Film Analysis: Decoding Emotions and Art in Moulin Rouge (2001)

This essay delves into an analysis of the film Moulin Rouge, exploring the importance of art and its central position in human lives. It examines the film's portrayal of love, sacrifice, and various emotions, such as passion and affection, as conveyed through the tragic love story between Satine and Christian. The essay discusses how the director, Baz Luhrmann, uses contrasting personalities and musical drama to highlight themes of love, selflessness, and the obstacles faced by women. It also emphasizes the movie's open interpretation, encouraging the audience to engage their imagination and decipher the embedded messages. The analysis further explores the characters' unique traits and their impact on conveying the film's underlying themes, concluding with a reflection on the enduring impact of art on contemporary society. Desklib provides similar solved assignments and study resources for students.

Running head: FILM ANALYSIS
Film Analysis
Name of the Student
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Author Note

1FILM ANALYSIS
In the materialistic globalized world of today, art is central to the soul of every living
individual. The contemporary generation is too much invested in the worldly affairs and material
things of the world. The people are no longer interested in enjoying the simple things of life such
as taking the time to soak in the beauty of nature and engaging in leisure activities. They feel that
the more time they spend not working which gives them the finances to satisfy their material
wants, the more depressing their life will become. This has a serious adverse consequence on the
lives of the people. Over working makes an individual tired and does not give the much required
rest to the body. This results in decreased productivity of work, which, in turn, affects the work
of the individual in his or her work place. This is where the importance of art comes in. The
fundamental importance of art has increased significantly in the modern times because of such a
nature of society where the people are only concerned with fulfilling their materialistic needs and
desires (Laine). Art helps to give the individual the requisite break and aids in the calming of the
body from all the stress and anxiety. This essay seeks to discuss the importance of art and the
central position occupied by it within the lives of the human beings. For this purpose, the essay
looks into the movie of the romantic genre. Known as Moulin Rouge (2001). The paper further
analyze the various specific emotions revealed within the film and analyzes them in depth of
how they are received by the audience. The paper concludes with the impact of art on the lives of
human beings in the contemporary society.
Art is the mirror image of the present societal conditions in the contemporary world of
today; it tries to depict the real life conditions of the people and also portrays what are the
various needs, wants and desires of the humankind (Laine). This art can be show cased in a
variety of ways such as through the medium of painting, through acting, through singing and
dancing and various other ways by which the emotions of an individual is brought out in front of

2FILM ANALYSIS
an audience in an exquisite manner but without explicitly telling the audience (Laine). It depends
upon the audience to decipher what the art is trying to show. This fundamentally central position
that art occupies in the daily lives of human beings makes it very challenging for the different
makers of art to always cater to the different needs of different individuals and to make the
various forms of art appealing to their audience (Barsam and Monahan). Moreover, these people
also have the responsibility to do something constructive for the society as it is solely through the
various forms of art that human beings get inspired to bring in revolutionizing changes in the
society for the welfare of the people (Laine). For instance, the dance form of art concentrates on
revealing emotions through the medium of body movements. The people engaged in dancing do
not talk or speak about what they are trying to portray but by looking at a dance performance, the
audience will be able to decipher what the performance is trying to say (Laine). Similarly, the
profession of acting is also about showing the emotive side of an individual to the audience
(Zaidel). Acting in dramas or movies is done with the purpose of showing how an individual is
supposed to act when faced with a particular situation.
Within the sphere of movies, there are many different genres such as action, thriller,
romantic, mystery, horror and so on (Laine). All these genre focus specifically on inciting one
important human emotion of the audience (Goldman). For instance, the movies of the horror
genre has the sole purpose of trying to scare the audience and make them afraid. Similarly, the
romantic genre of movies tries to portray the emotions of passion and affection within the human
beings (Laine).
The movie Moulin Rouge was directed and screened in the year 2001 (Rouge). It is a
romantic movie, produced in the background of Paris which is ideal as Paris is a city associated
with love and romance. The movie is based on the tragic love between the actress, Satine, which

