For Valentine’s this year Mike and I went to the Moulin Rouge sing along at the Alamo Drafthouse. For those of you not privileged to live in Austin, the Drafthouse is what all movie theaters should be – good food, good drinks, good movies (and often even better prefilm entertainment), and creative special events (like the Vampire Prom last fall, Lord of the Rings viewing marathons complete with meals at all seven hobbit dining times…). So we made it a date and headed to the theater for a night of freedom, beauty, truth, and love (complete with theater supplied props like strobe-light diamond rings and green fairy glow sticks). And I can honestly say I haven’t had that much fun in a long time.
First I have to say that Moulin Rouge is one of my all time favorite movies. A deconstruction of how reality and art inform and subsume each other complete with soundtrack – what’s not to love? I shamelessly say that I not only know the words to all the songs by heart, but I’ve worn out three (yes three) CDs of the soundtrack. But my point here is not how much I love the movie, but to reflect on the viewing experience.
When I first saw it eight years ago, I had no clue what to expect. I knew it was an artsy film and when people would talk about it they inevitably asked (in whispers) if I knew what “voulez vous couchez avec moi ce soir” meant. The theater I saw it in was filled with almost exclusively teenage girls – all there because of the popularity of the Christina Aguilera version of “Lady Marmalade.” So I watched the movie utterly mesmerized and sat in stunned silence as the credits rolled and the teens around me started chatting and saying what a stupid movie it was. I heard the same response repeatedly in the weeks to come – “stupid movie, “I didn’t get it,” “it’s not even a good musical.” They didn’t get what they expected to see – a film/musical/love story that fit the normal constraints of those genre – and so their response was rejection and ridicule.
I didn’t have a chance to see Moulin Rouge on the large screen again until this past week at the sing along. This time the theater was full of devoted fans – those of us who have watched the movie and listened to the music so many times we know it by heart. We sang our hearts out at the top of our lungs in communal admiration of the film. This shared experience couldn’t have been more different from my first viewing of the film. This crowd knew what to expect – we were a community drawn together based on our admiration of the film. Granted community bound by admiration of a particular movie isn’t necessarily substantial, but it was still nice to be a part of.
And I could go off about the pros and cons of likeminded community. Is it good to surround ourselves with those exactly like us? How does such encouragement help us grow? Or do we retreat into ourselves if we aren’t pushed to engage the Other? But honestly, it was just nice to experience that moment in time. To enjoy it and notice how different it was from a previous experience of the same event. Silly perhaps – but it was nice to find pockets of communal oneness.