A Tale of Two Musicals

Hello helllloooo,

This week was a weird one. Lots of intense energy, conflict, anxiety, resurfaced trauma and bodily pain. Felt like everyone I know was majorly going through it and I felt it all empathically. I’m in the middle of editing a long-form essay for Burnaway about my divorce and Dollywood (and by extension Dolly Parton), and WOW it hurts to uncover some hard truths. Raise your hand if you felt fucking wild this week???

Anyways, today I bring you the tale of two musicals, one really really awful and one absolutely stunning. I watched them in the same night. I’d had a hard day. My PMS is really intense and makes me deeply depressed and dissociated from my body - and it’d been a real doozy. I ended up getting into two fights with people close to me (I DEFINITELY instigated them), then driving to the UGA Intramural Fields to just be alone in my car in case I needed to scream it out. Yep, like that. (Mom, I’m okay).

I returned home and made dinner, and decided that tonight was the night I needed to watch…

Cats (dir Tom Hooper 2019)

Okay. I can handle a bad movie. I even like bad movies. I love the Twilight saga. In high school and college I went to midnight screenings of The Room. I felt like I could take on the insurmountable task of absolutely loving this film. I settled into my bed and put it on.

Y’all, I was not prepared for what I was about to witness.

Okay first of all, I couldn’t even tell you what this movie is about because I could not understand the dialogue. Maybe it was a sound mixing problem or I’m a dumb American but I couldn’t tell y’all anything about what they said. The first 10 minutes are an unintelligible mess of singing and hissing and dancing and slinking. If I hadn’t read the plot summary of this musical already I would be so lost. I was just like, WHY DID THEY MAKE THEM CGI? Why are the cats big and roaches and mice impossibly small. Please explain what Jellicle means, ANYONE. I BEG OF YOU. They’re going to a ball and this new girl is new and they are all hating on Jennifer Hudson who just looks like she’s in a weird Halloween costume? Idris Elba is unexplainably horrible and meows like a lion that’s entering a worm hole? This is supposed to be a “family movie” and it is like deeply weirdly freaky sexual? So different kind of “family”. Jason Derulo with a bunch of girl cats drinking from milk taps in a cat version of a bar???? Who is the foley artist who got to put all those weird hisses in? The dancing roaches are a look, though.

I’d been texting with a close friend about it. They were going to watch West Side Story, and I wanted OUT of this film. I made it to minute 59. No, I did not make it to the climactic performance of “Memory”…great song but it also makes me feel really uncomfortable, maybe too melodramatic. Other songs in this category for me include “Unchained Melody”, “O Holy Night” and “Pretty Woman”.

This film is totalllllly unwatchable in my opinion. I’m not drinking anymore, so I wonder what it would be like drunk - maybe a little bit more palatable? Or high maybe? I think you have to just turn off your brain for this one and let it wash over you. IF you can get over the slinking bodies of people who have been turned into cats singing songs about being precocious. I hope they all got their checks.

2/10

West Side Story (dir Robert Wise, 1961)

As soon as the overture for this film started on my TV, I instantly relaxed. I’d made the right choice. This is a re-visit for me - I haven’t seen the film in quite some time, but it was a childhood favorite. My two sisters and I grew up singing in the San Francisco Girls Chorus. I grew up absolutely loving and worshiping musicals. This one has always been close to me. For those who aren’t familiar, this is a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in a 1950s Upper West Side. Two warring gangs, the Jets (all white) and the Sharks (all Puerto Rican) are preparing for a “rumble” for territory. Amidst all this, Maria, the younger sister of the ringleader of the Sharks, and Tony, a former Jet, meet at a dance and fall instantly and tragically in love. You know the rest of the story. The exception being that Maria lives in the end, incisively indicting both gangs and the police for their useless and lethal hatred over the dead body of her one true love.

The music is stunning (Bernstein), and the lyrics are even better (Sondheim). The re-working of the story itself is artful in the way it underscores senseless violences, prejudices and allies the two gangs against the police and the state at large. It’s interesting to watch as an adult with certain anti-carceral politics and oddly prescient.

