‘Extravaganza’ is back in style

Film review: Chicago

There is a strong buzz at the moment that Renee Zellwegger has a very strong chance of winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in the musical Chicago. She should. She is great in the movie as the wannabe vaudeville star who killed her lover and is now on trial for her life.

Fat chance she will get it, though. It is true that there was a time when musicals were the hottest contenders during awards derbies. Think back to The Sound of Music, West Side Story, Oliver, My Fair Lady. The movie-goers for the past two decades seemed to have found it difficult relating to actors breaking into song and dance to progress a story. So they stopped watching musicals.

Along with this development, the genre acquired the reputation of being light-hearted fluff that is easier to do than drama or comedy and is therefore not award-worthy. In fact the last time that an actress won the Oscar for her performance in a musical was 31 years ago! It was Liza Minnelli for Cabaret in 1972. Unfortunately for the movie, The Godfather was also released that same year and it won as Best Picture.

But the Best Director trophy went to Bob Fosse of Cabaret. The famous choreographer/director is now in the big rehearsal room up there in the sky but he did beat Francis Ford Coppolla of the Godfather epic and remains a legend in Broadway and Hollywood. A hard-living perfectionist, he was known for his innovative choreography and mounted many memorable musicals like Cabaret and Sweet Charity.

Aside from the movie version of Cabaret and Sweet Charity, Fosse also directed the brilliant autobiographical All That Jazz. The title comes from a song in Chicago, one of his biggest successes on Broadway. While he never got the chance to translate the tale of love and dreams gone wrong to the big screen, take note that there was a time when his magic worked for Liza. Maybe it is still potent enough to bring luck to Renee, supporting actresses Catherine Zeta-Jones and Queen Latifah, supporting actor John Reilly, first-time director Rob Marshall and all those other talented people in the running for their work in Chicago.

Thanks to Chicago, the word "extravaganza" is once more back in style. Chicago has all the required elements of a good movie with just the right doses of romance, comedy and drama. But it is also a dazzling display of song and dance that works so well in conjunction with the other elements. If you were not honed on My Fair Lady or West Side Story, then the experience of watching Chicago comes closest to that of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, which brought back the musical two years ago. That movie though was a send-up of India’s Bollywood films and made use of mostly familiar hit songs, but Chicago is in every sense of the word, an American musical.

So, why do you think that Chicago, which must have seen a lot of work becoming a movie, turned out to be a massive success despite its being a musical? The prime factor I see is the brilliant casting. Zellweger is Roxie Hart, the wife who killed her two-timing lover but is so disarmingly charming that she able to convince her husband, played by Reilly to shoulder the expenses of her defense. Zeta-Jones is Velma, the vaudeville star who killed her husband and her sister when she caught them together.

Then there is Gere as Billy Flynn, a shady and expensive lawyer who claims that he can get anybody off the hook for the right price. Not to forget, Queen Latifah, who is as brassy as can be as a prison matron. They are all competent actors, very good singers and dancers particularly Zeta-Jones whose All That Jazz opening number sets the look and the pace for the glamour, the cynicism and the tongue-in-cheek fun of the picture.

Then there is the way the film is presented. The story is set during the Jazz Age in turbulent Chicago, a time and place associated with gangsterism and where women were either molls or submissive housewives. Not Roxie and Velma, of course. These two meet in prison while on trial for their respective crimes. Velma, the star is seen using every wile and everybody at her disposal to turn things to her favor. Roxie, the stage-struck floozy realizes that this is the time for her to shine. Soon she learns how to be a calculating enchantress who uses everything, particularly the media to win her case.

It is to Marshall’s credit that he presents this tale in a straightforward manner. Most of the musical numbers are instead staged from the point of view of Roxie’s imagination. And when imagination is at work, anyone can sing and dance to perfection and be larger and more of everything than in real life. As the story progresses, so does the song and dance but in a parallel, fantasy mode.

And that is what musicals are all about, a fantasy world where everyone gets a star turn and everything gets a rhythm one can move to with the grace of Astaire or Fosse. Seen beside Zeta-Jones, whom Fosse would have loved to direct in the stage version, Renee’s dancing shows effort but then Roxie is not supposed to be a star, she only thinks she is in her dreams. No matter, I can already see her doing Fosse proud as Charity Valentine. And although the image is not as distinct, I also see her waltzing away with a small golden knight holding a sword. He goes by the name of Oscar.