knives in Awards Season 2017 thread wrote:pandroid7 wrote:The Greatest Showman seems like the most Baz Luhrmann movie that isn’t actually made by Baz Luhrmann.
I really hope it doesn't win so I don't feel any obligation to watch it in this life.
I watched The Greatest Showman on television last night despite feeling much the same way as the posters above and surprisingly quite enjoyed it. It definitely is in the tradition of Baz Luhrmann with its very modern tunes occurring in a very period setting but with a couple of major differences that endeared it to me a bit more than Moulin Rouge! did. The first is that whereas Moulin Rouge! was full in your face artifice from start to finish the really 'heightened reality' CGI moments in The Greatest Showman are mostly confined to the bookending opening and closing circus numbers, where the trapeze artist flies just a bit higher than air, the tigers are even closer to the audience than they would ordinarily be (and are perfectly choreographed) and the elephants are doubled and performing, as with the tigers, in perfect symmetry with each other. The inherent unreality of CGI is used to give something 'bigger than life' that kind of captures the (hucksters?) dream of what could be rather than the struggle of what is in the rest of the film.
The second is that although it is in the tradition of Luhrmann in the fusion of modern song style and period it is much more of a standard film musical for most of its duration. It is nowhere near as frantic in tone (outside of the 'playing to the crowd' bookends) and the camerawork and editing is nowhere near as headache inducing! It was actually quite refreshing to see an 'actual musical' with, you know, choreography and little bits of business expressing developing character behaviour in the musical numbers (such as in the central ballad between Carlyle re-wooing his love interest after another lady catches his eye) rather than entirely relying on visual spectacle to power a song before getting back to the plot in the 'talky bits'. Here every song is both a break from the physical action of the film for singing and dancing, but the singing and dancing is where the internal, emotional aspect of the characters is given the room to shine. That feels like a very 'old school' way of doing a musical, where the external plot stops for the internal life to take the reigns but both are pushing the action forward, though I remember Chicago doing a little bit of the same thing a couple of decades ago, though I think only really successfully in that one John C. Reilly "Mr Cellophane" number.
And the third difference is that it is an inherently joyous film compared to Moulin Rouge!'s rather depressing La Boheme-styled take on shattered dreams and lives cut short once all of the hyper-natural trappings and pop song medleys have been stripped away (probably why Moulin Rouge! made a good pairing with the similarly depressing tale told in obscuringly over frantic terms Romeo + Juliet). With The Greatest Showman I was really nervous about how Michelle William's 'long suffering wife' character would be handled when she appeared, and whilst it is kind of a standard archetype of the wife at home complaining about the husband being obsessed with his work (and thereby making a busy situation an even more unnecessarily complicated for the harried husband trying to juggle everything at once), I did really love the way that she was blissfully happy from the very start of the film just being in love and together and gets to consistently make the very good points about not needing to quest for more and more fame and kudos when he has everything he needs to be content already.
So what could have simply been the 'nagging wife' character is shrewdly written to be loving and supportive but cruelly ignored, and I particularly love the moment of the break up where sweet Charity tells Barnum that she is not upset at him mortgaging their house but that he had not told her. That she would have said yes and had always wanted to be a partner in all of their journeys through life, but he had been cutting her out of his life with the focus on the international tour with Jenny Lind, and incidentally in doing that endless tour forcing her into the role of stay at home mother to look after their children.
It is difficult to properly explain but I particularly liked the way that the film paired up moments, such as Barnum's new assistant from a privileged background Philip Carlyle re-wooing his love interest (and giving up all of his wealth and privilege for love) after having his head briefly turned by the spectacular character of the singer Jenny Lind, which anticipates the turn that Barnum himself does into being obsessed with her, not romantically but for what she can do for his status in high society. Or the way that in managing Jenny Lind Barnum both abandons his real family of his wife and daughters as well as his ersatz family he has built up of the performers, both of them feeling disregarded and undervalued as Barnum tries to improve his status. And I particularly love that beyond the bookending celebratory circus performances that the film begins and ends with the lyrics being quietly spoken by Barnum - at the opening it is all about self-aggrandisingly being the ringmaster engendering a sense of anticipatory awe for the spectacle to come in the audience but at the end Barnum himself is in the watching audience watching his daughters perform and quietly speaking the final lines to his wife, content with his status in society and in some ways to have passed the torch (and burden?) of performing on to the new generation.
(Although yes, that does make it yet another film in which Hugh Jackman plays someone stepping down from their headlining role. It seems as if he has been trying to retire in films for longer than he has been the leading man by this point!)
The Jenny Lind figure is kind of the siren character of the film: stunning beauty, amazing voice, captivating to both audiences and the money men alike. In some ways she is the most monstrous character of the film, vampirically draining the resources of her managers to fund her endless singing tours (where she stands alone in a spotlight, everyone's focus entirely on her, unlike the ensemble of the circus where the performers haphazardly pile out into the ring in an unruly, exuberant mass) and calculatedly destroying Barnum with a kiss off at their last performance.
This fits in with the grander themes of the film, of not just the difference between outward beauty and unconventional 'freaks' but about ambition (but solitary, cold and ruthless) against family (where as long as you can all get by together and keep performing, that is the main thing). They are pretty obvious contrasts but I thought that the film handled them really well, especially the intercutting between the audience in rapturous applause at Jenny's performance and the elements in the audience for the circus yelling insults at the freaks (as well as Barnum watching Jenny in joy whilst Carlyle is upset at the abuse occurring), all done in silence.
