by Chris Marshall:
2002 marked the first time since Oliver![1],
a full 34 years earlier, that a musical won Best Picture. Because I’m not much
of a musical aficionado, I was perfectly fine with that long gap. And Chicago, while competently executed,
didn’t blow me away, certainly not enough to make me pine for the golden era of
the genre.
For one thing, it’s one of the least plot-driven musicals to
have won the top prize. Not counting the ending credits, the film only lasts an
hour and 47 minutes, which is already short by Best Picture standards[2].
Take away the song and dance performances that were basically stand-alone
vignettes—not a negligible portion—and you’re left with a very small amount of
time that’s devoted to story.
I’m not saying that the songs in musicals should always or
necessarily exist to further the plot. That’s not the case. But in this
situation, I didn’t like the songs enough to justify taking me away from the
film for so long. It’s not that they were bad or that I actively disliked them.
It’s just that they seemed forgettable, not in the same class as the musical
numbers in The Sound of Music or even
West Side Story.
The film begins with Roxie Hart, a wannabe cabaret singer
played by Renee Zellweger, shooting and killing Detective Jimmy McNulty of The Wire because he reneged on his
promise to put a good word in for her at a nightclub. Never mind how
implausible it is that anybody short of Stringer Bell or Omar Little could get
the drop on McNulty like that. Anyway, she’s arrested, and it seems like an
open and shut case. After her husband Amos (John C. Reilly) finds out she was
having an affair with McNulty, he stops his attempts to make up a story to
protect her.
Time for a brief aside. I want to make it clear that my
feelings toward this movie weren’t totally negative. In particular, I loved
Reilly’s performance, as is typically the case. He’s such a criminally
underrated actor, which is strange because he’s in about 100 movies each year. His
2002, in fact, was one of the greatest years for any actor. He became the first
male (Claudette Colbert did it way back in 1934) to appear in three Best
Picture nominees in the same year. In addition to Chicago, he also had roles in Gangs
of New York and The Hours. For a
guy who’s typically thought of as a comedic actor, those are some serious films
to have on your record.
Well, back to the story. After arriving in prison, Hart
meets the sensational lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere). Amos, her
ever-faithful husband, puts together all the money he can get his hands on to
pay for his services; after all, he’s never lost a case. His strategy involves
creating a media firestorm around his client. He gives her a backstory to win
over the public, and her face is all over the newspapers.
 |
| Zeta-Jones looked very Rashida Jones here. |
One of the main flaws I have with the story is that it pulls
its punches. Chicago has the
opportunity to make a strong statement about the circus-like atmosphere
surrounding popular criminal cases. In many mainstream, high-profile cases these
days, there is a carnivalesque (in the Bakhtinian sense) feel to the
proceedings, where the traditional roles are subverted. The suspect becomes a
celebrity, irrespective of the facts of the case—“Foxy Knoxy” and “Tot Mom” are
two recent examples that demonstrate that popular belief regarding the
defendant’s presumed innocence or guilt are mostly irrelevant.
The same thing happens in Chicago, but instead of being asked to criticize Hart, the film
seems to want us to sympathize with her. She’s just doing the best she can;
show business is tough! That may not have been the intended message, but it’s
the one that comes across in the film. When the Hungarian girl—the one who is
apparently really innocent—is hanged,
we’re only briefly asked to feel guilty before it’s back to business as usual.
By the end of the film, Hart and her cellmate, the fellow murderess Velma Kelly
(Catherine Zeta-Jones), are dancing on stage to an adoring crowd. Meanwhile,
the Hungarian girl is still dead, and nobody cares.
Typically if a movie has a criminal as its protagonist, she
is portrayed as comparatively less awful than her fellow criminals. Roxie,
though, is demonstrably worse than many of her peers. Yes, McNulty was a jerk,
but he didn’t deserve to die for his sins, and she most definitely doesn’t
deserve to profit from hers.
Maybe I should get off my high horse, but the message of the film didn’t sit well with me. On a more technical level, I felt it was well done. It looked great and sounded great, and most of the performances were quite solid. That last statement leads me to the most peculiar fact about this movie, though.
Amazingly, despite its all-star cast of Zellweger,
Zeta-Jones, Gere, Reilly, Latifah, West, etc., Chicago is one of only three Best Picture winners to date where
none of the actors who appear in the film have ever appeared in another Best
Picture winner. Isn’t that strange? West
Side Story and Slumdog Millionaire
are the other two, but they’re a little more understandable. Of course, I have
to assume this won’t be true forever. John C. Reilly, if I’m not mistaken, has
been in every movie that’s come out the past couple of years, so the laws of
probability dictate that he’ll be in another one, sooner or later.
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