Van Helsing” very loose premise begins with the world famous murderer/monster hunter Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) finishing off his latest assignment and returning to the Vatican.

In the holiest of cities, Van Helsing is directed to aid a brother-sister team of Anna (Kate Beckinsale) and Velkan Valerious (Will Kemp) in bringing down the notorious Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh). Dracula has been destroying the Valerious family lineage for over 400 years. For the mission, Van Helsing decides to bring reluctant Friar Carl (David Wenham) to aid him.

Upon their arrival in Transylvania, the duo learns that they aren’t exactly welcome and furthermore it seems that Dracula has a master plan of his own in the works and that Velkan Valerious may have been compromised.

The plot thickens as we learn about Dracula’s master plan and how it links to other legendary creatures such as Frankenstein, three vampiric brides, vampiric progeny and the Wolf Man himself.

For the most part “Van Helsing” is the dawn of the 2004 summer movie season and as a popcorn action effects-laden romp, it scores. It has every single element one needs from a summer movie.

I did on the other hand have about a handful of problems with the film itself. I was a little distracted by the lighting in the film which I am sure has been dimmed to cover some of the effects flaws. Director Stephen Sommers is still getting flack from his Scorpion King creation at the end of “The Mummy Returns”.

I also cringed a lot at the film’s version of Dracula. Roxburgh was excellent in his slimy, nasty and disgusting role in “Moulin Rouge” but that same allure is just wrong for Dracula. In this film he comes off more as George Hamilton’s Dracula than a debonair Gary Oldman or Bela Lugosi version of the vampire. And with that said the film hinges on this powerful foe but he is awful. The film needed Dracula to be more like Arnold Vosloo’s Mummy and less of a caricature. A lot more work was needed on this casting and re-imagination.

My favorite creatures in the film were the vampiric brides and of course the CGI werewolves. The scenes involving these carnivorous brides diving and swooping as they fly was so much fun. Van Helsing’s rapid-action crossbow trying to take down these evil divas was pure popcorn fun. The CGI keeps getting better and that makes for some nasty werewolves that are so much fun.

I felt that the whole Frankenstein concept and inclusion in this film was cheap and unnecessary. You really have to look to the film’s plot for the blame. I wanted more from Frankenstein.

As for the humans in the film, Jackman is still one of the best leading men around and he does bring a lot to the role of the monster-hunter but never really has a chance to act in the role. I have always been a huge fan of Kate Beckinsale, no matter what she has done. In a lot of ways I loved her in this film but in other ways she was one of the most wasted elements. Director Sommers break-neck pacing of the film doesn’t allow for much connection between Jackman and Beckinsale so you really aren’t ever sure if they have chemistry.

The story and how it interconnects the legendary lineages of the monsters is interesting and reminiscent of “House of Frankenstein” except instead of having a mad scientist you have Dracula as the scientist. But was it really necessary to have so many monsters in the first film. The film almost suffers from “Batman” sequel syndrome in that it was trying to include so many characters at once without really fleshing out any of the central ones.

As a whole I felt that the film reminded me more of the era of monsters after Universal’s golden age. The film feels a lot like a Hammer horror film with a huge effects budget. It is just too bad Peter Cushing wasn’t still around to play the priest who sends Van Helsing on his mission.

To be blunt, it is pure popcorn fun and why not since that’s what we love a brainless flick once in a while.

3.5 out of 5

So Says the Soothsayer.

NOTA : 7 RECOMANDAT

Download subtitrare Van Helsing

Trailer Van Helsing :

The greatest monster hunter of them all has his work cut out for him as he tracks down three deadly foes in this action-adventure saga. Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) is a man who has dedicated his life to battling evil forces who exist outside the bounds of nature; Van Helsing’s work has not always made him friends, and a false accusation of murder still trails him. But when he’s summoned to Transylvania at the behest of Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale), whose family has been fighting supernatural beings for generations, Van Helsing wastes no time answering her call. There, Van Helsing discovers that the undying vampire Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) has put a misshapen creature named Igor (Kevin J. O’Connor) under his spell, and, in turn, has forged an alliance with a hideous monster (Shuler Hensley) who was created by the misguided Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Samuel West). Adding to Anna’s burden is her brother, Velkan (Will Kemp), a lycanthrope who becomes a bloodthirsty wolf under the light of the full moon. Van Helsing also co-stars Elena Anaya, Silvia Colloca, and Josie Maran as Dracula’s vampire brides

I was Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street the other day and that made me think. I noticed that quite a bit of the movie musicals from nowadays are usually se in the past. Take Sweeney Todd for example. It was set during the 1800s. Hairspray is the same way. It was set during the early 1960s. There’s also Chicago, Moulin Rouge!, The Phantom of the Opera, etc. I think that’s part of the reason as to why they’re appealing. I don’t know why, but that’s just what I think.

