Moulin Rouge

These notes were provided by Bill as an introduction to the Film Group's discussion on 1st April 2026

This introduction has caused me no end of trouble. Moulin Rouge is one of my favourite films, but I have found it very difficult to say why. I happen to like its spectacle, which puts me in a very different camp to others who loath it. A film journalist writing in Telegraph recently dismissed the film as a ‘novelty ringtone’. It helps that I like the spectacle and much of its silliness, and quickly got used to bits of modern song lyrics being used as dialogue. But the bling, as it were, would not be enough to keep me coming back. Many years ago, Yvette and I saw a Trevor Nunn production of Anything Goes. That was just spectacle. I cannot remember a thing about it; I had no emotional reaction. My reaction to Moulin Rouge is altogether different, but why? I have concluded that my problem stems from the intense use of visual symbolism, a Baz Luhrmann speciality. I have a reaction to this symbolism which is intuitive, from the heart rather than from the head. And that is why I struggle to find the words adequately to explain why Moulin Rouge is one of my favourite films.

I am OK at the start, with the prologue so to speak. There are plenty of clues to where I am going. The film is in the musical theatre tradition: the red curtains in the front of a stage; an orchestra tuning up. The energetic conductor is great fun, and gives a taste of the film’s zaniness. When the curtains pull back, a character later revealed to be Toulouse Lautrec is singing the plaintive song which starts, ‘there was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy’. Up comes a picture to identify the strange, enchanted boy, who turns out to be Christian. Toulouse’s song continues to its message: ‘The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return’. I now associate that message with Christian, who taps it out on his Underwood typewriter. Christian takes over the narration. His distress is explained by the death of the woman he loved. I now know I am watching a tragedy. He goes on to say that the woman was Satine, a courtesan and the star of the Moulin Rouge, a night club and bordello. A series of pictures shows the Moulin Rouge lit up with can-can dancers and the man I later learn is the owner, Harold Zidler. But there are also shots of a dark and derelict Moulin Rouge. I am therefore forewarned that something goes wrong. In a later scene, I discover that Satine has a cough. I guess she is going to die of tuberculosis. I also spot a bird cage in her room. I guess she is probably trapped. Yvette pointed out the similarity with La Traviata. She was correct; I had guessed La Boheme. All these clues mean I can follow the film even though I did not know that it is based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and his attempt to rescue his wife in the Underworld. Also, a tragedy.

To keep my remarks short, so that we are not asked to leave the pub, I am going to have to assume you are familiar with the main plot. I’ll start with five quick observations about the early scenes and then focus on my attempt to understand the visual symbolism in one notable sequence and how that relates to the film’s underlying themes.

On the opening scenes, I note the likely importance of the four Bohemian ‘ideals’ of Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love (not necessarily in that order) but at this stage of the film I do not know what they are supposed to convey. That is a puzzle to be solved.

Second, I consider Zidler to be a bad man even though he comes across as fun and sometimes kindly. He uses Satine’s ambition to control her and, worse, later sells her into a form of domestic slavery under the control of the Duke. I think of Zidler as another Green Fairy. After some alluring wiggling, the Green Fairy flies at us as she exits, screaming and with orange red eyes. She is an evil sprite. Zidler can also fly, despite the absence of wings, and he wiggles. He roars a lot. His colour is often an orangey red.

Third, Zidler is right to fear the Duke. The Duke has a cut-glass English accent, so by convention he is a swine. He holds the deeds of the Moulin Rouge as leverage. Zidler knows that if he fails to deliver Satine to the Duke, he and the Moulin Rouge will be finished. This gives me a clue about the reason for its derelict state shown in the film’s prologue.

Fourth, the film goes beyond the typical conventions of a musical. Musicals are often unrealistic. People do not sing and dance as part of their normal conversation. But the Moulin Rouge goes further; it is also a fantasy. People do things that are physically impossible – flying, dancing on clouds - and impossible things happen. There is a singing moon (may be shades of George Méliès early French film, ‘A Trip to the Moon’, also a fantasy). I know that the rules of physical reality do not necessarily apply.

