December 3, 2002

Give `em the ol' razzle dazzle… razzle dazzle `em…

That is what Miramax is hoping that Chicago will do to moviegoers and particularly Oscar voters in the months to come. 

There is little doubt that it will charm and amuse many.  At the least, the film is a faithful recreation of the stage experience of Chicago, the musical, albeit on steroids.  And that’s not unpleasant.

The frustration of Chicago is that it is not half the film that it could have been were it made by a filmmaker and not a theater guy.  Sorry.  One hates to backhand an artist on anything so basic as their training ground.  After all, everyone starts somewhere.  And maybe there is a theater director who could have made a great movie out of this show.  Rob Marshall is not that man.

The great irony is that Bob Fosse, one of the three minds that really created Chicago as a musical, made Cabaret work so well 30 years ago.  He did what Rob Marshall does not do here.  He shot the musical like a movie.  There was still plenty of theatricality in the on-stage sections of the film.  But, even there, Fosse chose a style of intimacy that was not traditionally reflected in his Broadway choreography.

There is a page-long tract in the Chicago press notes about how Marshall solved the “fourth wall” problem of filming Chicago in an impromptu meeting at Miramax.  One problem.  His solution is not to solve the problem at all, but to make it worse. 

Before I explain further, let me offer up the highlight of the film… Catherine Zeta-Jones.  That’s right.  Renee Zellweger is out of her depth here and while she is one of my favorite actresses, she is not a great singer or dancer.  She does not embarrass herself.  But her director betrays her efforts.

Sorry… I was busy praising CZ-J…

The movie opens on Zeta-Jones and she kicks the movie off with a power that nothing else in the film will ever quite match.  She can sing and dance and she is a real, old-fashioned, red carpet movie star.  Her opening number, “And All That Jazz”, is a showstopper and it does the job here.  If I were Harvey, I would re-cut the opening to make it even cleaner and simpler.  Let Catherine roll!  Bill Condon’s excellent screenplay introduces Rene Zellweger’s Roxie Hart character at the club, watching Zeta-Jones’ Velma Kelly perform.  But given the way Marshall shot the sequence, which also shows Roxie in the throws of an affair in syncopation with Velma’s on-stage performance, it would have been much more powerful if we met Roxie in the midst of her lust and we were introduced afterwards. 

It’s a small distinction, but the difference between “acceptable” and “great.”  And it is not a writing issue, but an editing one.  When you see how the movie is coming together, more ambitious cutting choices expose themselves.  As this version of Chicago chooses to make a Roxie somewhat of an innocent at the start, her performing ambitions would be all the more pathetic, her stupidity at believing a lying male a little less obvious, and her choice to have an affair with a pretty boy (who seemed desperately miscast) a bit more ambiguous.  The way it is, neither Velma nor Roxie get to hold the stage quite strongly enough.  And the truth is that the only purpose for the pre-Roxie-sex intercutting is character establishment… character establishment that is unnecessarily heavy handed. 

Theater plays to the back row.  Film plays to every corner of every theater with no more than a whisper. 

And here is where Zeta-Jones, real musical theater talent and what should have been the key to Chicago collide in an almost haphazard way.  Zeta-Jones has two solo numbers, a duet and a group number.  The two solo numbers are the only ones in the film that are done the way I think the whole film should have been done.  And somehow, Zeta-Jones comes out looking better than any other performer in the film.  Coincidence?

What is unique about the two numbers is that they are not forced onto an unrelated proscenium arch.  One is a performance set in a nightclub, so it happens on-stage naturally.  The second number takes place in the prison and does not throw Zeta-Jones out of her natural setting.   Marshall & Co. jazz up the prison space a little to separate the musical from the reality, but the number really flies.  (A little more filmic ambition would have added even more.)

Chicago is a vaudeville show.  And that’s why it will likely get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, very much in the showbiz spirit of My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  But vaudeville is a theatrical style.  As the Marx Brothers proved, the transition to the screen can work beautifully.  But not by simply playing to the crowd as though you were still on stage.  Marx Bros. movies were not audacious cinematographic efforts.  But the actors jumped off the screen.

Unfortunately, Chicago is the Al Jolson of movie musicals.  Jolson was said to be the greatest live performer of all time.  But if you see The Jazz Singer or other on-camera performances by Jolson, he’s good, but hardly overwhelming.  The irony is that far lesser talents made much greater impact on celluloid. 

