High-energy, clever, and brilliantly performed, it's a film that's certainly deserving of that Best Picture honor.
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We had it comin'! We had it comin'!
It was about time that a musical made its way to Blu-ray. One of the great pleasures of the new HD medium has been the uncompressed audio that spreads across six channels so that it blankets a room with sound. And "Chicago" is a good way to start. Maybe another eye-popper like "Moulin Rouge!" will be next.
I'm one of those who's convinced that Baz Luhrmann's mildly lurid Oscar-nominated musical helped pave the way for "Chicago" to win Best Picture. Not that it was a make-up call, mind you. "A Beautiful Mind" deserved to win the year that "Moulin Rouge!" was the dark horse, but that quirky musical served notice that the musical was back and brand-spanking new. It revived interest in the genre to the point where "Chicago" had so much buzz by the time it was released that we were all more than ready to have our spines tingled by the familiar Kander and Ebb song "And All That Jazz" in the film's opening sequence. But we weren't prepared for how good Catherine Zeta-Jones was as a singer and dancer, or co-stars Renee Zellweger, Richard Gere, and John C. Reilly. We knew what Queen Latifah could do, but the actors known to us for their comedic/dramatic roles really did a fantastic job doing all their own singing and dancing.
"Chicago" was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and pulled down six of them: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Zeta-Jones), Best Art/Set Direction (John Myhre, Gordon Sim), Best Costume Design (Colleen Atwood), Best Editing (Martin Walsh), Best Sound (Michael Minkler, Dominick Tavella, David Lee) and, of course, the big prize for films made in 2002, Best Picture. And if it bears some resemblance to another Academy Award-winner, "Cabaret" (1972), it's because the legendary Bob Fosse had a big hand in both films.
Now "Chicago" is on Blu-ray and sounding better than ever. Looks? Well, that's a slightly different story. If you're the kind of HD fan who loves the hyper-clarity of the new medium, "Chicago" will strike you as surprisingly uneven. Some scenes (like the "He had it comin'" song, a.k.a. "Cell Block Tango," or one that has Gere in a restaurant surrounded by women) are as sharp and detailed as any Blu-ray picture you'll see. Other scenes, though--particularly the smoke-filled speakeasy scenes--are grainy. Either it's a flaw in the source master, or a deliberate choice. Though director Rob Marshall doesn't address the issue in his commentary, my guess is that it was a deliberate choice to evoke the smoky atmosphere conveyed by the stage play (book by Fosse and Fred Ebb).
"Chicago" is certainly evocative of the Roaring Twenties, but it's also the equivalent of a theatrical power drink. It's a non-stop energy rush that inventively takes the musical to a new level. Rather than stop the narrative and have characters sing songs during those pauses, "Chicago" weaves the narrative with a cabaret-style series of songs performed by the actors, all of it funneled through the imaginative mind of would-be star Roxie Hart (Zellweger). As she watches half of the famous vaudeville sister act, Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones) perform the opening number, we see her fantasize that she's the one onstage belting out the song. That continues throughout the film, as Zellweger sees most everything in terms of the stage. It's all skillfully and amazingly handled, with some of the transitions between the stage and narrative action so fluid that it actually helps move the picture along, rather than serving as an interruptive. And you know you're in for a special ride when the choreography of that opening number has a parallel in the narrative. As Velma is being manhandled during a dance, Roxie is being roughly made love to in her apartment nearby, duped by a furniture salesman who promised to use his connections to make her a star.
And so, early in the film, we learn that Velma killed her sister for getting it on with her husband, and we watch Roxie pull the trigger in anger after the furniture salesman uses her and roughs her up. Milquetoast husband Amos (John C. Reilly) tries to cover for her until he learns it's the salesman who sold furniture to his wife, and not an intruder as she had told him. So it's off to prison for Roxie, who's held on death row (okay, don't ask about the legal logistics here) while awaiting her trial. There she meets prison matron Mama Morton (Latifah), who offers to do what she's already done for Velma: make a phone call to the best lawyer in the Windy City to get her off the hook . . . for a price.
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