It’s a Musical, Baz--So How About Showing the Dances?

I am forever grateful to “Moulin Rouge” director Baz Luhrmann for rescuing the film musical from the precious hands of Disney and those who would have us believe real people can’t awaken our sense of fantasy as capably as a singing lion cub.

For the first time in years, someone with a genuine feel for the genre is at the reins (remember John Huston and “Annie”? Richard Attenborough and “A Chorus Line”?), and the results are dazzling. “Moulin Rouge” is a masterful work that achieves moments of pure cinematic exhilaration. Cross Vincente Minnelli’s lush visual style with Ken Russell’s fondness for overripe performances, mix in the soaring arrangements of classic opera with an MTV playlist, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of how audaciously pleasing a film “Moulin Rouge” can be.

Why then, with so much going for it, does “Moulin Rouge” stop short of being a great musical?

Because the film ignores the most important rule of musicals: Let the audience see the dancing.

Thanks to the rapid-fire, MTV-style of editing that is the current vogue, “Moulin Rouge” exasperatingly turns each of its big dance numbers into visual coleslaw. Time and time again, when the music and the setting call for that ultimate emotional lift that dance can provide, the impatient blade of Luhrmann cuts, chops, slices and dices promising musical sequences into a jarring melange of disjointed limbs and torsos. Heads pop in and out of frame, legs kick, hands fly, and all is awhirl, but it is not dance, it is not movement, and as a result, the emotional heart of each number is removed. All that is left is technical flash. I truly cannot remember seeing a single completed dance move in any of the large-scale numbers.

One number in particular, the powerful “Tango de Roxanne,” is slashed so mercilessly that it appears to be composed of images drawn from a flip book. It’s heartbreaking and made all the more so by the rare moment when the camera stays still and the editor gives his fingers a rest, as in the lovely “Your Song,” which has Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor twirling among the clouds. In these moments, “Moulin Rouge” becomes the transcendent entertainment its publicity touts it to be.

Yes, I am grateful to Baz Luhrmann for resuscitating the live-action musical. But it baffles me how a man with such an understanding of the ways in which beauty and music can elevate the soul could so thoroughly miss the potential for dance to visually convey the liberation of the heart.

Can it be that directors no longer feel they can excite and engage their audiences without the artificial “energy” of quick cutting? Maybe they should check with the choreographers. What must it be like to see your hard work minced in a Salad Shooter and projected onto the screen?

It is said that Fred Astaire had it in his contract that all of his dance numbers had to be shown in their entirety, and that his feet could not be cut out of the frame. Ah, were this demand made into cardinal law for the making of movie musicals.