For the opening scene of Wicked, 9m real tulips were planted, improbably, by a farmer in Norfolk. The necessity of this opulence was completely obvious to director Jon M Chu and production designer Nathan Crowley – otherwise they’d have to use CGI for the Munchkin Village. Is CGI lush? Does it recall the heady, future-facing surge of hope and optimism that the original Oz has come to represent for, goddammit, almost a century? It does not. While it isn’t for the production values alone that Wicked deserves the best picture Oscar – anyone can spend money if they have enough money – take a second to consider the commitment of this film, and its impossibility. It tries to remain true to the moment when the world discovered Technicolor (sure, sure, come at me with The Toll of the Sea some other time); cheerfulness, magic, a naive faith in cinema and beyond – these are quite big asks in 2024, and Wicked went for it.
It was partly in tribute to that quality of early musicals that Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande performed all the songs live; lip-syncing as an innovation has brought increased slickness to a movie’s sound quality, but at the expense of stripping out jeopardy and emotion from the human voice. Clearly, Erivo and Grande could both lift a building off its foundations with their vocals – the last thing you’d describe them as being is “fragile” – but it’s a “whites of their eyes” thing. You never realised you needed to see the muscles move in a singer’s throat to believe that they really mean it – yet it turns out, you do.
If it were just down to Erivo or Grande’s performances, then obviously the case would be for best actress/support. But forget screen chemistry, these two are like an actual chemical reaction together – hydrogen and oxygen fusing to become something entirely new, with its own properties. It’s not completely fanciful that TikTok is convinced they’ve fallen in love in real life, nor that What Is This Feeling? is such a strong song, when it’s not actually the strongest song. They have multiple matching tattoos! They burst into tears whenever they see each other!
To be honest, if ever there’s a musical on the Oscars shortlist, I would always lobby for that over a non-musical. People think the form is schlockier and therefore easier, but in fact it is better and therefore harder. The original musical which this adapts is a bit of a head-scratcher, to be honest – there are scores which you love instantly for obvious reasons (My Fair Lady, Cabaret), and ones that you love instantly for reasons you can’t figure out (Hamilton). Wicked is a grower, many of the melodies aren’t that catchy, often the motifs relate in ways you only realise after multiple listens. It’s the musical equivalent of going to a Pixies gig where they’re only going to play their latest album. You wouldn’t want to arrive at it cold. But, again, there’s that sense of confidence and commitment – let’s not make it shorter, to cater to the 21st-century attention span. Let’s split it in half, and make both halves unimaginably long. Everyone will fall for it, if they give it enough time. Time, we have (this first instalment is 2hrs 40min. I’ve seen it on the 22nd of every month since it came out, so I’m confident I could pass the GCSE).
The dialogue is also sharp but unobtrusive. It’s not played for laughs, but when there is one (Jonathan Bailey, saying “I’ve been thinking”; Erivo replying, full of consternation: “I heard”), it stands out, elegantly. And Jeff Goldblum – whose high-camp shtick can be jarring to a plot, reminding you insistently that, whatever else is going on, that’s definitely Jeff Goldblum – has found his happy place, as the Wizard.
Not wanting to be sacrilegious, the animal subplot didn’t make a whole lot of sense in the musical, which Stephen Schwartz, composer and lyricist, has acknowledged. Why would the Wizard want to empower the monkey army, in order to spy on the talking animals? Why not just maintain a monkey army in their non-flying state and just subjugate the rest of the animals some other way? “We wanted to ditch it because it was so confusing,” Schwartz said in 2000, adding “but so much of the plot hinges on it, so there is nothing that can be done.” The film has given Dr Dillamond, the talking goat, political resonance and emotional heft, introducing totalitarian overtones without which the central dilemma – does Glinda choose Elphaba or conventional society? – would fall apart. If it weren’t Elphaba v the fash, you’d automatically side with Glinda. She seems so nice, and Elphaba is green.
Source: theguardian.com
