Oversight Marathon: Chicago (2002)

I’ve come to the end of the Oversight Marathon and it is the last hour and a half of September, for me, as I type this.  This is the Chicago write-up.  Let’s get right to the one thing I want to talk about when it comes to Chicago.  I want to write about the way the movie is framed.  Not widescreen or fullscreen.  I mean the setup of the movie and how the musical part of the movie exists in the world of the movie.

The interesting thing that Chicago did, which I haven’t seen in many musicals was that the musical portion was separate from the core story of the movie.  The numbers did relate to what was happening within the story at the time when they were performed, but they were in another universe.  Usually the universe could be attributed to Roxy’s mind.  The exceptions being the first and last number which were performances in the actual world of the main characters, and Mr. Cellophane, which I’m not sure how it could be in Roxy’s mind.

The reason that this separation works for me is that it doesn’t involve people randomly breaking into song, and all those around them not noticing.  Aside from the quality of what you see on screen, this is usually my main problem with musicals.  I know that there’s supposed to be an expansion of believability when it comes to a musical.  It doesn’t stop me from being bothered by the random singing.  Chicago isn’t set up like that.

Another thing about the numbers is that, even in Roxy’s mind, they are performances.  There is no singing to each other on the street.  Everything is a performance.  Everything is in front of an audience.  It brings a sort of realism to the musical numbers that most musicals don’t have.

Let me use Glee as another example.  Glee isn’t a show that I ever loved.  I liked the first half of the first season.  After that, it began to wear down on me.  A lot of it had to do with the writing and acting, sure.  Another thing that added to my loss of interest in the show was the musical integration.  In the first chunk of the first season, I remember few, if any, instances in which the characters were singing while walking down a hallway with other people not noticing the music happening.  All of the musical performances that I remember happened either on a stage or in the practice room.  After that first chunk, the show began the usual musical trope of certain characters singing while nobody else noticed.  It changed the format of the musical within the show, in turn changing the show.  After that, the show began to deteriorate in both the musical aspect and the writing.

That might not have been the best example.  Since the writing went downhill around the same time, the credibility of my evidence comes into question.  I can only hope it helped my point in some way.  My point is that the way that Chicago set up the music helped to get my interest.  The music added to the plot without being unbelievably in the plot.  It’s something I like to see in a movie and something I hope that movie movies, or television shows, do.  I enjoy a musical a whole lot more if I can believe the musical integration.  In most cases, at least.  There are exceptions.