Finally, the early scenes see the beginnings of a play within a play: Spectacular Spectacular. The characters write what we see as the inner play to reflect their predicament and desires. The Duke is the evil Maharaja (Zidler notably insists on playing the part); the princess and the penniless sitar player represent Satine and Christian. Why does the Duke fail to spot what is clearly going on in the rehearsals? He is not dumb: “I am way ahead of you Zidler”. The answer I believe is that he has been bedazzled by Satine. I recall the flash that goes across his eyes.

To explore the visual symbolism, I want to take a sequence at the end of the elephant scene. I think it is a pivotal sequence which helps set up the contest between two ideas of what love means. In the elephant scene, you will recall that Satine reveals that she would like to fly away. There follows the sing off on the top of the elephant. He professes his love; she initially resists - “You crazy fool, I’ll not give in to you” - but finally succumbs to Christian’s pleas. For the last love song, they are placed in the opulent bedroom on the top floor of the elephant. They are standing facing each other in front of a heart-shaped window. We are viewing them from inside the room from the chest up. Outside the window, we can see the windmill and, in the distance, the garret and its balcony. When the sequence begins the couple sing the Dolly Parton number ‘I will always love you’. Christian sings first; then Satine; last, both in harmony. This duet is a familiar expression of love. But I am also presented with a slew of visual symbols. As the couple begin to sing, a star burst fills the window and they begin to revolve with a silver material backcloth pulsating with light.

The star burst and pulsating backcloth seem quite straightforward to interpret: symbolic perhaps of the start of the love affair, or the awakening of Satine’s heart, or their two hearts beating as one. But why the choice of silver? The answer may a practical one – silver is a useful reflective material if you want to create a light effect. But it may also be that silver has symbolic connotations - the protection of a silver moon. Are the couple being cradled? The illusion is that they are surrounded by the silver backcloth, a physical impossibility given their position in the room. Also physically impossible is the fact that they are revolving. Why so? I think the important point is that they are tracing out circles, three in fact. The circle and the number three have long represented notions of infinite love and unity.

When they have completed the circles and come to a halt, they kiss. They are shot in close up. At this point, the sequence could easily have dissolved to a new scene but instead we find ourselves flying out through the window. We witness a celebration. We see the moon singing joyfully; there are fireworks and silver stars cascading down the dark night sky. On the sound track, the timpani are sounding boom, boom, boom. We do not stop there. As the music fades, we fly under a turning sail of the windmill, which acts like a clapper board to cut us off from the preceding action. We arrive in front of Toulouse standing on the balcony. He provides an epilogue, singing “How wonderful life is now you’re in the world”. As the camera slowly pans in, we see he is crying. I thought he could be crying out of loneliness. Later in the film he says how he aches for what Christian and Satine have. But I do not think Toulouse is sad in this instance. If he were, I think he would be clothed in dark weeds. Instead, he is wearing a richly embroidered coat. I think Toulouse’s tears are tears of joy.

I then notice that Toulouse has broken the fourth wall; he is looking directly into the camera. To whom is he singing? Satine and Christian are out of sight. Toulouse could be making a general observation about Christian’s presence. But in that case Toulouse’s address should be in the third person, ‘How wonderful life is now he is in the world’. If that sounds implausibly pedantic, I remember that the lyrics are the dialogue and later in the film the choice of third over second person proves critical to the Duke’s ‘I see’ moment when he realises what is going on in Spectacular Spectacular. So, I think that Toulouse is welcoming something else. My guess is that he is celebrating the manifestation in the Underworld of the four Bohemian ideals: Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love. What Toulouse is seeing may be an idea in his mind’s eye or it might be an incorporate, immanent force. I do not think it matters what form the four ideals take, but it does matter what they convey. The arrival of the ideals is made possible by the union of Satine and Christian. I can understand now that I am witnessing a particular vision of love. It is one freely entered into and based on the truth: Satine truly and freely loves Christian and he her. I think Toulouse’s tears of joy mean he finds this idea in his head or the immanent force both beautiful and inspirational. It lifts him up where he wishes he could be, so that he too can be a hero. I think Yvette correctly describes this kind of love as selfless. It is also transcendent.

