Major Dislike, Moulin Rouge

I recently watched the Nostalgia Critic Moulin Rouge reviewmusical extraordinaire, it was quite a bit longer than the title.  The most heavily impacting aspect of the review for me was Nostalgia Chick’s major dislike <salute> of Christian’s behavior when he is deceived into thinking she never really loved him.  She describes his actions with words like, “despicable” “evil” “insulting” “dirty” and “mean-spirited.”  I’ve been thinking about her perspective on that at least once a day since I saw the review/short film/musical.  I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that bothers me about this scene; it’s one that I also greatly dislike but maybe not for the same reasons. 

Despite my confusing military name, I've been known to like many things!

First-off, Christian’s a kid.  He doesn’t look it but for this story he’s someone who’s left his home despite his father’s warning in search of this concept known as love.  Most people by the time they’re 16 have discovered the obsessive crush of teen-love or something equivalent.  Christian’s also a writer, an artist, and every artist I know goes through emotional extremes, depression to euphoria, love to indifference.  It’s all about growing up as a teenager.  Christian’s reaction to his betrayal is blinded by his emotions, by what he feels, because everything he does is through these same emotions.  He’s not even really thinking, he’s trying to express something he doesn’t even understand.  William Congreve said, “Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorned.”  I’d say the first is true for Christian.

A woman scorned

Secondly, everything we’ve seen up until now is done through song and dance.  Expositions in musicals are done through a musical montage displaying the progression of the story or character's skills or to slingshot a relationship from mild acquaintance to die-hard lovers in love.  This scene has intense music in the background but for the most part it’s all dialogue.  Making something a musical has this way of making it easier to bare.   Music does make things more emotional though, it’s more of an emotional experience when things are sung; we can’t help it, it gets to us, music is emotion put to sound and it hits us.  But this scene is simply dialogue with intense background music and because we feel the raw nature of this scene, we’re not shielded by the disreality of people singing through their feelings (something that should but doesn’t happen in the real world).  This makes it a scene closer to a tragedy like Romeo and Juliet, where we know the truth but the characters can’t make the connection.

My dream date

Thirdly, and finally, what this scene amounts to is simply a break from the main underlying fiction that has been the movie up until this point.  Up to this point in the musical, Christian’s represented the one thing many people are obsessed with, true love, and he has yet to falter until this scene where it all comes crashing down onto the audience’s emotions.  Should he just believe her when Satine says she was playing him?    He loves her so he’s inclined to believe her either way.  She said she was lying so he believes her, she was lying about the lying so he should just assume she still loves him?  It’s confusing for anyone to figure out, either way it’s a betrayal and to have your idea of this perfect love smashed to bits is not something you can deal with.  It brings us back into reality, something we’ve been thoroughly trying to avoid by watching this film in the first place.  


Christian being hurt, acting childish, and the lack of musical number to accentuate make this experience a slap in the face for the audience.  We’ve just been hit by the reality of “true love” in that the concept of it is entirely bullshit.  Love is very real, and people experience it every day but true love is the love that lasts longer than 12 months.  I’m serious; there have been extensive studies on the idea that the first year of a relationship is literally a euphoric stage in which couples are ignorant of each other’s flaws.  After that year ends, it’s all about accepting what you couldn’t see before and not caring about it either way.  Back to the film, we didn’t want to experience that aspect of reality, we liked the distraction.  Overall, though, it’s an effective scene in that it stays with us or makes us hate it, and maybe it’s better for it.  Who knows, I just know it’s hard to watch.


<Addition: Dec 14, 2011>


Ok, so there's a bit more to this.  If you watch El Tango de Roxanne you'll notice a few things.    

1. Firstly, this scene happens directly before the slut-shaming minus "The show must go on"
2. Secondly, it's your friends doing an interpretive song and dance about your girlfriend being a prostitute and her having paid sex with other men.
3. Correct me if this wikipedia article is off, but "Satine offers to spend the night with the Duke to keep the original ending"

So, number 3... Satine is making a decision here.  I know it's art, it's Christian's writing, but Christian's looking for true love here.  True love would be changing the ending of the play.  Make it a tragedy, make it whatever, it's less important than having each other.  She's not quite strong enough, she gets bullied, badgered, and bought by the creepy Harold Zidler, she's dying of the consumption and this is her last chance to achieve her dream.  Christian is bullied by his friends in the Tango.  It all comes to a climax when both of the main characters discover they could easily hurt the ones they "loved."  


Here's the thing, Satine and Christian's actions show it all.  Satine hurts Christian to save both the show and the theater, screw the logic of "hurt him to save him", it really doesn't fly at all and no one in love would be bought by it.  It's the last of Harold's arguments and we're not entirely sure which one convinces her.  Christian's reaction and slut-shaming are him reacting to being played.  His ultimate goal wasn't necessarily to find a woman to love, it was just to find love.  He found it and it was taken away by Satine so he's pissed off at her.  I'm not entirely sure that they ever really loved each other, I mean Christian had to convince Satine that they were in love in the first place.  Seriously, who does that? 

Satine:  Ah!  Help me!

Christian:  I love you!

On the other side of the argument, people in love hurt each other all the time.  Sometimes people say mean things, get clumsy with words, make unnecessary observations, are negligent about certain details.  In the end, they both get over their mistakes and go back to simply loving each other.  That's what it's about really.  Their entire relationship has only enough time to encounter one obstacle.  We'll never really know if what they had was true love because, well, Satine dies directly after they patch it up; the circumstances tend to put a swing on things.


Overall, I'm just messing around.  Love is an abstract concept and not clearly defined.  Sometimes love is weird, adventurous, or just a bonus for finding a suitable man.  I did a brief search and the most interesting thing I found was that "true love" was first described as the feelings that come from marriage.  So, regardless of how you felt before, once you were married your love became real.  It was then revealed that this isn't necessarily true as divorce rates show, marriage doesn't create new feelings it simply strengthens and reaffirms what's already there so when people found that marriage wasn't giving them the elated "true love" they'd been told to look forward to, the search for it became extensive.  People began to look for it, a love that removes all doubt.  I don't know that Christian found that in Satine, maybe it was just the beginning of a bigger quest.  I mean, really, if you came to Paris in search of something as epic as "true love" and found it within a week of settling in you'd almost feel it was too easy.  No, Christian's first  attempt at love dies so it's try try again.