I was with a friend of mine and it was one of her favorite films ever, but I was really going on the recommendation of a certain well-known internet reviewer, Confused Matthew, who claimed this as not only his favorite film, but also said (in the epilogue of his review of the film) that the film had the most well-constructed screenplay of any film he'd ever seen. anyone who has seen one of his "reviews" knows that all he is really interested in is story and character, and doesn't talk about other aspects of film making all that much (I'm not saying that this is a bad thing,but I just wanted to point it out. Yeah.)
So my initial reaction:
Anyone who likes - or especially those who love this film - should also love Joel Schumaker's Batman and Robin. Both films have extremely thin stories (that in itself isn't a bad thing) and both are extremely over-produced. Yeah, you heard me. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
Think about the fact that, with what looks like an edit nearly every second (or even more) that there must be a new camera set-up to get that angle, makes you realize that this film is nothing but an over-produced and yet ultimately hallow exercise, a plodding experience that is the ultimate of self-indulgence for the film-makers. I'd probably go easier on them if they just admitted it (after all, the band Rush admitted that their first recorded instrumental a little masterpiece of musicianship called La Villa Strangiato, was "an exercise in self-indulgence.")
Some aspects are not lost on me, like the value of the dual ending, - that the fantasy ending before the curtain closes is happy, and, as soon as it closes and we are now in "reality" is actually tragic, but the film seems so high on itself to constantly remind us that we are supposed to just surrender and give into it's spell, and I didn't buy it.
And one more thing about the editing: Jonathan Frakes said something very interesting during his First Contact commentary about editing. He said that all the people involved in the production tend to lean to faster editing, because their ayes and their brains already know what they have seen in a shot and they always have an idea of what they will see next and their brains have already done half the work as a scene plays out, but an audience has not seen it, and the brain needs a beat or so - a bit more time - to settle in on what it is seeing because because, to the audience, each shot is new. The filmmakers working on Moulin Rouge have not learned this lesson. I don't think Christopher Nolan truly learned this lesson either.
So my initial reaction:
Anyone who likes - or especially those who love this film - should also love Joel Schumaker's Batman and Robin. Both films have extremely thin stories (that in itself isn't a bad thing) and both are extremely over-produced. Yeah, you heard me. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
Think about the fact that, with what looks like an edit nearly every second (or even more) that there must be a new camera set-up to get that angle, makes you realize that this film is nothing but an over-produced and yet ultimately hallow exercise, a plodding experience that is the ultimate of self-indulgence for the film-makers. I'd probably go easier on them if they just admitted it (after all, the band Rush admitted that their first recorded instrumental a little masterpiece of musicianship called La Villa Strangiato, was "an exercise in self-indulgence.")
Some aspects are not lost on me, like the value of the dual ending, - that the fantasy ending before the curtain closes is happy, and, as soon as it closes and we are now in "reality" is actually tragic, but the film seems so high on itself to constantly remind us that we are supposed to just surrender and give into it's spell, and I didn't buy it.
And one more thing about the editing: Jonathan Frakes said something very interesting during his First Contact commentary about editing. He said that all the people involved in the production tend to lean to faster editing, because their ayes and their brains already know what they have seen in a shot and they always have an idea of what they will see next and their brains have already done half the work as a scene plays out, but an audience has not seen it, and the brain needs a beat or so - a bit more time - to settle in on what it is seeing because because, to the audience, each shot is new. The filmmakers working on Moulin Rouge have not learned this lesson. I don't think Christopher Nolan truly learned this lesson either.