Since the end of MasterChef on Sunday, a lot of people have been left with gaping holes in their lives. Many chose to fill the void with Dance Your Ass Off, if tonight’s Twitter trending topics is any indication.

What a spectacle; the fishnets, the spandex, the big hair…and that was just the host. Just kidding. Real car-crash stuff – can’t wait to see tomorrow’s ratings.

Speaking of ratings, boy did I get it wrong on the finale of MasterChef. I blame Matt Preston. I thought it would do more than 3 million, he wasn’t so sure, so I revised down to 2.6 to 2.8.

Should have stuck with my instinct – an average 3.72 million tuned in with a peak of 4.11 million – making it the most watched non-sporting event ever and Ten’s highest rating show. It was the third most watched show ever behind the 2005 Australian Open men’s final and 2003 World Cup Soccer Australia v England.

There are several new shows premiering tomorrow (Wednesday) with World’s Strictest Parents on Seven competing against Australia’s Perfect Couple on Nine. The latter is cringe-worthy, unless you think blindfolded kissing and an electric shock test will help determine who makes a perfect match. And host Jules Lund looks a bit like he has spent too much time on a Getaway sun and surf story.

Pick of Wednesday night is Fox8’s new drama The Secret Life of an American Teenager, a surprisingly poignant and humorous family/teen drama. Everyone’s favourite 80s teen flick star Molly Ringwald is the mother of a pretty, polite, all round nice girl who shocks her friends by getting pregnant at band camp.

Secret Life was created by Brenda Hampton of 7th Heaven fame but don’t let that deter you. The show’s second series recently started in the US so it has legs.

Seven has a big Thursday with the belated return of The Amazing Race, plus new Aussie shows TV Burp and Double Take. If the latter two programs can live up to the promos, we should be in for a laugh-filled night, even if a lot of the comedy in Double Take seems to rest on the shoulders of Paul McCarthy.

I’ve somehow managed to steer my eyes away from finding out the winner of TAR (series 14 ended in the US in May) thus far but am sure I will inadvertently see a spoiler soon. The first episode moves at a cracking pace and has two of the best challenges ever – a 70 storey bungee jump off a dam and a Swiss cheese challenge in which the giant wheels of cheese escape and cause mayhem. Hilarious!

 Add that to  the usual weird and wonderful mix of hillbillies, bimbos, bickering couples etc.  You can read more about TAR in The West on Thursday.

This Saturday at 7.30pm there’s the second season premiere of East of Everything on the ABC with Susie Porter and Richard Roxburgh (who has just been cast by Ten to play Bob Hawke). Meanwhile on SBS, those Mythbusters will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the moon landing with a special where they put conspiracy theories to the test to see whether the whole thing could have been a hoax.

I’m reserving judgment on Ten’s The 7pm Project which like any new live/news-panel/talk show needs time to find its feet (and audience).  It has had good and bad moments so far.

James’ opening night assessment of the 60 Minutes Jamie Neale story was pretty funny but Carrie’s blank moment this evening and the cross to MasterChef’s Julie cooking for a winner’s family didn’t quite cut it.

Had no idea who the entertainment reporter was so looked it up on the program website and eventually worked out she is Aleisha McCormack, a TV producer and standup comedian. 7pm Project site actually called her MacCormack but Google helped me anway. According to IMDB she was also a researcher on Glenn Robbins’ series Out of the Question.

If 7pm Project could just drop the use of the B word rhyming with witch, I think I’d be quite content. Although it’s not as family-friendly as MasterChef (which come to think of it did drop the S word a lot) it beats Home and Away and 2 1/2 Men.

