When we talked about Chicago, I noted how that film displays the allure of sin as something empowering and freeing. Likewise, when we talked about A Face in the Crowd, I mentioned how false prophets use rhetoric of liberation to sell their counterfeit gospel. I guess you could say that there’s something similar at work in Baz Lurhman’s 2001 masterpiece, Moulin Rouge. This jukebox musical sells something like manufactured emancipation, but the film also offers a glimpse of what it... Read more