Memento Rouge
Movies from 2001
Originally written: June 2001
Moulin Rouge
Memento
Finding Forrester
Save the Last Dance
The Mexican
Ghost Dog
Chicken Run
Magnolia
The one piece of art that is rebounding around my mind and imagination is Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge. Many movies are more than the sum of their parts; some less. MR is the sum of its parts. And a little more. The film is an amalgam of a series of vignettes loosely connected one of the most basic of plots, with a very simple story. But that doesn't explain the visceral and basic appeal of the film.
The story is quite straight forward: a penniless writer comes to Paris, falls in with a group of Bohemians and through them meets and falls in love with the leading star of the Moulin Rouge, Paris' leading nightclub. She eventually reciprocates and the lovers have to overcome the opposition of her boss and his noble patron before the inevitable tragic ending.
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In true post-modern style Luhrmann tells his story through a series of brief scenes which are brilliantly intercut with successive and inter-related scenes. He samples pop culture for his dialogue, as well as the songs which intersperse the action. But he also samples styles. The film takes, above all, the form of classic opera, with the story developed through song. But he also uses aspects of Shakespeare, Gilbert and Sullivan, musical comedy and modern music video and dance music. The pop culture (and other) references come so quickly that some viewers will be confused or concerned that they have missed something important. That's not something that I worried about too much as scenes succeeded each other with greater delights presented.
The early scenes, outside the Moulin Rouge, introduce Christian, the writer (Ewan McGregor), to the rude mechanicals, a group of Bohemian artists led by Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo). In a breath-taking series of jump cuts and special effect shots over and through Paris, Luhrmann establishes the pace of the movie which really takes off when we're taken inside the nightclub. There we have the chorus girls introduced by an up-tempo Lady Marmalade; a swirling counter-point of the men who visit the club; and then the Cancan, overdubbed with a rap by the club's owner Zidler (Jim Broadbent). The set of scenes climaxes with the introduction of the star of the Moulin Rouge, Satine (Nicole Kidman) who enters on a trapeze, and sings a medley that segues from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna. We also meet the Duke (Richard Roxburgh) who lusts after Satine and will do anything to possess her.
The flow of the story, which takes us through confusion of identity, a let's-put-on-a-show sub-plot and the lovers' travails and the plottings of the Duke and Zidler, is sufficient. But certain scenes stand out: the development of the play within a play, to the Can Can tune from Offenbach's Orpheus and Eurydice; the sung dialogue between Satine and Christian utilising a variety of love songs; the Like a Virgin duet between Zidler and the Duke; and the tango, based on Roxanne and seguing into a massed dance. The strength of these great scenes outweighs the occasional less succesSful scene and a few performances that aren't quite up to snuff.
McGregor is surprisingly strong in the central role of Christian and his is an outstanding performance in what was billed as Kidman's movie. He surprised me by the strength and subtlety of his performance. From previous experience with him I had not expected that he would so easily draw and keep the focus of a major movie, or be able to carry one in what is basically an ingenu (there has to be a male counterpart for the ingenue) part. Nicole looks the part but isn't quite up to the demands on her voice or her acting ability. Still, within the context of the drama, she survives despite this. Broadbent finds just the right over-the-top level for Zidler and Roxburgh is a good lip-smacking villain. The major weakness is Leguizamo - so good as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet - whose Toulouse-Lautrec is a lisping fool, rather than an innovative leader of the avant-garde. There are a host of familiar faces in the ensemble, including Garry McDonald as a Bohemian; Caroline O'Connor and Christ ine Anu, inter alia, in the chorus; and the likes of Johnny Lockwood among the good time boys.
The reviews of Moulin Rouge have been either unstinting in their praise or largely unimpressed but I think that they have generally missed the operatic quality and the range and depth of the plot of the movie. At the start, Christian and the Bohemians are afficiandos of the Bohemian belief system: Truth, Beauty, Freedom and, above all, Love. The Moulin Rouge is the centre of cynicism and hedonism. Its inhabitants courtesans at best, prostitutes at worst. But Christian's love converts first Satine (in the love-song duet noted above) and then, one by one, the other Rougers. Zidler last of all. In fact all except the Duke who, in losing Satine, remains the one character unconverted to the love.
