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As Jon M. Chu constitutes one of the great modern musicals of an era, his vision of a phantasmagoric coming-of-age tale is vividly exemplified in his Step Up 3D, which was released in 2010. This film revolved around a world filled with magic, wild dancing, and vibrant spellbinding bubbles. Even though this film was poorly received by critics, each passing year makes this masterpiece of a movie feel much better. The first part of the movie showcased the director’s skills at crafting new worlds through the use of movements and varied moods. After being put through a pandemic in 2021, Chu tried his hand at In the Heights, where the beautifully blended harshly realistic and dreamlike music numbers provided a deeply moving theatrical experience to the audience which was so eloquently advertised in the Washington Heights.
Chu’s latest, Wicked, is pretty good too, but one misses the sheer attack of his previous work. Some might call it swollen, but it is a spectacle that divides a long-running hit Broadway musical into two parts, with the movie’s finale taking place at the sole act break of the play. Since the second half of the play is considerably shorter than the first half, one suspects that part two will need additional musical numbers and subplots to equal the volume of the first half. That would be an accomplishment because this Wicked is enormous in every way possible. Fans of the show will likely adore it, but the rarely achieved, frenetic energy that characterizes the best of Chu’s work and the great modern movie musicals is what makes this show sing.
The movie is executed with little regard to the play’s sequence of events, the film version of the play remains a lot longer. In the beginning, everyone in Oz is rejoicing in the death of Elphaba, who will one day be portrayed by Cynthia Erivo as the Wicked Witch of the West. From here, the original Wizard of Oz essentially comes to a standstill, but before long Grande’s Glinda the Good, who is the assumed nemesis of Elphaba, descends in a pink bubble to narrate the story of how she and the Witch were acquainted in their early years as students at Shiz University. Initially, Glinda does not want to tell the story. The walls of the villages in Oz are covered with banners of anti-Witch statements. (“She’s watching you” is one of the posters with a rather dreadful depiction of Elphaba.) The story that has been set out elicits the so-called Great’s evil question: why does wickedness happen? But what Elphaba Glinda reveals is that she was not wicked at all. She was simply a girl with green skin who was scorned by a society and what “the powers that be in Oz” needed more than met the eye.
This is a blurb from the book that the show is loosely based on. Saddam Hussein was often described as Adolf Hitler disguised in a mustache by Western journalists which partially influenced Maguire while writing the book. Moreover, the book focuses on the grand demise of Oz into fascism wobbling beneath the wizard’s control. The first stage version of the show in 2003, reflected the racism and discrimination faced after the tragic events of 9/11 and the impending invasion of Iraq. The play and movie show this by using the line, “The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.” I have no doubt that this new movie will resonate with the audience. It is no secret that the story of Wicked can serve any sociopolitical setting without any boundaries. It is not a bad thing, as many books such as Animal Farm by George Orwell, who I might remind you greatly influenced Maguire’s work, have been disregarded over time.
Both L. Frank’s Baum’s original novel of the Wizard of Oz and the classic 1939 film have been subject to limitless explanations over the years, including one fancifully optimistic take that claims Baum’s true goal was to critique the American monetary policies of the turn of the century. (Seriously, he actually sought to do that at some point.)
This means that, from the very beginning, the clash of a dark analogy and a sickly sweet version of Oz has existed. And for good reason. The world beyond the colourful rainbow is simply too outlandish and bizarre to be taken literally – it has to symbolize something. It could be possible that Chu’s reason for not adding any form of substancial reality and gravitas to his movie Oz is for that very reason. Even when his camera swoops and skims through rivers, flying over the hills, or barging through towns, it feels lovely but meaningless. Those who expect Chu to infuse Oz with essence like Peter Jackson did for Middle Earth in his Lord of the Rings masterpieces will be let down.
With all its ambition and cinematic artistry, Wicked still does not feel like it has widened its scope that much from the source. Perhaps it is because the play itself is already gigantic and breathtaking. A great part of the performance comprises of speeches, tours, and large public expositions – people singing and talking to large audiences. This would make sense in a stage production, but can be exhausting when it gets too film. To strengthen the sense of all-encompassing allegory, the citizens of Oz are in fact a blank amalgam of imbeciles who are thoughtless, fickle, and easily manipulated to a fault. They are a chorus, always and forever. In the meantime, we keep hoping the main protagonists will express some nuanced emotion, something delicate and human that will make us care for them, even just for a moment, without having to resort to icons or symbols.
The actors come to life when everything becomes still. Grande animates Glinda’s popular-girl frivolity with real comic shape, and with her pagoda-roof eyelashes and quicksilver physicality, Grande shines as a comedian. She also pokes fun at her own terrific vocal range, tossing errant high notes into simple statements like, “I already have a private su-iiite.” Arguably, Erivo has the harder task. Elphaba goes from love to sadness then stridency and in the end, rage. It’s not a particularly nuanced performance, and her character is not particularly nuanced, either; Elphaba’s melancholy, after all, is as much part of Wicked’s spectacle as the legs of the flying monkeys or the never ending views of the Emerald City. And one of the film’s quietest yet biggest moments is, After all, the most tragic. It is when Elphaba stands alone at a school party, ostracized because of the black hat Glinda has made her wear. She starts creating her own rhythmic dance movements without any music, ever so slowly. This is a rather short but sweet moment and it is where the story begins to hint at the more complicated relationship between the two protagonists.
This is the movie’s emotional climax as both Chu and Erivo shift Elphaba’s scowl from an expression of surrender into one of defiance, giving an insight to her transformation.
It’s true that I would have loved Wicked a lot more had I been a bigger sucker for those songs. Apart from a few notable peaks such as “Defying Gravity,” the song that serves as a battle cry for all rebels, that synthetic, tacky faux-pop Broadway sound resonates with me the same way a siren blast does. But no need to fret, songs like these do not need my approval. They have survived long enough for the studio to announce sing along screenings for mid December. And whenever Chu puts his heart into the numbers, magic can happen. In the film’s version of “What is This Feeling?”, a forgettable duet where our heroes express their mutual disdain for one another, it appears as though the performance springs from a late night split screen argument to all out school celebration with rhythm of silverware and twirling fingers, stomping feet, rolling chairs, and screeching tables taking over. The glorious madness of the man who directed two Step Up films is undoubtedly behind this.
As expected, Erivo and Grande are fantastic singers, and they sound amazing in the songs that were allegedly recorded live on set. They have no reason to not give it their best: Wicked has so much more content, and many of the songs had been further developed in the transition from stage to film.
The seams might not show, but the movie drags on. The breathtaking magnificence of theatrical drama rests on a kind of enchantment that is completely different from the admiration brought about by the moving picture. To be physically present with the smoke, cherry pickers, and singers performing the songs has some sort of a cult-like zeal that is completely different from the feeling of watching something happen in two dimension. Wicked the movie does, indeed, have large images, but most of them are superficial in nature. They do not draw our focus deeper into the image nor do they make us wonder about the world. They have scale but lack depth. And the movie keeps pounding in the points it has already made, and sometimes that does the movie harm. Elphaba’s inadequacy and undesirability complex after several important character shifts becomes rather convincing, especially when we start guessing the direction everything is leading into. That perhaps is Wicked’s greatest flaw. While it claims to be a revisionist transformation of a classic text, so much of it seems so decided, even programmed in advance. Instead of waiting for unpredicted transformations or insights, they look forward to declarations and intensifications. Wicked is as maginificent as it is fatiguing.
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