Con ésta, su tercera película, el director de cine catalán Balagueró ha cambiado sustancialmente de maestro. Si en su dos primeros y alucinantes bodrios, Los Sin Nombre y Darkness, el cineasta se centró una y otra vez en hacer exhibiciones con la cámara sin preocuparse por los derroteros de la historia o la simpatía de los personajes, con Frágiles la cosa cambia un poco, porque para empezar no estamos hablando de un clon de pacotilla de Fincher o similares. Esta vez, Balagueró ha hecho una película con argumento y donde los personajes vuelven a ser lo importantes que deberían haber sido en sus películas anteriores. Además de la buena dirección y todo lo que ella conlleva,  el decorado es muy adecuado para la situación.

Su tercer y mejor film, Frágiles, cuenta la historia de Amy (una flojísima Calista Flockhart), una enfermera con un pasado oscuro que termina trabajando en un hospital infantil asediado por una presencia maligna y tenebrosa que tiene asustadito al personal, empezando por su compañera Helen (Elena Anaya, sacando petróleo de un personaje casi inexistente y demostrando que la película hubiera ganado mucho más con ella como cabeza de cartel) y terminando en Robert, el doctor interpretado por Richard Roxburgh (que no desentona, gracias a Dios). Volviendo una vez más a la inefable conexión fantasma-niño, en esta ocasión la agraciada es Maggie, una niña aquejada de fibrosis quística que es la única capaz de comunicarse con tan terrible presencia, cuya habilidad sobrenatural consiste en provocar fracturas a los niños que están en el hospital. La peli no es tan simple como la he contado aquí, pero merece la pena verla y juzgarla uno mismo.

Esta es una de las escenas donde Amy intenta tranquilizar a Maggie, que no cesa en decir que ha visto a la niña y que la dice que no quiere que los pequeños se marchen del hospital y la dejen sola.

Lo mejor de la película son ciertas partes donde se depende más de lo que dicen los personajes y de la propia estructura de la historia que de los sustos o trucos baratos y simples para intentar asustar al espectador. Además, el director se centra en contar una historia de fantasmas de forma muy sencilla y argumentada.

Lo peor es que en esta peli sigue existiendo esa manía por provocar miedo a través de paisajes oscuros y fotografías perturbadoras.

Aquí dejo el trailer…

The Wife:

If you wondered why we haven’t written about our usual weekend shows (i.e. Dollhouse, Animation Domination, ABC Sunday Night Chardonnay and Chocolate Fest, etc.) or even our usual Thursday night shows, it’s because we let our DVR collect morsels and goodies for us over the weekend as we headed to Arizona for Oakland A’s Spring Training. Let me tell you something, kids. Arizona is hot. My living room is much, much cooler. The first thing we watched when we got back was The Amazing Race, the safe way to travel to hot climates such as India without ever having to encounter abject poverty or leave your couch! Whee!

From the cold climes of Russia, racers flew to Jaipur, India, a place that I bet is as hot as Arizona, taking connecting flights through Moscow and New Dehli, therefore giving everyone a chance to catch up, which was especially helpful for Christine and Jodi, who faced a Speed Bump in this leg of the race after having avoiding Philemination last week. Once on the ground in India’s pink city, racers had to grab a taxi and head to a sacred tree outside the city, where they would receive their next clue by calling one of the red telephones guarded by an opium-smoking man who, for obvious reasons, made me think of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. Mel and Mike got off to a bit of a rough start when their taxi driver abandoned them, letting all of the other teams jet off ahead of them. Mel further endeared himself to me by not only being the most polite person to “yell” at a taxi driver in a civilized manner that still conveyed his frustration and urgency (that’s why “yell” isn’t exactly the right word), but that he also felt terrible about having to say something negative to the cabbie at all and admitted that he would feel badly about it for the rest of the day.

On their way to the sacred tree on the outskirts of Jaipur, everyone was very touched by the extreme poverty they witnessed, apparently for the first time in their lives. Even though parts of New Orleans were covered in garbage and people were living in shanties after Hurricane Katrina, I guess that’s just not as bad as seeing people who live that way when not as a result of a natural disaster. Luke cried. Cara shed some tears for all of Jaipur’s homeless animals, because she, like me, likes animals a lot more than she likes people. I remember Goth Girl Vyxen shed some tears when she visited India a few seasons back — does TAR only send racers to India so that they’ll weep about the poor? It’s starting to seem that way.

