“Love Is Like Oxygen.” “Love is a Many-Splendored Thing.”
Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong.” “All You Need Is Love.” At least that’s what
pop music tells us as well as Christian, the young penniless Bohemian writer
looking for truth, beauty, freedom and love in turn of the twentieth century
Paris in Baz Luhrmann’s kinetic marvel Moulin
Rouge! It’s ten years ago this month I first saw this movie on DVD and
shortly thereafter I sought it out in the one Manhattan theater that was still
showing it. It simply astounded me even though I fully expected to be repelled
by it. I’m not a fan of musicals in general, but it quickly became, along with West Side Story, one of only two examples
of the genre I truly adore and landed on my list of favorite films of the first decade of the 21st century.