Luhrmann starts and finishes the movie with one of my favourite songs, Nature Boy: "The greatest thing you'll ever know is just to love and be loved in return." It's a theme his brave and experimental movie explores in detail and one which rewards the viewer with a major buzz from a roller-coaster ride in which the director dares in ways which most directors would avoid and succeeds often enough to entertain and amaze.
Remember Sammy Jankis
Memento is a another example of the recent renaissance of the script. It is a brilliantly written film noir with a twist. It's played backwards. This sounds more complex than it plays on the screen.
Leonard (Guy Pearce) cannot remember things subsequent to the murder of his wife. His memory washes out every 10-15 minutes. He is aware of his problem because, before the trauma, as an insurance investigator, he had dealt with a similar case and has a tattoo to remind him of Sammy Jankis, the man who could not remember. He is trying to track his wife's killer and inscribes his clues on is body with a further series of tattoos and carries a series of aides memoires, including polaroids on which he inscribes notes as they come to him. He trusts his notes and tattoos, even as we learn how he came by them and that he shouldn't.
The film opens with a death (shown by a polaroid print fading, in reverse of the usual development process). Then in a series of 5 - 10 minute scenes, each placed earlier than the previous, we track his movements back to see why he did it. There are also a series of flashback scenes which track forward until the two sets of scenes meet in the middle. It's a method of narrative that actually works far better than it should.
There are two other major characters, each of whom we are in doubt about, in true noir fashion. Teddy (Joe Pantaliano) is either Leonard's best friend or his worst enemy and we're never quite sure which; Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) appears to be assisting Leonard for good reasons but, like any femme in a noir film, her motives and actions become more cloudy, the more we know of her. As the clerk at the motel he occupies knows, it is easy to exploit Leonard because even if you confess the exploitation, Leonard has forgotten 15 minutes later.
Memento works for two reasons - the excellently constructed script by writer-director Christopher Nolan and the brilliant performance by Guy Pearce. The script device of playing scenes in reverse order and intermixing briefly cut scenes from earlier episodes (usually telephone calls to Leonard and what he recalls from before the trauma) gives the audience the clues it needs to solve the puzzle. Pearce's rivetting performance comes as no real shock. After a series of roles in Australian movies including The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, he has been outstanding in American films such as LA Confidential and Rules of Engagement. Here he gives credibility and depth to a character that is almost without emotion but who draws our attention and, ultimately, our sympathy.
Memento won't be seen by all that many on first release but its reputation will grow - it will become one of those 'cult classics' that everyone will 'love'.
Bits and pieces
On first release we have also seen:
Finding Forrester, yet another take on the strange self-imposed isolation of JD Salinger after Catcher in the Rye. This time Sean Connery is the reclusive author and a young black adolescent finds him and learns from him - though how a hermit for three decades can have so much knowledge about courtship techniques is a bit of a worry. F Murray Abraham is the kid's nemesis but, of course, Connery and kid overcome him in the climax. I enjoyed it far more than I expected to, largely because the kid was so convincing.
Save the Last Dance was supposed to be a dance movie but the dancers couldn't dance and the script wasn't worth much. This was your basic white-ballet-girl meets black-hip-hop-dancer and learns the synthesis script. Too bad no-one thought to include decent dialogue. Or dance.
The Mexican is supposed to be a star vehicle for Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. In fact, James Gandolfini, showing he's learned from the mob types he's played in The Sopranos, steals it wholesale. It's almost worth it for his performance. But not quite.
We have also had a chance to catch up on some videos:
Ghost Dog is a complete wank. One of those movies where the cognescenti have confused slowness for art and cliche for depth. Avoid.
Chicken Run is an Aardman claymation full-length cartoon. It's very, very silly and very enjoyable. A complete hoot.
Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson's overly long attempt at an Altman movie, is much less than the sum of its parts. A series of vaguely interlinked stories, 'highlighted' by a sub-plot involving a dying Jason Robards and his estranged son (Tom Cruise), this movie doesn't work on any level. So desperate is the director that he requires an amphibian (and unexplained) deus ex machina to resolve his plot. Cruise proves again that he just cannot act and not even good supporting performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C Reilly can save the film. The only joke I enjoyed was that Henry Gibson's character, a philandering and wealthy gay, was called 'Thurston Howell'.
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]