Zellweger and Gere and Reilly are not great singers or dancers.  But they could have been helped, had Rob Marshall known how to or chosen to help them.  And editor Martin Walsh does help them.  He cuts away from their feet quite often.  But unable to hold the screen as theatrical performers on their own, like Zeta-Jones, Marshall forges ahead, leaving them to their own devices far too often.  Zellweger, in particular, has two solo numbers that require show stopping, Broadway superstar talent to pull off on stage, much less in the colder medium of film.  In “Roxie” it takes Marshall half a song to get Zellweger her Monroe-esque boy dancers so that all the attention is not creating a void that she just doesn’t have the size to fill.  I’m not sure who would have been the “right” person for this role.  Can Charlize Tehron or Reese Witherspoon sing and dance?  Samantha Morton? 

Gere has it easier.  But still, he is not quite where he needs to be.  His first number is sung in an odd U.K-ian accent that never appears again in the film.  And Marshall doesn’t sell Gere half as well as Gere tries to sell himself.  The number, “All I Care About Is Love,” ends with a variation on the great dance number by Christopher Walken in Pennies From Heaven… one that Gere cannot top.  Gere’s second number, “The Press Conference Rag”, should bring down the house.  But again, its extreme staginess distances the movie audience from the cleverness of the idea.  Finally, Gere has a number in which he tries to tap dance his way out of a corner, literally.  One problem.  Gere is a game, but not very good tap dancer.  Again, my brain full o’ movie history goes right to another film, The Cotton Club, which featured a brilliant tap juxtaposition in which Gregory Hines “kills `em with his tap shoes.”  Chicago’s number is okay… but is okay enough?   Word has it that Hugh Jackman was approached for the role.  With due respect to a hard-working Gere, Jackman would have floated on air where you could see Gere’s wheels turning.

John C. Reilly is the perfect image of a Mr. Cellophane.  But as good an actor as he is, and as game he is about singing… he’s not a showstopper.  And that role needed one.  In an homage to the great vaudevillian clowns and, oddly, to the great fan dancers of the stage, the person playing this role has to be transformative.   Matthew Broderick was born for this musical performance, even if Reilly was a better fit for the drama. 

The most disappointing number belongs to Queen Latifah, who can really belt out a song.  Perfect casting.  But she has to work to Marshall’s beat, not the one that really fits her talents.  She is great, but the number doesn’t take off the way it should.

The history of musicals is long.  But in recent years, it has tightened up quite a bit.  Moulin Rouge, 8 Women, Dancer in the Dark, Evita, A Chorus Line, Pennies From Heaven, Everybody Says I Love You, Jim Brooks’ aborted I’ll Do Anything, Hairspray, The Cotton Club, New York, New York.  Movies have been converted into musicals, but there are not a lot of Broadway musicals making their way to the screen.  Amazingly, none of the “recent” movie musicals were conversions from the stage. 

Nonetheless, there are a lot of ways to make musicals work on screen.  It can be complicated, but at the heart, it is simple.   Are the songs catchy?  Do movie audiences like the characters?  What inspires your characters to sing?   Answer those three questions successfully and you will find an audience… if not a $100 million audience, a very grateful $50 million audience. 

Audiences are forgiving.  Those of us who are willing really want to make the leap.  We will meet you in the middle or even farther.

Of course, while most of this review could be considered pretty negative, there are silver linings.  Catherine Zeta-Jones will win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for this breathtaking performance.  I get literal chills down my spine when real movie magic strikes me.  Z-J got me repeatedly… and nothing else in Chicago did.  Also, I do still think that we are looking at a Best Picture nominee.  There are better movies out there, but Chicago is right in the Academy’s wheelhouse and too many potential nominees have already been grounded for this one to crash & burn. 

The thing is, I like Chicago.  But I wanted to love it.  And I don’t. 

When Edward Norton and Tim Roth “sang” in Everybody Says I Love You, I loved it.  They weren’t the best singers or dancers, but they sold it with their character work and commitment.   Gere almost gets there here.   But he’s playing to the back row, which creates an expectation on which he can’t quite deliver. 

When Christopher Walken (a likely Oscar nominee this year for Catch Me If You Can) tap danced in Pennies From Heaven, it was a revelation.  And it is still a revelation every time he dances, even though we now know it’s coming.  Renee Zellweger gives it her best and she is good, but she is not a revelation. 

When the French stars of 8 Women sang and danced badly, they still were charming as hell, because Francois Ozon made the numbers shrink to fit like fur-lined gloves.  No such luck for Queen Latifah or John C. Reilly.

But Catherine Zeta-Jones…. hers is a very special performance.  There hasn’t been a big-screen musical performance like that since Streisand.  Now, Zeta-Jones isn’t quite Streisand yet.  But when she is working on screen, everything else works better.  In The Jailhouse Tango, she matches up with some real dancer/singers with theatrical experience and she still holds the screen. 

If you like musicals, you will like Chicago, as do I.  But I’m sure that I’ll be wondering just how great it could have been for a long, long time.

