Moulin Rouge Review

 

Review on Moulin Rouge

Without searching about the storyline of the movie, Moulin Rouge, I chose this movie because of an attractive movie poster. And the movie was quite interesting, too.

                    Moulin Rouge is the movie about the life time of a French artist, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. In the movie, he breaks his leg as he falls down from the staircase. In order to fix his broken leg, he even take a surgery, but the bones do not knit together. So he spends his life with crippled legs which does not grow anymore. This gives a huge impact on his life and painting. Instead of spending his day in the bed, he decides to go to Paris to pursue his dream of being an artist. Living alone in Paris, he goes to the bar, Moulin Rouge, almost everyday. At the Moulin Rouge, he draws dancers and the owner of the place, who saw his drawings, asks him to paint a poster for the place promising him to give free alcohol for a month as a return. While returning home, he helps the girl named Marie Charlet from a quarrel between her and a policeman. She stays at his house spending his money. But he becomes upset about her behavior of not telling him anything when she stays outside and not hanging out with him anywhere. He accepts her several times but eventually kicks her out from the house. After then, he stops drawing and become more alcoholic. His mother sees him in a terrible condition and tells him to search for the girl. He finds Marie who is seriously drunk, but he fails to bring her back. When he comes back home, he suddenly starts painting of the requested poster in the dark under the light of stars and the moon. The light of the house gradually lightens up as he finishes his poster. The poster become immensely popular all over Paris. By then, he meets Myriamme Hyam who was standing at the edge of the bridge over the Seine River. They later meet again by a friend of her, Jane. Telling that Myriamme is a great fan of him, Myriamme and Toulouse-Lautrec begin to hang out together, exhibiting the Louvre Museum for example. But after hearing the marriage of Myriamme, he becomes a terrible alcoholic. He passes away as he again falls down from the staircase when he is drunk. At the end, he sees the image of the dance at the Moulin Rouge.

        Toulouse-Lautrec and Marie Charlet

 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in
the movie










Moulin Rouge(1890) painted by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec ->

                                 Moulin Rouge: La Goulue (1891)


                    Before watching the movie Moulin Rouge, I did not expect anything from it. I thought I was going to be boring like a documentary movie. But, I realized that I was wrong while watching it. It showed how far an artist's life can be miserable but can be astonishingly creative and artistic. Even though Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had lots of unfortunate accidents since he was young, I think that all of those affected himself and his artwork. If he did not break his leg, he wouldn't have decided to go to Paris suddenly. And if he did not go to the Moulin Rouge, he wouldn't become renowned.

In the movie, his mother asked him to go back to the previous home where is in rural. So he told her:

" I have a friend, Maman (His mother). He is a painter too. His name is Vincent van Gogh. He paints wheat fields hot with the sun of Provence. A man can stare at one of his canvases and go blind with the light. I cannot paint his hills... but he cannot paint my girls of the Moulin Rouge. I am a painter of the streets and of the glitter."

I found from the movie that one who has a great will of doing something till the one's death is a lucky person, though the one might spend a hard life. Even Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had such a miserable life, he could stand up again and bear in the middle because he had his painting and art. He was a fortunate person who could see what he admired until he died, the Moulin Rouge.