Victor and Tammy take a fast lead as the first team not only to reach the sacred tree, but also the first to quickly figure out the whole “using the phone” thing. From there, teams were told to drive to Amber Fort to get their next clue, a Road Block in which one person from each team had to care for a group of the Maharajah’s royal camels using the traditional techniques of carrying water to a trough and stacking hay. First of all, those camels sure looked purty wearing them headdresses and the like! Second of all, I sadly cannot say or hear the word maharajah without hearing this in my head. (I also think about the way Richard Roxburgh as The Duke sneers the word later in the film, with the appropriate hand gesture.)

Most people kind of sucked at following the directions on this challenge, using their water pail to carry hay when there were clearly larger hay baskets available, or, in Kisha’s case, stuffing hay down her shirt as a means of conveyance, which, though creative and functional, was definitely a strange choice. Some dude in the background got kicked by a camel, and Tammy straight up fell down, even though it was her brother who actually did this challenge. They finished first and continued their breakout lead, while Mike White worried that his dad, who chose to do this Road Block despite his age (and because Mike couldn’t do all of them) seemed to be struggling. Nonetheless, Mel White is hella gangster and finished the challenge second and, in Mike’s words, totally smoked the competition.

There is no such thing as a bad photo of Mike White.

With the Road Block complete, teams taxied to a puppet stand in the local market where they were presented with their Detour for this leg of the race:

1. Movers, in which teams pedaled rickshaws 1.5 miles to a loading dock where they would unload the nine barrels on their cart and search through the hay contained within to find a tiny silver elephant.

2. Shakers, in which teams joined up with a local street band, put on horse costumes and danced for 100 rupees.

Mark and Michael chose to move the barrels of hay, although I have no fucking clue as to why. Why, when given the choice to merely dance like an idiot for coins on the street, a task involving no skill whatsoever, would you choose a task that involved you to ride a bike for 1.5 miles through Indian traffic, and then do some manual labor and then literally search through a haystack for a tiny thing? Why would you do that? That doesn’t even make sense, strategically. I knew when they chose this that they were going to come in last, or close to last, depending on how Christine and Jodi handled their Speed Bump, which, by the way, they had to do before they could do their Road Block. The Speed Bump? Painting an elephant so that it could be just as purty for an upcoming festival as the Maharajah’s camels. Honestly, that was the best Speed Bump ever. They looked like they were having fun, they didn’t even have to paint it that accurately and, most importantly, it seemed like the elephant really had a good time getting dolled up.

Once teams completed their Road Block, they taxied to Jaigar Fort, the Pit Stop for this leg of the race, which upped the cute animal quotient in this episode considerably as it was INFESTED WITH MONKEYS, which rival only koalas as the cutest infestation ever.

1. Tammy and Victor, who won kayaks, which they promptly noted would be great for living in the Bay Area. (Fuck yeah, man. Kayaking in Drake’s Bay is AWESOME.)
2. Mel and Mike, who I continue to adore. They’re just the nicest dudes, ever.
3. Kisha and Jen.
4. Margie and Luke. (Are they ever anything but first or fourth?)
5. Cara and Jaime, which serves them right for yelling at their taxi driver and not in a Mel White kind of way.
6. Mark and Michael, beating the flight attendants by just a hair.
7. Phileminated: Christine and Jodi.

The Husband:

As aforementioned…

Me: Sick at home with what could be whooping cough.

Brain: Not working.

You: Watching this video from Disney’s The Jungle Book with Indian elephants.

Other You: Watching this even-better mash-up of that song from The Jungle Book, resulting in what it looks like when I have a coughing fit and start hallucinating.

Of the League, Sean Connery is typically charismatic as Quartermain and Stuart Townsend proves a pleasant surprise as Dorian Gray. Jason Flemying does a terrific job with Jekyll / Hyde and Tony Curran’s Invisible Man is a fun character.

Peta Wilson’s Mina Harker makes no sense and Shane West’s Tom Sawyer is useless at everything except spraying bullets aimlessly (he can’t even hold the big gun steady, grief!).

As usual, the production design and special effects guys did some terrific work. Dorian Gray looks splendid throughout, the Nautilus and Nemo’s car both look spectacular (but do not look like they could do their real-world jobs) but the best work is saved for the design and execution of My. Hyde.