3FILM ANALYSIS
is played by Nicole Kidman, and the lead actor, Christian, played by Ewan McGregor (Rouge).
Satine faces a fatal disease of tuberculosis and she is diagnosed to be very near to her deathbed.
However, she is adamant to make a name for herself within the sphere of theatre and hence, she
keeps her illness a secret for early everybody. Christian is a potential writer who falls madly in
love with Satine, unaware of her fatal condition (Rouge). Christian, along with his neighbor,
Toulouse-Lautrec, who is played by John Leguizamo, directs a movie whose main aim is to
reveal the brilliant talent of Satine to the entire world (Rouge). However, the characters do not
have the requisite finances to direct and produce the desired movie. In their search for sponsors,
they came upon the Duke of Worcester, played by Richard Roxburgh, who agreed to give the
necessary finances for the direction and production of the movie (Rouge). However, his main
intention was to win the heart of Satine so that he will be able to pursue her ( Rouge). In this
movie, the director has tried to preach the ideas of love and sacrifice. The character of Satine was
about to make a huge sacrifice, that of her life while the character of Christian personified the
concept of love itself. He was so deeply in love with Satine that he gained the strength to
overcome barriers which earlier seemed to be too impossible for him.
All the characters in the movie have a unique personality of their own which sets them
apart from each other (Krausz). For instance, Satine has a happy and charming personality even
though she is suffering from a terminal disease which will end her life very soon (Rouge). In
contrast to this, Christian has a melancholic and tragic personality and is sad and depressed most
of the times. His concern is creating a noteworthy career for himself so that he can have the
finances to enjoy the worldly pleasures (Rouge). This contrasting personalities of the two
characters attract them to each other so much so that they end up falling in love with each other
(Rouge). The director of the movie, Baz Luhrmann, has tried to prove true the concept that

4FILM ANALYSIS
opposite personalities attract each other (Rouge). To provide some comic relief and seriousness
in the movie, the characters of Toulouse-Lautrec and the Duke of Worcester have been
introduced. The character of Toulouse-Lautrec has to be that of a romantic and happy nature,
while the Duke of Worcester has the only concern of how to win the affection of Satine through
bad intentions (Rouge). For this purpose, he takes recourse to any means necessary which often
leads his character to be duped and susceptible to corruption and bribery. The different
personalities of the different characters is what makes the movie interesting and intriguing. All
the characters execute their role spectacularly and with grace (Séverin and Pleven).
Moulin Rouge was directed and produced at a time when the women folk were still yet to
get their rightful freedom from the agency of the State. The character of Satine represented the
desires of most of the women of the world who wanted to work but were unable to do so due to
the lack of suitable avenues. Satine was an outstanding actress but in order to catch a break like
most of her male counterparts, she had to go through a lot of struggle and hardships. It was not
easy to be a female in the entertainment sphere as there would always be somebody trying to
exploit her to win favors. This was clearly revealed by the character of Duke of Worcester who
only agreed to invest in the proposed movie by Christian because he wanted sexual favors from
Satine. This movie beautifully analyzes the various obstacles faced by the female gender in the
public sphere dominated by the male gender.
Moulin Rouge is along the lines of musical drama (Rouge). The director concentrated
more on trying to impress the audience with the body movements of the various actors and
actresses rather than giving them a script to read off of (Nummenmaa, et al.). The movie has a
strong message embedded deep inside the movie which is left open to interpretation to the
audience. The director did not want to direct a movie where all the information is given to the

