where the rich played with the young and beautiful
Moulin Rouge! is a movie. I don't mean that the obvious way because, well, that's obvious. I mean that the movie is almost constantly separating itself from the usual emersion and suspension of disbelief. It throws its contents in your face and then takes everything overboard so you cannot help but keep looking even as you recognize every falsity. The opening shot, for example, is a theater proscenium and the orchestra conductor conducts the Fox logo after the curtain opens. This framing device is deliberately artificial. But, that one's obvious. Less obvious is Toulouse's role as pseudo-narrator. The opening lines are his, and yet the rest of the movie tells us that it is Christian telling us this story. This means that Toulouse is telling us the story of Christian telling the story of, well, all the events we see. And, Toulouse is within that proscenium. Get into "Spectacular Spectacular" and you're several story levels deep. And, Christian is effect...