This idea of love contrasts with the one the Duke has in mind. Later in the film, he finds out that Satine does not love him; she has not been truthful. But he still wants her, he regards her as his possession. He asks during the argument over Spectacular Spectacular why the Princess should not want to marry the Maharajah? The Maharajah is offering the Princess a lifetime of security. The Duke insists that the Princess marries the Maharaj and rejects Bohemian ‘dogma’, as he calls it. The Duke’s notion of love is not one based on truth or on freedom of choice. It is based on a lie and on coercion. To the outside beholder, the Duke’s notion of ‘real love’ appears ugly.

After the argument over Spectacular Spectacular, the film becomes very dark, literally so. I think the light is being sucked out because Christian’s jealousy is destroying what he and Satine had brought into the Underworld. Christian becomes an arse. He is never violent, however. Unlike the jealous Duke. In a ghastly scene, he tries to rape Satine.

I am now going to fast forward to the climax on stage when Satine and Christian are reunited. The four Bohemian ideals are celebrated. There is a promise of enduring love in the only new song in the film, ‘Come what may’. Their love has overcome all adversities. If I am correct about the inspirational nature of this love, other characters should be inspired to be better than they have been. And I think that is what happens. The dancer who had betrayed Satine to the Duke, I suppose out of spite, is instrumental in stopping the assassination of Christian. She looks pleased when she succeeds. The previously menacing assassin does a sand dance. And then there is Zidler, who performs the most charitable act of all. He instinctively punches the armed Duke who is intent on murder. As Zidler staggers back, he does not look scared by the prospect of bankruptcy. I think he looks surprised by his own act of charity. To celebrate, there is an impossibly loud ding as an impossibly large handgun flies an impossibly long distance to hit the Eiffel Tower.

I find one of the satisfactions of the film is that Satine and Christian are changed by these events. Satine has changed from being a material girl – she understandably sought protection as well as fame as an actress - to someone who wanted to fly away for love. And she sacrifices herself for Christian. By hurting him to save him, she greatly hurts herself. She tries to save him twice in fact: first from the assassin and second from himself. After his denunciation of her, Christian looks broken. He has lost his faith in love which defines his reason for living. The key piece of dialogue which echoes his father’s, is, “Thank you for curing me of my ridiculous obsession with love”. Satine saves him from self-destruction with her forgiving declaration of love. I think these sacrifices and her courage make her inevitable death all the more poignant.

Christian is also a changed character. He is no longer naïve. He still believes in the four ideals. But he has also matured. I think he has learnt that love is not just Romantic Love: Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire dancing on clouds under a starry starry night with a moon singing along. Thanks to the example of Satine’s sacrifices, Christian has experienced the power of Selfless Love. He also has the pain of guilt and loss. The fact that the line he invented for Spectacular Spectacular is repeated at the end of the film suggests to me that Christian has learnt the deep meaning behind the message, ‘the greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return’. When he arrived in Paris, he could write musical romantic comedy. The mature Christian can write a tragedy, the one we have been watching all along.

There is a final point about the role of the play within a play. Spectacular Spectacular is written in a way that cleverly foretells many of the events on its opening night. I can enjoy that joke but there is also something else. We see both the performance of Spectacular Spectacular and its audience. The audience is expecting light entertainment but what it gets is impassioned drama. If we are taken by the film, we too see impassioned drama and have emotional responses similar to those experienced by the audience we see. It is as if that audience holds up cards saying how we all react: ‘gasp’, ‘rejoice’, ‘laugh’ and so on. We have mirrored audience participation, one of the many feats of the screen play.

So those are my attempts to interpret the film. I realise I have not conveyed any of its visual excitement and daftness or talked about the high quality of the acting, singing, dancing and the great costumes. Whether you like those things or find the film overwhelming is, I think, largely a matter of taste. As human beings, we respond differently to what are objectively the same sets of pixels and sound waves. But even if you do not like all the bling, I wanted to argue that the film is more than a novelty ringtone. I think Moulin Rouge has a ring of truth about the power of selfless love to inspire, to unite and to heal.