5FILM ANALYSIS
audience beforehand and there is no scope for speculation and the usage of imagination
(Saarimäki, et al.). The movie does not have much coherence in the traditional sense and the
actors and actresses have the role to showcase only their emotions without much verbal
communication.
The movie is considered to be one of the masterpieces which has the inbuilt aura in it to
charm the audience in its own magic (Baveye). The romance that gradually grew between the
characters of Satine and Christian was very nicely and commendably executed by the respective
actors. The combination of the happy personality of the character of Satine with the forlorn
character of Christian made the audience appreciate the fact that people with all types of
personalities are capable of love and affection if this is given to them with a clean heart and
without any expectation (Rouge). Satine had the courage and strong will to hide about her
condition from Christian even though she loved him with all her heart. This was done mainly out
of selflessness as she knew that the information would only burden him and he would constantly
be trying to find out how to cure the situation instead of spending valuable time with her, just
simply being in love (Rouge). Satine knew her time on Earth was limited and she wanted to
spend her numbered days as happily and joyfully as she could. The audience might also get a
vague hint of selfishness on the part of Satine. They might opine that with Satine gone, Christian
would face one of the horrific losses in his life and this would push him into a deeper zone of
depression and sadness (Rouge). However, the character of Satine had no such intention and the
pure love between the two characters can be deciphered in various scenes within the movie, for
instance, the times when the characters looked into each other’s’ eyes (Rouge). Even if the
glance was for a few seconds, the audience could see the depth of love each had for the other in
those sparkling eyes. Moreover, when Christian goes to Satine in order to find out if she really

6FILM ANALYSIS
and truly loved him, she refused to acknowledge her love for him even though she was already
starting to fall for him (Rouge). To woo her, Christian made the statement that “Love is like
oxygen” implying that his love for Satine is as necessary as oxygen is for the survival of human
beings (Rouge). Christian was in love with her so much that he would not have been able to
survive without her. It was during this time, that the character of Christian citied several lyrics of
romantic songs, such as the songs of The Beatles, who are popular for singing romantic and
emotionally appealing songs (Hoover).
Besides romance, several other emotions have also been shown in the movie, such as the
emotion of pain in losing one’s life but still being brave (Stadler). When Satine realized that her
disease of tuberculosis was fatal and she might die, she was depressed and forlorn initially but
then she reasoned with herself that the remainder of her life should not be spend in moping and
crying (Rouge). She should make every viable attempts to achieve her dreams and in order to do
so, she would require immense courage and optimism (Dermer, Dunham, and Ford Sori). This
scene beautifully portrayed the importance of having a strong will power and keeping faith in
oneself. The character of Christian was portrayed in a melancholic manner. His character tried to
show the various struggles involved for a man pursuing a not so lucrative job as that of a writer
(Rouge). The movie hence, not only focused on the romantic aspects of a typical romantic movie
(Livingston). The love that blossomed between the characters of Christian and Satine was not the
only focus of the movie. The movie tried to give equal importance to all the emotional turmoil
that an individual experiences in his lifetime (Liu, et al). There was sadness, joy, love and even
jealousy. The aspect of jealousy was portrayed in a vivid manner when the Duke of Worcester
wanted to win the affection of Satine only to get sexual favors from her (Rouge). The money
which was provided by the Duke was essential for the success of the movie which would propel

7FILM ANALYSIS
Satine to her deserving fame, but his actions and intentions made Christian angry with jealousy
(Rouge). Satine did not reciprocate the feelings of the Duke of Worcester in any way, showing to
the audience that taking a strong and firm stand in front of evil people will most often lead to
your win (Acácio and Chambel).
To conclude, it is observed that the movie of Moulin Rouge (2001), directed by Baz
Luhrmann, is not similar to the other musical dramas of its genre. It is not also a typical romantic
movie. The musical aspect of the movie has been criticized by many to be in the nature of uber
musical. There is the use of a lot of music, accompanied by body movements, while the number
of lines per character has been relatively less, almost negligible. Such a nature of the movie kept
the entire movie open to interpretation and speculation. The audience faced a lot of difficulty in
understanding the deeper meaning of the movie in the first go. The movie is very complex to
comprehend as there are many human emotions which has been casted by the director. The
emotions of pain, suffering, happiness, loss and comical relief, all have been shown in the movie,
in accordance to the personality of the characters. This is what made the movie of Moulin Rouge
a much talked about movie even in the recent times. The uniqueness of the movie has been well
preserved with time and the audience of today is still intrigued with the complex story line and
the emotions portrayed in the movie.

8FILM ANALYSIS
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