But in the end it comes down less to the external corrupting figure of Jenny Lind but more the internal drives and flaws within Barnum himself. The neglect and abuse he suffered on the streets as a child fostering the drive within him to succeed and attain more and more status, as if desperate to keep proving himself to people who never cared about him before, and never will however high he climbs in society. After 'claiming' Charity from her father, which is where Charity is happiest, he needs to keep attaining more to prove himself 'worthy' of being able to mingle in high society. Even after he has created a successful enterprise in the freakshow and has a loving family, there is still the need to go further, because those things are not what will impress the outside world. In fact running a freakshow and having a family tying him down might even be seen as a liability to a successful, 'respectable' career. But the pursuit of ever grander dreams brings his empire crashing down, both in financially bankrupting him and in not being there for his real family and business.
___
While I did very much enjoy the film, and it entirely succeeds at what it sets out to do and the story that it is intending to tell (which is really the main thing, and I can entirely understand why this became as big of a 'feel good' hit as it did) I think I do have a number of reservations as well. Mostly that I still feel a bit uncomfortable with the beautiful vs unconventional looking aspect to the film. I think this film is 'empowering' and 'diverse' but in a way that could be argued to be still rather contained and 'safe'. I am not arguing that the film should be 'cancelled' or anything as drastic as that I hasten to add, but I do think that this is a good example of a film celebrating 'diversity' whilst still within a rather conventional framework. A conventional framework that is probably part of its box office success, but it is kind of about 'safe' tolerance within already tried and tested boundaries (plus in a period set film, where these issues can arguably be safely contained within a less contemporary context) rather than 'unsafe' tolerance that might surprise or confront an audience with much beyond the way that bearded ladies, midgets, giants or guys with full body tattoos are people too, and hey they mustn't be all that bad if they can belt out showstopping tunes!
A lot of this aspect is downplayed in the film but it is pretty obvious that the radiant (too radiant) beauty of Jenny Lind is meant to contrast both with the performers that Barnum has previously been the manager of as well as of his neglected wife herself. But the 'dilemma' (if we should even call it that) of Barnum giving up his management of Lind to return to his neglected business and wife is rather undermined by his wife being stunningly beautiful as well! There could never be any doubt or sense of disappointment in anyone's mind about returning to Michelle Williams! Although to be fair Barnum was never romantically infatuated with Jenny, it was more about unthinkingly replacing Charity as 'business partner' with Jenny. I think actually the film goes a bit too far the other way in the ending of Barnum retiring from his ringmaster role to become a full time family man, when really all Charity wanted was to be a full partner with him in the business of
both home and work, but I presume that the implication is that they will both continue to have strong behind the scenes managerial roles rather than being front of stage performers anymore, that baton passed across to Philip Carlyle and Anne Wheeler in their business sphere, and to their ballet performing daughters in the family one.
I think where the biggest issue with the film turns up is the romance between Carlyle and Wheeler which brings in elements of an interracial romance. That is not particularly an issue in itself but I did find it rather strange that Anne Wheeler and her brother have quite different skin tones, with the actor playing the brother being a lot darker than the actress playing Anne. Was that meant to be a way of making this relationship 'more acceptable' to the audience? But that aspect did make it amusing that this romance is played out rather perfunctorily within 'safe parameters' with the standard tried and tested scenes of on the one hand Anne's brother being suspicious of Philip's motives (especially when he briefly eyes up Jenny), and on the other Philip's parents being appalled that he would bring Anne to a swanky play and disowning him for his transgressive behaviour in coming to the production arm in arm with "the help". I was just left thinking how
truly wonderfully transgressive it would have been if Philip had fallen for the darker skinned brother and had brought
him to meet the parents instead!
And on that note of playing things safe, really this does all boil down to two white benefactors providing a voice to the disenfranchised and a 'safe space' for everyone to inhabit (despite one of them neglecting it, bankrupting everyone and letting the place get burnt down! But hey, he's a white guy so he deserves a second chance with a loan from the profits that the other white guy (pretty much his more youthful doppleganger) squirrelled away!).
But asking for those elements to have been changed or accommodated is probably asking for a much different film from the intentions behind this one! I guess what I was wanting was for the John Waters version of this story! (Or even arguably a Tim Burton one, although more the wide-eyed romantic Ed Wood era Burton than the more recent one that would have likely meant Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in high Gothic form as the Barnums and even more ker-razy CGI everywhere)
And this is probably the biggest nitpick of all but whilst I loved the
content of Zac Efron's final speech as Carlyle to Barnum, I wish he had inflected it a bit differently. Efron plays it all pretty un-nuanced but if he had played up the first part of the speech standing in the timbers of the burnt wreckage of the theatre where he seems indignant about Barnum's behaviour and what he has personally lost because of it with a bit of played up faux anger it really would have made the final part of that speech when he says that
however he has gained so much more from his friendship with him hit all the stronger. I still teared up a bit at that moment despite myself, but I probably would have been sobbing more if Efron had done a bit more of an emotional turn there.
Anyway I suppose above all it was really nice to finally find out what the origins of the big top were! I had always assumed it was because it was just because it was easy to put up and take down again and move around the country with, but apparently it is something to do with stopping angry mobs from causing as much damage when burning the fabric tenting down as they did with the previous building, as well as something to do with getting around having to deal with expensive land taxes and building permits (I do wish they had added an extra musical number or two about those issues!)