Five Minutes of "Moulin Rouge!"

Baz Luhrmann’s magical and electrifying musical motion picture Moulin Rouge! is a celebratory ode to love and romance. The story takes place in Paris, France in 1899, but it is different than most musicals in the fact that the music is anachronistic with the times. More contemporary rock and pop songs are used in the score. However, Luhrmann makes it fit in beautifully, almost as if these songs were written in the day of the Moulin Rouge.
When I think of the “radical romance” as a whole, my mind automatically goes to Moulin Rouge! To begin with, it is the story of a man who falls for, none other than, a courtesan. This, to me, is a total departure from the “typical” romantic movie. Indeed, it follows the classic formula of “boy-meets-girl-and-they-fall-in-love,” but it’s radical in the sense that the woman is a high-class prostitute. Also, the ending, (which I will not give away for those who have not seen it,) is tragic. When one thinks of romance films, one usually thinks of the two lovers going off happily ever after. Not so in Moulin Rouge!, which establishes itself from the very beginning as a contemporary take on the myth of Orpheus, whose story also ends in tragedy. Therefore, I feel that Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! epitomizes the idea of the “radical romance.”