¿Puede existir el musical sin música, sin canciones? ¿Puede el musical sobrevivir sin una sola coreografía, sin un número de baile? ¿Dónde reside el mérito, la magia, el buen hacer, de esta clase de cine? ¿Cuáles son los méritos que lo han convertido en un género indisoluble de la propia historia del cine, por más que a algunos nos salgan pústulas con el 99% de ellos? Esta “película” de Buzz Luhrmann, quien ha vuelto a lucirse con ese cutre manual de épica de escaparate para no iniciados que es Australia, con el guaperas Hugh Jackman y una recauchutadísima Nicole Kidman, otra a añadir a la lista de “bocas de pato”, no es, pese a su apariencia repulsivamente recargada, una película pretenciosa. Porque ofrece exactamente lo único que tiene: apariencias inconsistentes y maquillaje en exceso. Y nada más.

Colofón de una trilogía cuyas dos primeras producciones apenas tuvieron repercusión fuera de Australia, Luhrmann se inventa un París de 1900 que mezcla cierta recreación histórica con una estética entre futurista y videoclipera visualmente impactante, hay que reconocerlo, y en la que sitúa una azucarada historia de amor llena de ridículos tópicos casi ofensivos para la inteligencia: escritor bohemio que viaja a Paris para convertirse en el gran novelista del siglo que va a entrar; cabaretera, prostituta ocasional para contribuir a los fines de su marido, de la que se enamora; pretendiente rico pero malo, maloso, que quiere comprar a la mujer; tuberculosis que hace su amor imposible, y demás vómitos argumentales.

Todo ello con una estética que, para la mayor parte de la crítica que no mandó este bodrio a freír espárragos, sostenía por sí sola la calidad del film. Se ha hablado de “obra maestra absoluta”, “prodigio de originalidad”, “goce de los sentidos”, de “ritmo y riqueza visuales que arrastran al espectador, que lo seducen y atrapan con la bellísima historia de amor que sirve de telón de fondo”. Para echar la pota, vamos. Porque ese prodigio de originalidad descansa en el uso de efectos especiales para ¡¡¡ un musical !!! Nada en la trama es original, no hay un solo número de baile, ni innovador, ni moderno ni distinto; sencillamente, no hay ni uno solo que pueda llamarse coreografía, ni siquiera hay una canción que no sea una versión de algún clásico del pop o del rock lo suficientemente tuneado para que parezca irreconocible y apto para las exiguas cualidades vocales de los actores, exceptuando las compuestas específicamente para la película y que parecen escritas por el empalagoso músico de cabecera de Disney. ¿Dónde radica el prodigio de originalidad, en el uso de unos efectos especiales y en la desvirtuación del París de 1900 convertido en una orgía de colores, maquillajes y puestas en escena barrocas y recargadas hasta la extenuación que pretenden acogotar al espectador por acumulación y que naufragan en su propia pretendida magnificencia? ¿Es eso goce de los sentidos? ¿Un videoclip de dos horas y media en el que nada de lo que se ve existe de verdad, con maquillajes retocados digitalmente, un París de videojuego y una nula escasa atención a coreografías y bailes que continuamente se ocultan, eluden o camuflan con mareantes movimientos de cámara y efectos de ordenador? ¿Desde cuándo es eso un musical? ¿Bellísima historia de amor? ¿Original? ¿Alguien se ha molestado en leer algo de la literatura romántica francesa, aunque sea La dama de las camelias? ¿Es bellísimo lo que empalaga, lo que sonroja por su absoluto vacío? Realmente hay critica muy poco exigente o, en su caso, muy bien pagada, incluso de sí misma.

Engaño digital, estomagante y pretencioso despliegue de un “quiero y no puedo” que intenta ocultar sus carencias con una cortina de lujo y y adornos generados por ordenador, estética de nuevas tecnologías, narración boba, vacía, tonta hasta la vergüenza ajena, criminal caricaturización de un París idealizado en el que Toulouse-Lautrec queda reducido a la categoría de mariquita loca, colección de clásicos de la música destrozados por lamentables adaptaciones, pésima recopilación de interpretaciones inexistentes, de caretos y cuerpos que como inexpresivos autómatas se limitan a ponerse delante de la cámara para arrastrarse en la piel de unos arquetipos ocultos bajo toneladas de maquillaje virtual y vacío interior, resulta una de las películas más injustamente sobrevaloradas de todos los tiempos. Musical sin baile y sin apenas canciones propias, y con unos actores que no ofician de tales, sino como meros maniquís de una comparsa, es una aberración y una estafa.

