Seducing the Underworld
The March/April issue of Books and Culture contains a review of Moulin Rouge by Douglas Jones, editor of Canon Press and Senior Fellow of Philosophy at New St. Andrews in Moscow, Idaho. Here, to whet your appetite, is the opening paragraph:
When Baz Luhrmann’s new film musical, Moulin Rouge, opened last year, Twentieth Century/Fox tried ever so hard to pitch it as a feast of skanky perversity, but the film itself is about the triumph of purity, a wild purity that seduces the stiffest of hearts. Indeed it begins by explicitly telling us that it is about love. That may sound safely generic, but in fact the entire story is engaged in distinguishing among different types and levels and transformations of love — vulgar, selfish, kind, and that love which proves so magical it extinguishes the lurid lights of the Moulin.
The review makes me want to watch the movie again!