Double Dose of DeBose

(Double Dose is two films from the same director, writer or star...or genre or theme...pretty simple.  Today:  grieving people becoming vigilantes, but in a non-superhero-origin or action movie capacity) 

West Side Story (2021) d. Steven Spielberg - D+
Schmigadoon! (2021) d. Barry Sonnenfeld - AppleTV+ (created by Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio)

What it just might come down to is I don't like musicals. I never thought I disliked musicals. Although I've never been much of a purveyor of them, I always thought myself open to them. I mean I quite like an animated musical... well, sometimes.  I loved Encanto, and just thinking about it makes me desperately want to rewach the Triplettes of Belleville, but yeah...I mean, I turned off La La Land after less than an hour and have no compulsion to go back. But that's La La Land...like, whatever, right? I mean, I bounce along joyfully to "Rogers:The Musical" in the post-credits of Hawkeye.

I've seen a bunch of stage musicals and yeah I've generally liked those experiences, and even film versions (or, well, Hamilton) still are energizing. But this West Side Story, I dunno, it just didn't move me.

Right, yeah, I started watching this on my phone. I picture Spielberg, sitting in his mansion pondering Indiana Jones, starting to suddenly cry inexplicably. I'm sure it happens every time someone presses play on on West Side Story on their phone. But instantly I could tell this was shot for the big screen, and no other presentation will really do. The second thing I noticed was the colours...good god the colours. I haven't seen a movie shot this vividly in...I don't recall the last film that was this vibrant that wasn't a cartoon. Even on my phone, prepping dinner, (oh yeah, that too, the movie didn't even have my full attention on my phone...Spielberg just uncontrollably sobs) I was wowed... just stunned by the visuals and production values. This looked great...better than great, outstanding, dazzling, beautiful.

I got through the first hour before dinner was ready. I was really enjoying the eye candy, but I was having a very, very hard time investing in the film, a film whose structure has been cliche for hundreds of years and whose exact story has been cliche for another 60. Sure, Tony Kushner brings some modern, progressively-aware sensibilities to some (but not all) of the story, but Spielberg, I think, can't let go of his fondness for how the original was told and so it all still feels so....staged, and stagey.

The songs, the singing and the dancing, while technically proficient, feel dated. Everything feels dated. It's a period piece, but it shouldn't feel of the period. But maybe that's just my lack of experience with musicals. Does this happen in all of them? Should the fight scenes still feel like dance numbers? Isn't fight choreography the new cinematic dancing?

I don't know West Side Story intimately. I get the sense that Spielberg and Kushner admirably bolstered the Puerto Rican contingent of the story (not subtitling the Spanish was a great choice), and deepened the resonance of systemic, inbred, American racism. But in that, the sympathies for the Jets is almost nil (as it probably should be), but it leaves for a love story that just sets your teeth on edge. Tony is bad news Maria... just run.

This film doesn't work for me, but I think much of it comes down to how little experience I have with cinematic musicals and how perhaps they just haven't evolved in a way that I've learned to appreciate.

What I did appreciate was the scene composition, the sets, the costuming, the lighting... all the technical elements working in precision with one another and it all looks fantastic.  I also appreciated the performances. Rachel Zegler as Maria is explosive, just a powerhouse who contains and incredible voice in her petite frame.  She's captivating and handles hope, sadness, affection, anger, adoration...basically any emotion asked of her, magnificently.  She is absolutely magnetic in her first on screen performance.

Comparatively Ansel Elgort, putting his very public personal problems aside, doesn't quite have the same charisma.  He's not completely devoid, but I don't feel a much affection towards that character, and Elgort has difficulty selling the uncontrollably-in-love element of Tony.  He is quite good at selling the need to escape the life that put him in prison for a year (it's almost the same requirement as Baby Driver, but that's my only other familiarity with him, so I may just be conflating the two), but I don't ever really get the simmering danger underneath that I think this character is supposed to have.  Tony *could* have depth, but there's not enough time to explore it (this whole story takes place in just over a day and a half).

Mike Faist as Riff is fantastic, his high-pitched nasal 50's greaser tough guy act is so very full of menace instead of the cliched cartoon which that kind of role is usually delivered.  He really pops in the way you  think Elgort should, but doesn't.

Rita Moreno is back, subbing in for Doc as his widow, and she gets the only moment that actually did move me, a solo performance that contains the soulfulness of a performer with over 70 years experience under her belt and in full control of every moment of her song.

But I figure we should talk Ariana DeBose since I did name this post after her (mostly because it sounded cute in it's rhyme, and not necessarily because I intended to focus on her to any great degree).  DeBose has, like Moreno before her, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress this year for her role as Anita.  After appearing as a contestant on So You Think You Can Dance, DeBose she quickly graduated from regional and touring theatre to Broadway in increasingly prominent roles, landing the title role in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical in 2018.  

Now, I have no first hand experience with any of this history.  She had a short stint in the original ensemble for Hamilton (and returned for the Disney recording of it), but she doesn't have any breakout moments there.  No, my first experience with DeBose was earlier this year when she hosted Saturday Night Live.  It's rare for SNL to bring on a host who doesn't have name recognition, and in the cases where it's someone I don't know, it's typically a sports figure. By bringing her on as host, SNL was effectively saying that, based on her performance in West Side Story, she was someone ready to become a star.

