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Chicago
***1/2
Cinema
Reviews - Week of January 17, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12A. USA.
113 minutes. Directed by Rob Marshall. Written by Bill Condon; from the musical
by Fred Ebb, Bob Fosse; based on the play by Maurine Dallas Watkins. Starring
Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, John
C. Reilly, Lucy Liu, Christine Baranski, Taye Diggs, Colm
Feore.
In its look and feel, in its smell and taste,
"Chicago" is my idea of heaven at the movies. Jazz not only
plays on the soundtrack, but is to be found in the very bones of the material.
It has the look of the late '20s, with its sharp suits, sexy showgirls and
moody gin joints. Characters talk in voices that remind us of the snap of
classic Hollywood; their tones make lines as simple as "That's Chicago!"
bring smiles to our faces. Hanging over the razzle-dazzle of the musical
numbers is that very specific kind of mist that summons the sexual energy
of a great theatre production.
If I came out of the cinema feeling a little
disappointed, part of the problem must be that the trailer got expectations
up unreasonably high. The aesthetics of this movie are so fine that before
going in, I was thinking that it might just end up being the best movie musical
of all time. It's not even close, and yet we would be wrong to dwell on that.
Sure, there are flaws, but the moments that do things properly see the screen
burst with confidence, rhythm, heat and pizzazz.
The source material is, of course, the 1975 Broadway
hit by Fred Ebb and the legendary Bob Fosse. Huge in its time, and again
after the 1996 revival, which continues a sell-out run in New York and our
very own West End. I am convinced that the show is special even though I
have not seen it. Anyone who remembers Claire Sweeney before she appeared
in the play knows that it really must have been something to turn her into
a credible star.
Roxie Hart is the name of the main character;
she's a bored housewife and a wannabe starlet, who cheats on her kindly doofus
of a husband with a swish cad named Fred Casely. She's banging this cat because
he promises her he's got contacts in the biz -- but he doesn't, and in a
fit of rage she ends up gunning him down. In jail, she becomes acquaintances
with a singer called Velma Kelly, who shot her sister and husband when she
caught them practising dance routines in the sack. Roxie and Velma are both
reliant on a prison matron named Mama, who'll be sweet to you as long as
you've got the dough to keep her happy, and a lawyer named Billy Flynn, who
keeps himself successful and entertained by manipulating the justice system
into fiction, and by caring about nothing except his $5,000
fee.
The gift of Flynn and Mama, which quickly intoxicates
Roxie and Velma, is knowing how to play the games of pushing the buttons
of the media and turning the courtoom into a circus. There's a terrific moment
where we realise that Roxie is learning the ropes; a new murderess named
Kitty Baxter starts stealing the headlines, and Roxie gets them back by stumbling
in front of a group of reporters and inventing a new bombshell: "I just hope
I didn't hurt the baby!"
Ebb and Fosse's musical, based on a comparatively
forgotten dramatic play by Maurine Dallas Watkins, has been praised for
remarkable showmanship. It is also acclaimed as a satire of corruption in
politics, stage-management in the news and the frequently dubious nature
of the trial system. As a movie, "Chicago" has the surface electricity of
the legend, but not the substance.
The film has been directed by Rob Marshall, an
experienced choreographer making his first cinematic feature. His bright
idea -- the one that got Miramax to put up the cash -- was that while today's
movie audiences are reluctant to accept characters breaking into song in
the middle of action, they might enjoy a musical that had a narrative
justification for the numbers. Marshall, along with screenwriter Bill Condon,
remodelled the script so that the song-and-dance segments would either be
actual stage performances or fantasy sequences in Roxie's
head.
This works perfectly well for staging purposes
-- because Roxie is obsessed with theatrics, and because it is her imagining
the performances, "Chicago" is able to cut to playhouse settings and launch
into routines whenever it wants. Marshall, as director and choreographer,
and Dion Beebe, the cinematographer, are genius at making this look good.
They are in love with contrasting the glare of spotlights against pitch-black
backgrounds, putting glitter in certain parts of the frame and intense colours
in others, and draping the decoration of the period all around. Damn, this
stuff is just plain cool. And it hardly even needs to be said that the songs
are wonderful.
The downside is that the fantasy-sequence angle
feels like more of gimmick than would random bursts of singing. It also leaves
many of the straight narrative sequences feeling somewhat rushed and
half-hearted. The whole movie is just too fast-paced to relate its details
properly. Points about Roxie's reaction to celebrity are pretty hard to digest
when we haven't had time to process that she is actually hitting the
headlines.
Why does Marshall rush ahead so much? Why does
every scene feel cut with the same breathlessness as the opening sequence?
Sometimes this works -- I like the way certain sequences use cuts to match
moments on the soundtrack with movements onscreen, while forming rhythms
that underline the moods and suggestions the actors are creating with their
eyes and body language. At other times, the speed of the editing drains the
material of tone. Look at the number "Cell Block Tango", where jailhouse
women parade in front of the camera explaining their reasons for killing,
and why the victims had it coming. You can tell that the words of the song
are supposed to build to punchlines, and they're funny to an extent, but
the actresses are not given enough time to milk the crowd-teasing words for
what they're really worth, and the thing is so rigidly choreographed that
you can feel Marshall concentrating on the next camera movement or piece
of dancing. Even the most obvious gags are skimmed over without skill, as
when a newsreel voice-over explains, "The D.A. says he's gonna make sure
she swings," and then the district attorney is shown declaring, "We're gonna
make sure she swings!" We want to laugh, but aren't given the
opportunity.
It's funny that my fellow online critic Eugene
Novikov, a big fan of the musical, mentions having hollow feelings in some
of the same scenes. In his blisteringly negative review, he also bemoans
the casting of Queen Latifah as Mama: "Mama was a small, elderly, white lady,
and Queen Latifah is neither small nor white." I don't know what the tone
of Mama was in the play, but Latifah didn't seem right to me either. When
a character is a cunning, scheming, quick-on-the-mark winker, it might be
good irony to have someone who looks frail and folksy play the part, rather
than a woman who seems like a smart and feisty presence at first
glance.
The rest of the casting is wonderful: Some have
complained that Renee Zellweger looks too thin and pasty, but that's appropriate
for this role, where her character is supposed to come across as irritatingly
silly and out of her depth. Richard Gere plays the lawyer with grinning,
shrugging nonchalance; Billy Flynn is a man of pure skill and zero emotion,
and Gere carries an amused ease that lets him slip through the story like
it's all a big laugh. John C. Reilly, a master at taking dopey characters
and making them memorable without seeming to try, plays Zellweger's poor
husband. The standout is Catherine Zeta-Jones -- she's fleshy, slinky and
sassy, and poised with the same balance of elegance and dangerous carnality
possessed by screen goddesses of decades past.
I'm still a little peeved that "Chicago" is not
sheer perfection. But hey, it picks up in the courtroom climax, where the
gags and their relevance to the themes of the script are broadly underlined.
And although the material hints at so much more that the film cannot get
away with being pure style, the level of stylishness that Marshall achieves
is not to be taken for granted. If "Chicago" is not a great film, it's certainly
a great ad for the musical. I am now more curious about its raves than ever
I was before.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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