Main Character Arc: Moulin Rouge, the Musical (Part 1)

Why Story Spine Is Important, or Moulin Rouge the Musical, a Cautionary Tale, Part 1: The Main Character’s Arc

Diving into story structure in a formal way is the best thing that’s ever happened to my writing—it’s shown me how to look at why some stories seem to work, and when they don’t, why they can’t quite land. 

On the other hand, it’s also probably made me an annoying person to go to movies, shows, or even listen to songs with, because I tend to start critiquing the story structure.

Early last summer, I had the opportunity to visit New York on practically a whim, and we got to see the stage version of Moulin Rouge on Broadway—it was my husband’s first Broadway show, and we figured, let’s go for the glitz and glamor of a really big production…and we knew we’d both enjoyed the movie. 

And there was so much to enjoy about the production! The sets and costumes were incredible and immersive, the cast was first rate, it was just so much fun. And in reworking the story, the writers had the opportunity (and took it) to weed out some of the most deeply problematic Stuff from the movie, like the play-within-a-play being a huge culturally appropriative piece about a magical sitar and an evil maharajah, and giving the character of Santiago an actual name, rather than identifying him only by his ethnicity and played-for-laughs disability. (And then casting a non-Latino actor in the movie role.) 

The movie, for all its weirdness and questionable choices (it was the late 90’s and Hollywood was way back on its learning curve), had a solid story. It worked, it hung together. The Broadway musical—Its story, structure, and spine, its direction and architecture and arcs?

There were Many Missed Opportunities.

Let’s discuss. 

***SPOILERS AHEAD SPOILERS FOR BOTH MOVIE AND BROADWAY SHOW SPOILERS LAST WARNING***

We need to know whose story it is

To me, the biggest and easiest lens to use here is the one of character arc: Who is your main protagonist character? On whose decisions and choices does the progression of the story hinge? Who is the player in the story with the strongest Want, and what (usually) unrecognized Need to they have that runs at odds with that Want? 

This was a revelation to me in learning how to build a story. There are many ways to approach it; just google “character want and need” and you’ll find more than you’d ever need to know. In a nutshell: Your character wants something; that’s their external motivator, it’s what drives the action of the story. But then they also need something, and they usually don’t realize they need it (or are in denial about it), and that’s what drives their internal change arc. And they cannot have the thing they want and the thing they need both; something will have to give. (Pages and Platforms does a great look at this internal/external storytelling in their Story Path course; highly recommended!) Then, in addition to the basic concept,  K.M. Weiland adds the dimension of the “character lie” that sits within every arc, something sitting in the way of the arc being able to resolve itself, for added tension.

The Movie: Satine the Shining Diamond

So, Moulin Rouge: In the movie, though its main narrator/point-of-view character is Christian the Naïve Writer Young Ewan McGregor Love Interest Dude, the character whose arc is most pronounced throughout is undeniably Satine. (Nicole Kidman is luminous in this role, y’all.) 

We see her first singing how diamonds are a girl’s best friend; she wants to be a real star, not just a courtesan up for sale to the highest bidder, even if that bidder is a rich (but super-creepy) Duke. Then she falls in love with Christian, who sees her not as a prize to be won but as valuable and worthy of love just for who she is. This conflict between the wealth and stardom she wants, and the authenticity of love she needs, drives the story, propelled even harder by the Lie: she is dying of consumption, even if she won’t let herself see it, and ultimately neither want or need will save her from a death that’s thundering toward her at an alarming rate; the clock is ticking from the first monologue of the movie in which Christian starts by telling us, “The woman I love is dead.”

So much tension, set up from the start; you hardly have to do anything to make this story go, it’s got most of what it needs already. 

(But what about Christian? What is his arc? The thing is, he wants to write, and he loves Satine, and there’s nothing except circumstance and her conflict preventing him from having both; the conflict inside him is driven almost exclusively by the one in her. That’s what makes it work so well. This is also true of the secondary characters of the Moulin Rouge: they need Satine to choose stardom, to choose the show, to choose them, with their own lie that assumes she is the one who needs to sacrifice for them. Whatever she does, either her theater family or her true love loses all.) 

Through the movie, Satine makes choices, trying to have both, alternately risking the Duke finding out about her affair with Christian and thus risking the future of the Moulin Rouge, or placating the Duke and walking away from Christian and driving him into despair, and they are all painful and they all have harsh consequences—and when her illness keeps her away from both men, it’s all even worse. 