Acusados: Buzz Luhrmann y compañía
Atenuantes: algunas de las canciones destrozadas ya eran igual de malas en su versión original
Agravantes: la caricaturización inadmisible, ridícula, estrambótica, gilipollesca, de Toulouse-Lautrec
Sentencia: culpables
Condena: un nuevo musical con las canciones de los Mojinos Escozíos y ambientado en una charca de pirañas hambrientas

Okay, time for honesty: I have no idea what to make of Baz Luhrmann. The Australian director isn’t exactly prolific, having made only four films since starting with 1992’s Strictly Ballroom. Three of those films make up the so-called “Red Curtain Trilogy” (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!). Luhrmann also directed the 2008 epic Australia. He has a tendency, at least in the Red Curtain Trilogy, to utilize modernity within different contexts to produce a dizzying spectacle of a picture. 2001’s Moulin Rouge! is perhaps the best indicator of what this interesting director can do.

Moulin Rouge! is based on Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata. The three act opera is based on a novel by Alexandre Dumas from 1848 and describes an unlikely relationship between a courtesan and a young nobleman. Luhrmann’s adaptation keeps the same framework but alters the roles of some of the characters to create a greater sense of social class differences and character.

We open in 1899 and are introduced to a young writer named Christian (Ewan McGregor). He is trying to immerse himself in the artisan community and joins a musical troupe led by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo). The troupe is trying to write a production for Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) and his Moulin Rouge cabaret. Christian helps the troupe write the show and they head to the Moulin Rouge to present the finished product to Zidler.

While in the Moulin Rouge, Christian discovers the star courtesan Satine (Nicole Kidman) and is instantly smitten with her despite all of the yelping she does. She is to spend the night with the wealthy Duke (Richard Roxburgh). The Duke wants to purchase the Moulin Rouge and everything in it. In a bit of confusion, Satine ends up in a room in a giant elephant with Christian instead of the Duke and the two rapidly develop affection for one another. But the error leads to complications, including that of the Duke’s desire to own Satine and her ailing health, and the story veers inexorably towards tragedy.

Luhrmann has said that his Moulin Rouge! was largely inspired by Bollywood pictures and the grand pageantry involved. The jumbled approach to the music, the use of flashy colours and dizzying noise, and the spectacle piled on top of spectacle attracted the director and he decided to infuse his own film with those elements. As such, Moulin Rouge! is an appallingly confused, kitschy, flamboyant, ear-splitting, big-headed picture. It is both endlessly gruelling and endlessly fascinating.

Luhrmann’s desire to have the film relate to modern audiences is mutually mesmerizing and maddening. To accomplish this, he utilized modern music and spliced it together. It took Luhrmann almost two years to secure the rights to all of the songs he abuses, making a finished product that conceitedly and brazenly uses bits of Nirvana alongside bits of Madonna and Elton John for a multifarious stew of exasperation and culture.

The performances are alright at times, really quite good at other times, and really quite bad at other times (spot a trend here, yet?). McGregor, Kidman, and the rest do an admirable job conducting themselves in the middle of the madness. They sing well enough, straining through some songs and elegantly delving into others passionately. The chemistry between Kidman and McGregor is shaky and not overly convincing, and yet there is something magical about that uncertainty that drives the picture.

Moulin Rouge! is a film for lunatics. It is dizzyingly shot with every music video trick in the book and it often overdoes it with camera tricks, yelps and squeaks, and musical blunders. As I continue to think about the picture, I continue to wonder whether I liked it or not. And at this point, the only real safe answer is to say that I’m really not quite sure. Perhaps no other film in recent memory has polarized me internally like this and, for the sake of Luhrmann’s ugly but fascinating Moulin Rouge!, that has to be worth…something?

5.1/10

Trailer:

Sadly, this episode has all the shortcomings of both John Woo action and James Bond genres and virtually none of the strengths and, in the end, comes across as an action-lite, seriously below par Bond movie at double the budget and half the entertainment. The blame for this must surely lie at the hands of producer / star Tom Cruise, writer Robert Towne (a man responsible for what is rated one of the greatest original screenplays of all time, [Chinatown]) and, most of all, director John Woo.

