Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge are two movies directed by the eccentric Baz Luhrmann. In these love stories, Baz Luhrmann especially stake on the visual and the abundance: the abundance of decorations, the abundance of colourful visuals (Moulin Rouge « uses the colourful musical setting of the Montmartre quarter »), the abundance of the actor's play, the abundance of the story, the abundance of love, the abundance of money. This abundance allows us some questions about the marginality and the networks in these movies. But on thinking it over we can see that Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge are almost the same, we meet again the same state's mind of the characters, and even the same characters. Thanks to all of this, we shall study a lot of things: first, we are going to say a few words about the great director, Baz Luhrmann, then we will sum up Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge. In a third part, we shall see that Moulin Rouge took one inspiration of Romeo+Juliet and then, we'll study the marginality of the characters, of the theatricalness and of the different networks in these two movies.
To conclude we shall ask the question of what will be the problematic of this essay: Can not we think that the Baz Luhrmann's way to represent a musical comedy and an adaptation of a Shakespeare's famous play hide another gender of movies?
[...] But there are not only the characters who are the same in Moulin Rouge and Romeo+Juliet, we note that a few scenes are the same ones. First of all, the scene of the fancy-dress ball in Romeo+Juliet has been revived in Moulin Rouge during one of the first scene when Baz Luhrmann presents us the Moulin Rouge and how to live in this place. These two scenes are meeting scenes between Romeo and Juliet and between Christian and Satine. These scenes show the entertainment, the wealth and especially do not show us the real faces, the real personalities of all the characters because they are all caught aback, so they can hide who they really are, and they can pass themselves as another person. [...]
[...] III) When Moulin Rouge takes one inspiration of Romeo+Juliet Looking at Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge we can easily see that some characters present in Romeo+Juliet can be found again in Moulin Rouge. First of all, Christian and Satine, the two main characters in Moulin Rouge, represent Romeo and Juliet but in another way. Satine is a courtesan, she does not want to leave her job, she works as a dancer in the Moulin Rouge, she knows what she wants, she lives in a world of money, of luxury, she has command on Christian, and she is a little bit like Romeo. [...]
[...] Indeed, there are two balcony scenes, in Romeo+Juliet, it is one of the most famous of the play and of the movie and we remark that in Moulin Rouge there are exactly the same processes of the scene: the scene happens by night, Satine and Juliet are on a balcony, they are unhappy, they are thinking about Christian and Romeo and they appear under the balcony but in these two scenes someone keep them seeing their beloved. In Moulin Rouge, Satine spends a night with the Duke and he is always behind her, he does not want her to see Christian so when he joins her on the balcony he obliges her to return inside and in Romeo+Juliet, Juliet is going to sleep soon and her nurse is with her so Juliet can not see Romeo peacefully. [...]
[...] To conclude, we can say that everything in these movies are only provocation, because even if Romeo+Juliet is a modern adaptation of a play which tells a famous love story and Moulin Rouge is a marginal musical comedy, we find some another gender of film. First of all we find some Bollywood scenes in Moulin Rouge during the shots in the elephant, a work room for Satine. This elephant is equipped like an Indian one, with a lot of jewels and colours, Bollywood is present too in the play written by Christian because it is the story of a Maharajah and Satine plays an Indian courtesan. [...]
[...] If all the theatricalness in Moulin Rouge and in Romeo+Juliet is marginal it is because everything, as we said before is too much everything is exaggerated, and we are in an extreme play. So we can think that everything is a lie if everything is theatre, in Baz Luhrmann's movies, theatricalness serves as a pretext to film sentimental things. He refuses the reality but in Romeo+Juliet and in Moulin Rouge, the only thing which can bring Satine, Christian, Romeo and Juliet back to the reality is death. [...]
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