In the end, her choice is made both easier and harder: if she does not choose the Duke and the play, he will murder Christian. There we go—she must do the show, because to do otherwise would be to lose want and need both. But first she must convince Christian that she does not love him—she must be false with the one she could always be truthful to, and it nearly destroys her. He confronts her, calls her a whore on stage in front of a full audience (who mercifully thinks it’s just the play, but ouch that moment!), thanks her for curing him of his “ridiculous obsession with love,” and walks out down the aisle. He is leaving. His life will go on, hers will too (except that she’s dying), the Moulin Rouge will survive, and she will be a great star for however little time she has left. The story could end here. 

And she chooses Christian anyway. He’s going, but she sings after him, how come what may she will love him till the end of time. He stops, he sings back, they embrace, and then the whole cast of the show rebels against the Duke’s enforced “wrong” ending and finish their show the way they always wanted to. They go to bat for the lovers; they knock out the guy aiming a gun at Christian, and in the end the theater owner (I’ve never loved Jim Broadbent more in any role, and that’s saying something)—who stands to lose everything in this one move—decks the Duke before he can shoot someone. The stage show ends on a glorious note and standing ovation. Everything is, for a moment, perfect.

Then Satine dies. One glorious shining moment of freedom, beauty, truth, and love—and it ends. Presumably the Moulin Rouge club is gone, because the cast defied the Duke and he had the money and he would ruin them. Christian is writing sadly in his garret. 

But damn—the story worked. 

The Musical: Christian? Satine? We’re not sure…

The stage musical? Well….not so much.

Ultimately, the musical’s problem—in my opinion—is that it seems to center the story on Christian, without giving him a correspondingly powerful arc. He wanted Satine; he had to share her with the Duke, he didn’t like it. And Satine barely had an arc at all. The “I want to be a serious actress” piece was gone entirely. If she had any driving want, it was to save the Moulin Rouge—but it wasn’t her want, it was a sort of self-sacrificial dutiful thing she felt was important for the people she loved, her family. But there wasn’t any real tension there either. And as patently ridiculous as the whole element in the movie whereby she convinced the Duke to not sleep with her till after the show (giving space for a truly creepy rendition of “Like a Virgin” and did I mention how amazing Jim Broadbent is?), having her in the musical basically sleeping with both Christian and the Duke the whole time sucked all the sexual tension out of both relationships. 

Part 2 of this blog post series is about how supporting characters also need their arcs to be solid and consistent—the musical also falls short here—but suffice it to say that while the first act almost holds together, the second is a bit of a mess, and by the final climactic scene you have no idea who cares about what any more. I think they were trying to set up Christian’s conflict as “do I keep trying, or do I let her go and forget about her and get on with my singer-songwriter hot tragic tenor life,” but it’s ultimately hopelessly fuddled, because there are no real stakes attached. 

Climactic tension, or…?

Finally, the performance and the “climactic” confrontation between Christian and Satine, under the guise of the play-within-the-play. They’ve done a sort of half-baked Don Jose thing here, where Christian shows up with a loaded gun, first threatening to kill her, and then himself, if she doesn’t say she loves him.

And…she does. 

There is no tension in this moment at all. She’s onstage, in front of an audience, and the dude she used to sleep with is about to blow his brains out right there in front of everyone. Even if she didn’t love him, even if she was the coldest-hearted bitch in the world, she would sing “come what may I will love you” if only to avoid getting blood and brain-bits on her costume. It’s not a declaration of love, it’s a de-escalation of violence. “I loved you the whole time, I’m telling you now, so don’t shoot yourself, why would I lie to you right now? Put down the gun, honey.”

Then she dies. 

We have no idea who wanted what, who needed what, except that Satine herself in this version has been reduced to the one who was wanted and needed by everyone else, in vague non-specific but certainly very important-to-them ways. She possessed nearly zero agency throughout the story. And hey, maybe the writers were trying to subtly subvert the original story by making exactly this point in an ironic way, but—damn, y’all, you can’t go with subversive subtle thematic twists in a jukebox musical with a giant red-illuminated elephant and windmill onstage. 

Viva la vie bohème. Freedom, beauty, truth, and love. Christian got what he “wanted,” which was to fall in love, and be a writer. Mission accomplished, curtain falls. Satine who?

I was so disappointed. So much opportunity, squandered. 

I loved it anyway

A working story, a story with architecture, with spine and balance and solidity, must have a central character with a conflict-creating want/need arc. It’s like a suspension bridge, everything in balanced tension with everything else, or the whole thing crumples and falls into the bay.

But my God, the cast, staging, choreography, spectacle, were tremendous. No aspersions to cast anywhere on there. No regrets, no wanting my ticket money back, even if I did buy it that morning at the TKTS booth. (If you’re in New York and want to see a show but don’t know which one you want to see, hit up the TKTS booth for discounted last minute tickets, there are so many good shows to see!)

The story was just so…disappointing.

(Part 2: Secondary Characters)