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I can’t say that when reading The Great Gatsby in high school, I ever thought, “Wow! A Beyoncé song would really liven this book up!” However, Australian filmmaker Baz Lurhmann sure did. Designed to sell soundtracks rather than books (seriously, buy the soundtrack, or at least the Jay-Z and Lana Del Rey cuts), this weekend’s box office busting adaptation of The Great Gatsby in 3-D is by far the biggest financial success of Lurhmann’s career. However, this very weekend 12 years ago, the director had released his most acclaimed film, the visual spectacular, Moulin Rouge!

A better fit for 3-D and musical numbers compared to Gatsby, Rouge! is an interesting jukebox musical that has high-kicking show girls from 1900s Paris dancing to ‘80/90s pop numbers. Almost Bollywood-esque, Moulin Rouge! is an extravagant romance that is viscerally driven, yet has enough story structure to keep things entertaining throughout the two hour runtime.

Co-written by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce (a script collaborator with the director on Gatsby and Romeo + Juliet), the Paris-set musical stars Nicole Kidman as club starlet, Satine. Drawing the attention of all the patrons, Satine falls for a visiting English writer (played by Ewan McGregor), while a Duke (a delightfully villainous Richard Roxburgh) is determined to have the bombshell for himself, starting a love triangle that questions whether romance can trump riches.

Love it or hate it, Moulin Rouge! is a film that is made entirely out of bold, loud decisions. There is even an exclamation mark in the title! And it is certainly earned. I fell into the “love it” camp. A historically inaccurate fantasy that blends the old with the new in uneven amounts, Moulin has that enigmatic magic to it that makes everything click.

After watching Gatsby, I wished that Baz Luhrmann was an art director rather than a filmmaker; however, with the right material, his films can fly off the screen (even without the aid of clunky polarized glasses). With the camera moving around the 19th century club quicker than one of the cars in Fast & Furious 6, there is still a semblance of space, balance, and action. Kinetic and exciting, the dance numbers are brilliantly filmed while the style is taken down a notch for the more intimate scenes. Still, the splashy colors and sparkling diamonds are a constant. In fact, up to the film’s release, Nicole Kidman’s diamond necklace was the most expensive piece of jewelry commissioned for a film, valued at a million dollars.

Kidman does not let the diamonds overpower her shine, slaying her song-and-dance numbers just as well as her dramatic scenes. The role gave her the first Academy Award nomination of her career. The two have an instant chemistry that takes the film to another level. The two nail their performance just right - a bit extreme to match the film’s loud tone, yet dialed down enough to not become Broadway-esque.

The film landed itself eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, but only won for Art Direction and Costume Design. However, the film’s lack of nominations for Luhrmann’s directing and writing was considered a major snub that year (it’s not like the film wrote and directed itself).

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