Two left feet

Noel Vera

"Chicago," despite all the legs on display, took time to traipse our
way--from the 1926 play by Maureen Dallas Watkins to the 1933
comedy "Roxie Hart" with Ginger Rogers to the 1975 musical written by
Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb (choreography by Fosse) to this movie almost
thirty years later. Fosse struggled to bring the musical to the big
screen, only to give up and use parts of it--some songs and plot
elements--in his autobiographical "All That Jazz" in 1979. The
musical then spent several decades in development hell, with a long
list of actresses at one time or another attached to the production,
until Rob Marshall finally succeeded with this adaptation.

The play, movie, musical and movie basically have the same story--
about Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger), aspiring singer-dancer who kills
a man in a fit of rage, then goes to town on the resulting media
feeding frenzy. Along the way we meet Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-
Jones), Roxie's rival in love and fame; "Mama" Morton (Queen
Latifah), Roxie's warden-cum-talent manager; and Attorney Billy Flynn
(Richard Gere), Roxie's defense lawyer-cum-love interest. It's
hardly fresh material (The legal system a circus? The media exploits
news stories? The public loves lurid scandals? Stop the presses!),
but Fosse in the '75 musical would at least have served up enough
style and (as he might put it) "razzle-dazzle" choreography to see
the audience through the staleness.

Marshall does well enough--he drapes his cast in slinky, sequined
costumes and throws enough elaborate sets and fireworks at your face
that you pretty much feel you got your money's worth. The musical
numbers have enough ideas, or wit, or both--"He Had it Coming," for
example, with different women telling their different hard-luck
tales, and "We Both Reached for the Gun" with its puppet imagery--
that you recall them not without some pleasure. And his cast looks
handsome enough--Zellweger's puffy-cheek pout, Zeta-Jones' Louise
Brooks hair and vampire glower, Gere's affably Zen smile. More
appealing--to me anyway--are the supporting players: Christine
Baranski's news reporter Mary Sunshine, complete with lacquered
smile; John Reilly's Amos Hart (Roxie's cuckolded husband), with his
Charlie-Chaplin pathos; and Latifah's "Mama" Morton with her silken
voice and steely eyes.

But pout, pyrotechnics, and a Brooks 'do do not necessarily a great
movie musical make; that requires less easily definable qualities
like passion, precision, even inspiration. Marshall probably has the
necessary passion--you don't win the director's chair out of sheer
humanitarianism--but as the editing of his musical numbers reveal, he
lacks precision. The numbers in "Chicago" aren't all that chopped
up; if anything, the cutting in Fosse's "All that Jazz" is even
finer. But the net effect of the editing in "Jazz" is to give you a
clearer picture of the room or space the characters dance in, same
time the cuts give you an impressionistic view of the number's many
details. Marshall's cutting in "Chicago" doesn't jell that same way--
he only gives you an impression of the numbers, you don't have any
idea what the surrounding space is like. You don't learn that much
about the dances either--the cutting may be slower than in music
videos (or in Baz Luhrmann's incoherent "Moulin Rouge") but you still
don't get a clear sense of the choreography, maybe because Marshall
can't bring the shots together in his head the way Fosse does so
easily. In one case, Gere's "Razzle-Dazzle" tap dance number, it's
apparently cut to hide the fact that Gere isn't much of a tap dancer.

Beyond mere precision however, Fosse's editing serves to distance
you, to cut you off from close identification with any single point
of view and keep you looking at the larger overall picture--this in
keeping with his darkly ironic, detached style of storytelling. More
than just a bravura technique, Fosse's editing is an expression of
his sensibility.

It's not as if Marshall doesn't try: the film is full of darkness and
irony, and his choreography and camerawork points this up best they
can--usually in an awkward, heavy-handed manner (the overwrought
ending to "We Both Reached for the Gun," for example, spoils an
otherwise interesting number). Fosse likes his black humor, but he's
assured enough to wield it lightly; it's the contrast between
effortlessness of technique and intensity of effect that separates
master from mimic.

One more thing: Marshall credits his idea--of making the numbers
figments in Roxie's imagination--with winning him the assignment of
directing the film, but you wonder if he should have bothered:
musicals have been bursting into song without the least excuse for
years, to no apparent harm. Is it because the producers were afraid
audiences have lost the habit of watching musicals, and want
to "prepare" them, so to speak? Recent international successes
like "Lagaan" don't feel that way.

And Marshall's idea is hardly new: it owes a huge debt to Dennis
Potter's "Pennies From Heaven"--without, however, achieving that
musical's emotional intensity. "Pennies" adds a corollary to what
we've mentioned so far: irony is well and good, but you need heart to
provide contrast, to lift the irony to the level of tragedy. In
their race to show you how cynical and all-knowing their characters
are (except for Reilly's Amos Hart--who, tellingly, is depicted in
clown makeup), the makers of "Chicago" seems to have forgotten this
lesson (to be fair, the flaw probably comes from the original
material Fosse and Ebb had adapted. Which from hindsight makes
Fosse's decision to do "All that Jazz"--where the autobiographical
elements provide much of the drama, and poignancy--that much smarter).

Finally, "Chicago" fails to be inspired--to have those tremendously
reckless moments of imagination and beauty and sheer filmmaking that
films like "Pennies" (Accordion Man singing the title song comes to
mind) and "All That Jazz" (the audition scene; the "Take Off With Us"
number) have in spades. Oh, "Chicago" tries, but it's like a hoofer
with two left feet: all heart, not enough talent.

"Chicago" does have its moments, many of which I've mentioned, and a
movie with Zeta-Jones' legs and Latifah's smile can't be completely
bad. And people keep saying that the success of this movie, plus that
of Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge," signify a revival of the musical as a
viable genre, to which I say: sure, why not, God bless. I just hope
we get a real musical out of all this somewhere along the way.

(Originally printed in Businessworld, 3.15.03)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)