Now, SNL has long passed its king-maker days.  It's producing a lot of talent who go on to do modestly successful projects (which is a step up from fading into obscurity), but it hasn't made a Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy or Will Ferrell in quite some time.  The show itself is, week to week, pretty middle of the road, each episode usually having highs and lows, but the sketch highs are rarely that high anymore, and tend to be just as forgettable as the low sketches.  What does tend to transcend are performances, and DeBose put in one of the best hosting performances in the past decade.  She was just so game, enthusiastic, and energetic.  She brought her decade of live theatre experience to live sketch and, somehow, at worst, matched, but usually exceeded the ensemble of live sketch performers at their own game.  It's not like she was funnier, but her energy levels were vastly different from practically every other host in recent memory.  

DeBose has a wide, toothy, infectious smile and an spark in her brown eyes that only a special few lifelong stage performers have, a raw energy that seems to come from an endless well, backed up with both singing and dancing aptitude that she can put it all into.

But I don't think DeBose got SNL randomly.  She worked with current cast member Cecily Strong on the 2021 AppleTV+ mini-series Schmigadoon!, which, if it wasn't obvious, is specifically a play on the musical Brigadoon.  The mini-series was produced by SNL's Lorne Michaels, so it's almost a guarantee that Michaels took notice of DeBose on that production, and then, noting her star-making turn in West Side Story, found the opportunity to promote her as a host.

I'm not familiar with Brigadoon, but a quick synopsis of it notes that two American tourists stumble upon the mythical Scottish town of Brigadoon which only appears once every 100 years.  This isn't a direct lampooning of that musical, but borrows from it (as well as many of the tropes from '40's and '50's-produced musicals...most of which I'm also largely unfamiliar with.  

In Schmigadoon!, we follow Melissa and Josh (Cecily Strong and Keegan Michael Key), first through their meet cute three years earlier, then to their modern day as a stuck-in-a-rut couple, potentially at odds, taking a group camping trip that further cements their divide, only to get lost in the fog and encounter Schmigadoon, a quaint village of group singing and dancing that is inescapable.  They come to learn that it's got very "old-fashioned values" around the roles of men and women, and really backwards perceptions of how people should behave.  Most of this is policed by the staunchly conservative, pursed-lipped Mildred (Kristin Chenowith, naturally) whose gang of town elders ensure that nothing ever changes.

To leave this unbelievably backwards community, Melissa and Josh need to find true love, which is hard considering the fractured nature of their relationship.  Before the first night is through, they've broken up, and their subsequent days are spent very differently.  Josh is solely focussed on getting out, finding his true love by checking with every woman in town, including the school marm, played by DeBose, who wants no part of Josh initially, and more than anything dreams of a different life that Schmigadoon can't give her. Meanwhile Melissa instead bares down and tries to affect some positive change in this brutally repressed environment, encouraging the town's closeted mayor to be true to himself, teaching an elderly couple sex positivity, and practicing medicine as a woman.

It's a definite vehicle for Strong who hasn't had much of a spotlight outside of her SNL work, and she is an enjoyable presence.  We know from her sketch comedy that she can sing, and she is an versatile actress as well, the dancing seemed to be a bit more tricky for her, but she's game.  Key, on the other hand, refuses to sing or dance, although I've seen him do both on Key and Peele (see Aerobics Meltdown at least for his impressive corrodination), and he leans into the Josh's emotional shut-down as the relationship gets rocky, which is such a guy thing, but he comes around.

Chenowith is always a welcome presence in anything, and never anything short of a delight to watch, even when she's being despicably authoritarian about her backwards "values".  Alan Cummings likewise seems to be having a blast in the Mayor's coming-out story.  Then there's Aaron Tveit as the town's perfectly alright ne'er-do-well, who just can be tamed until Melissa sleeps with him, thinking he's the perfect guy for a rebound one-night-stand, only to have him singing a much different tune in the morning, much to her horror.

Of course DeBose is a very bright spot here, even though her character almost has the most weight underneath her.  Of the main cast she seems the most at home in her role, and her character, and her performance.  She has a seemingly natural ability to make any role feel like they are lived in, that they've lived a life and have much more going on than just what we see and hear them say.  This was my second experience with her, watching Schmigadoon! after her SNL hosting stint (and not even knowing she was in the show) and was very happy to see her. Much like Chenowith, she seems to have the touch that her presence enriches whatever she's in.  I feel like I've been watching her for years, when I've only seen her in three or four performances. 

Schmigadoon! is fully directed by Barry Sonnenfeld who is the master at bringing artifice to life.  The Addams Family movies, Men In Black, The Tick, Pushing Daisies, A Series of Unfortunate Events... all movies or shows that really layer on the facade, living in heightened surrealities that he seems to easily draw you into, rather than keep you at a distance from.  Schmigadoon!, in replicating 40's and 50's musicals aesthetics, looks like a vibrantly coloured set, with painted backdrops and sound stage lighting.  But Sonnenfeld, and the story, all play into it.  First by calling attention to it, acknowledging the artifice, then living within it, having the characters and the audience become habituated to it together.  It surprised me at first to see Sonnenfeld attached but very quickly it made perfect sense.  Plus, in the editing and production, Sonnenfeld opens each episode with a flashback to Melissa and Josh's relationship in the real world over the prior three years, which in the wrong hands could hinder the show, drawing the audience out of the artificiality, but each of these vignettes provides important emotional context for what's happening within the show.

As a musical, it is definitely satirical, poking fun at the tropes from the past.  My lack of knowledge of vintage musicals means I'm missing all the in-jokes and references, but it's not what the show is built on, so it doesn't hinder having a good time.  I really enjoyed this.  It wasn't mind-blowing but it was definitely enjoyable and had an emotional core that was worth investing in.  There were surprises, and plenty of laughs, as well as some really fun songs that feel era-appropriate, winking lyrics included.

So I suppose I'm not anti-musical after all, but I definitely want my musicals to have modern sensibilities, rather than feeling like 2018-era Hallmark movies but with song and dance.