TOM CRUISE – PRODUCER / STAR

As producer of the movie, Cruise could and should have kept tighter grip on the spiralling budget (reported as anything between $150 and $180 million). What has ended up on-screen is a significant lack of bang for your buck, a movie that consistently builds expectations and, too often, does not deliver the required payoff. This is most obvious in the film’s opening sequence where a spectacular plane crash into a mountain is built up to and then never delivered. The movie returns to the site for some seriously unconvincing aircraft wreckage. This is, thankfully, the worst occurrence of this build-up with no punchline but there is only one scene, the motorcycle chase, that fully delivers the promised follow-through.

As star, however, things are different. Tom Cruise is in good form here doing, reportedly, 95% of his own stunts including some spectacular mountain climbing stuff at a couple of points during the movie and looking rather cool through all the deliriously marvellous slo-mo gunplay. While he doesn’t bother to do any acting (he clearly saw this as a kind of break after the emotional exertions of [Eyes Wide Shut] and [Magnolia]), he remains bizarrely charismatic as IMF agent Ethan Hunt and, on numerous occasions, manages to bring more to his role than the words he is asked to speak.

ROBERT TOWNE – SCREENWRITER

Writer Robert Towne has fashioned a good enough storyline for this genre of action movie but has populated it with lack-lustre lines, no wit whatsoever and very obviously second-hand action sequences (with the exception of one, the motorcycle chase). His other main fault is the overuse of the brilliant full-face disguise. In the original movie, it was used once at the beginning of the movie to set up the final surprise twist right at the end. It should have been used in similar manner here because, by using it several times all the way through, the audience will be way ahead of the movie on at least three occasions (and the full-face disguise is only used four times) and that is a place the audience should never, ever, ever be.

JOHN WOO – DIRECTOR

At fault in the biggest possible way, however, is director John Woo who yet again demonstrates the same awesome strengths and oh-so-frustrating weaknesses that is present in the majority of his work. John Woo is frequently acclaimed as the world’s greatest action director, which he clearly isn’t, but it remains the fashionable opinion (both James Cameron and Steven Spielberg are comfortably better than Woo – for example, see [Terminator 2: Judgement Day] and [Raiders of the Lost Ark] – even on their bad days – for example, see [True Lies] and [Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom]). Still, when Woo is good, he is very, very good and in this movie he pulls out two outstanding sequences, one of which is so good it makes the entire movie worth sitting through.

The first scene occurs about halfway through the movie and is a John Woo shootout in a laboratory featuring slo-mo dives, twists and one-handed and two-handed gunplay. The sequence is brilliantly photographed and charismatically performed by Cruise. This scene is undercut, however, by a complete lack of tension which is clearly supposed to be there.

The other sequence closes the movie and is an extended motorcycle / car chase that follows a very reasonable set of mini-action sequences in an underground storage facility. When Cruise jumps onto the motorcycle things really hot up and one of the best action sequences of any film takes place. It is worth putting up with the rest of the movie just to watch this sequence. A few years ago I saw a motorcycle stuntman perform all these incredible feats using his motorcycle including stoppies, tyre burns and even jumping off the bike while it is moving at high speed and ’skiing’ alongside or behind it. I thought then, wouldn’t these moves be fabulous if incorporated into a Bond movie. Well, my wish has been partially fulfilled because they are all present and spectacularly correct in this movie. The sequence features a couple of beautiful explosions and culminates in what promises to be a Crusades-style jousting standoff with the protagonists on motorcycles instead of steeds. This is beautifully filmed, thoroughly exciting and very, very loud. It is, without doubt, the best sequence in the entire movie and one of the all-time greatest chase sequences in movie history. It makes you wonder why the producers and directors didn’t incorporate more action into the story…

Unfortunately, the answer is quite clear and is rather terrifying. Woo comes from a background of making movies in Hong Kong where there is a very narrow field of film-making. Martial arts action movies were king, then Woo added the gun-toting martial arts action movie to Hong Kong’s output. Though Woo clearly does love the action in movies, it is equally clear that he wishes to spread his wings as a filmmaker and since he has being making movies since 1975 ([Hand of Death]) that is entirely understandable. His most frequent quote go along the lines of "I shoot action sequences like dance scenes in classic musicals" and "I want to make a musical." Despite Woo’s reputation as an action maestro, he clearly wants to do something else as well. Sadly, Woo has very little skill as a storyteller and his desire to do something other than action is, frankly, terrifying. Woo has only made one unequivocally decent film with American money: [Face/Off]. Whether he ever makes another of equal quality is very, very debatable. Woo sees this movie (according to the DVD commentary track) as a story about love and hate. He may see it that way but that is not what has materialised on-screen. The emotional impact Woo is clearly striving to get is completely non-existent and this renders his use of Thandie Newton completely obselete. Her character has no value in this film whatsoever, not because of Newton’s lack of ability or even because of her lines, but because of Woo’s failures.