The film is pretty damn near perfect. Directed by Robert Wise, the camerawork and editing is god-level. It starts with this amazing overture sequence (one of my personal favorite things about 1960s movie musicals) which fades into a sweeping aerial shot of Manhattan. We hear a single whistle, which we learn is the call of the Jets as we fly over the borough, faster and faster until - a closeup of a sweaty greaser. Then, the famous ballet-like fight choreography to lilting, dissonant, perfect jazzy score. We know we’re in for something we’ve never seen before.

What follows: two and a half hours of pure joy, terror and sadness. You don’t care that it’s totally wild that two people could meet at dance and then be unequivocally in love with each other - willing to go anywhere, do anything, because everything changed in the instant they saw each other. Tony and Maria’s meeting is one of the most beautiful sequences ever captured on film. It follows a furious and heated mambo sequence. All of a sudden the two lovers make eye contact, and everything literally fades away. A variation on “Maria” plays softly, and they engage in a gorgeous duet, barely moving and graceful. Of course the two are ripped violently from this dream, but it’s that feeling of the noise and anger and difference fading away to something else entirely that keeps you as engaged in their love as they are.

No real complaints about this film other than its length (it drags just a tiny bit but not really), and the brown-face (most of the actors who play the Sharks are white or otherwise very obviously not Puerto Rican, and the song “America”, while classic, is clearly a white American’s interpretation of immigrant experience).

The acting performances are so electric that they give me chills even thinking about them. Natalie Wood is particularly iconic as Maria. Everyone sweats profusely. You can feel the tension throughout the film. You’re aching for something, anything to give way, and it does - just not in the way you’d hope. Incredible dancing, singing, beautiful and poignant editing. You will not be disappointed, I promise.

I wept for like 20 minutes after finishing it. The song “Somewhere” hits different when you’re older. The loves you’ve lost or couldn’t have bubble right to the surface. But also, the tragedy of suffering under white supremacist structures is soul-crushing. We’re left to dream of another time or world or life where we could all be freer to love. Maybe it’s Pollyanna-ish of me to say but, until then, we’re just trying our best to care for each other.

10/10

p.s. this comment on the youtube video of the opening credits for WSS just broke my heart. the power of film!!!

Mini Reviews:

A few other things I watched this week

In The Mood For Love (dir. Wong Kar Wai, 2000) Fantastic and gorgeous foundational film for lots of photographers of my generation. Abstract telling of two neighbors, their affairs, and what love really looks like and means. It’s hard to ever tell what’s going on for real, which is the point. 9/10

Skate Kitchen (dir. Crystal Moselle, 2018) The inspiration and basis for the new HBO show, Betty. Airy, soft focus NYC cool girl skate fantasy. All about the power of friendship, skating, family and girls looking out for each other. Jayden Smith is comically bad as a douchey love interest. Better than the tv show, in my opinion. 7.5/10

Mid90s (dir. Jonah Hill, 2018) As you can tell, I tore through a bunch of skate content this week. Uncomfortable (in a bad way) film about masculinity and how boys learn how to be boys, I guess. Sometimes a little unbelievable that it was written by Jonah Hill. Was grossly disappointed and a little disturbed, but there was a *tiny* message in there about how you don’t have to take hard hits to prove you’re tough. 6/10

Funny Girl (dir. William Weyler, 1968) One of the films on my growing musical/hollywood research list. Iconic role for Barbra, but it makes me sad that so many of her films involve her having to put up with a deadbeat husband. Fashions are impeccable, singing incredible, songs are legendary. 8/10

Hollywood (created by Ryan Murphy, exec produced by Janet Mock, 2020) Buzzy new Netflix show about the golden age of Hollywood - and an alternate reality in which they tried to diversify every aspect of film production in the 40s. Patti Lupone and Holland Taylor are really fucking good in it. The whole show is campy, weird, funny, raunchy, nasty, and totally outrageous but in a good way…until the end. The revisionist history stuff gets a little too annoying. Also, the characters speak their subtext constantly. Good for bingeing, especially if you love films. 8/10

Okay, that’s it.

Have good weeks,

Ron

p.p.s I won’t make you pay to subscribe to this bc, why!!!? But if you want to throw a tip into my virtual tip jar - here’s my venmo: @ronika-mcclain