READER OF THE DAY:  2002 AD writes:  “Have you read the David Brooks book Bobos in Paradise? It's a great book, but your comments about film critics coming down loving or hating films is similar to Brooks' comments about public intellectuals and how the key is to write a book they know is partially wrong because people will discuss it and rail against it and it will raise their profile. I'd like to think that film criticism is more than simply trying to shock one's readers though. But could that be part of the gap between critics and the public, that critics are attempting to be noticed, to raise their own profile by making such pronouncements. It's not as simple as that of course, but I wonder if that's part of it.

Any thoughts?

I also have to say I was overwhelmed by Anthony Lane's review of The Quiet American in last week's New Yorker. (though partway through I checked the byline to see if it was really him and not Denby cause it was good) I think a lot of it is due to the fact that Lane knows Graham Greene and as a result he bring to bear his knowledge of the book and the context (part of what makes him a good literary critic), but it had that rare effect that a very few pieces can have, where they make you want to go see a movie more than you did.”

And this from TOR!:  “As for this critic fighting. You should have seen it coming Dave. Did you find it odd that you were on the O'Reilly Factor? Its not a coincidence, cable news pundits have taken over our idea of  discussion. We can no longer have an intellectual qualification of a movie.  You either love it or you hate it. And if you know Sean Hannity is going to like it you should probably write a scathing review. Because you can't agree with that egotistical son of a bitch that writes for the blah blah blah now can you? Ego is a good starting point, but it’s really that television media outlets have not only rewarded people for their opinion but amped it up to levels that are deafening. Springer is probably smirking at it all.

Ebert seems unscathed, but sometimes I see it creep up in some of his reviews. You seem ok, but you pick your battles and you do dig the trenches every once in a while.  But Fox, Cnn, Msnbc...hell the whole fucking crowd is telling us "we want you to have an opinion, but it can't be wishy washy bullshit, you have to be ready to go to war."

No DMZ, no thoughtful reflection on a film.  All you have to do is scream your bullshit louder than the other guy. And it sucks. Critics may have had some thoughtful knowledge about film. But not anymore.  That era is dead. Rupert did his job well. I'm glad you see it though, because I was not sure anyone was.  I think this means that thinking film people will just have to sit through more bad movies, because if you can't trust your partners who can you trust?”

STAY SINGLE sent this in:  “I had a solid 2 for 2 weekend with Solaris and Far From Heaven.  I really enjoyed Solaris and find myself still thinking about it two days later. Don't quite get the venom being hurled at the film.  When did a thoughtful, meditatively paced film become a crime?  I think it’s suffering from Al Gore syndrome aka everybody hates the smart kid. 

The part of the film that resonates with me the most is the scene where Kelvin flashes forward (or backwards?) to his life on Earth and his voiceover relates his unease and discomfort with the everyday rituals and daily interactions.  At first it seem that Kelvin is envisioning his future after his experience on Solaris, but is it in fact him flashing back to his life the years after his wife's death where his everyday life was more the function of learned habit/gestures than any genuine feeling? And so many other questions…   How often do movies get made which question the power of memory, the mind, perception and the projection of them on another person and the affects of that projection?

Far From Heaven is more than the pastiche or parlor trick its been accused of being.  The movie makes an interesting statement on the intersection of gender, racism, and the position of women 50+ years ago given that it was easier for Kathy's closeted husband to leave his wife and go off with his boyfriend, than for Kathy and Raymomd to be together anywhere.  Granted, the Dennis Quaid character would still be living in the closet (especially if he still worked for corporate America at Magnatech), but he still had the freedom and option to make the choice for happiness.

Aside from two great movies I saw trailers for tons of movies to add to the ever growing list---Adaptation, LOTR, Gangs of New York, Antwone Fisher, Analyze That, Maid in Manhattan (I'm in need of quality sap), Catch Me If You Can, and Chicago.  So many movies, so little time.”

Finally, this came from SENOR SENIOR:  “Like many of my fellow Americans, I went to the movies this past weekend.  Saw both "Treasure Planet" and "Solaris."  I happened to enjoy both -- but for different reasons.  Treasure Planet was a fun little ride and well worth the matinee price that many families surely paid for it.  Solaris, though, all I can say is "wheew."   This is not a movie you can just switch your brain off and expect the answers provided to you.  I found its pace to be similar to "The Sixth Sense," but without the big payoff at the end.  (I think that is why people are hating it so much -- I did see a few get up and leave during the show .  This is not a movie that says it has all the answers.  It expects its audience to go along and provide the big finish for themselves).  Nonetheless that is its beauty; the openness and mystery of its ending.  I loved it.”

E ME:  What films are on your hottest of hot lists?