OTHER BITS…

Other aspects of the movie include the technical accomplishment and the support cast. The technical accomplishment is good for physical effects (like stuff being blown up etc.) but the composite effects are generally far more ropey. This is rather surprising given the huge budget of the movie and considering that, admittedly unusual as it is, the effects of the first [Mission: Impossible] movie were perfect. Literally perfect.

The support cast is really wasted. Dougray Scott tries to be menacing but doesn’t succeed. The script tells us that "every hero needs a villain… every superhero needs a supervillain." Well, Scott’s character is not a supervillain. Thandie Newton fares quite well as the world’s cutest professional thief but gets dumped by the script about halfway through. She is very, very cute and looks fabulous throughout but is clearly frequently unconvinced. The most frustrating waste is probably Ving Rhames (who bags a nice posy "and" credit) who simply sits in front of a computer screen for virtually the entire movie. The only time he gets to do anything else (get shot and fire an explosive shell from a helicopter) his potential is revealed… then quickly tucked back into place. Anthony Hopkins makes an uncredited appearance as Hunt’s boss but, unlike his work in The Mask of Zorro, he is half-hearted and looks fed-up to be there. He looks like he is simply doing it for the money (he probably was!) but even in this disinterested mode, Hopkins still manages to deliver the movie’s best lines ("She’s a woman. She’s got all the training she needs.", "This isn’t Mission: Difficult, Mr. Hunt, it’s Mission: Impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park.") so brilliantly that his part takes up virtually the entire trailer and becomes the only slightly memorable dialogue from a two hour movie with rather too much talking.

There is also a notable lack of invention in the movie with many, many sequences feeling like pale copies of other, better movies; it doesn’t even come across as homage. For instance, the opening plane hijack / crash has been done to death in numerous other films but at least with those we got a plane crash or emergency landing as the punchline. As mentioned previously, we get nothing here. We also have a mountain climbing sequence reminiscent of Cliffhanger but this is brilliantly done here and it looks very much like Mr. Cruise doing his own stunts (reportedly he did). The brief car chase that brings Cruise’s and Newton’s characters together is a blatant and non-witty rip-off of Goldeneye’s Bond’s Aston / Xenia’s Ferrari confrontation. And talking of Goldeneye, the entire plot featuring a rogue agent sounds suspiciously similar but without any of the attempts to deliver surprise or tension. That said, you would have be paying very, very close attention to be able to follow the plot at all and many people may not even realise that Ambrose is, in fact, a jealous and lesser IMF agent eager for his own day out of the shadow of Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. Another Bond film visited is A View to a Kill with major sequences taking place at a horse-racing track for no reason whatsoever. Of course, the entire super-virus genre has been and gone. Wolfgang Petersen’s 1995 Outbreak managed to create genuine tension when one of its lead characters was infected and left with only a day to live. There is no similar tension here when one of the lead characters gets infected. There is even an embarrassingly uninvolving copy of the classic waterfall scene in Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans where Daniel Day-Lewis tells Madeleine Stowe to ’stay alive, I will find you.’ Other people have also noted that the plot is identical to Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious.This is a film with a strong sense of déjà vù.

All this analysis isn’t to say that the movie completely lacks entertainment value. Even though the audience will spend significant amounts of time waiting for the movie to catch up with them, Woo’s searing pace does help drag the movie through its lesser parts and his slo-mo style helps us appreciate the occasional good bit. It remains entertaining and perfectly watchable throughout but it is disappointing because the first movie promised a franchise that could deliver so much more. It’s very nearly the Wild Wild West (one outstanding action sequence surrounded by tedious rubbish) of the year 2000 but, thankfully, it is not.

Media Type: High Definition DVD

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