Isn't Music Supposed To Express What People Are Feeling?: Dreamgirls (2006)

While I had a different film scheduled for viewing for the last blog post of the musical marathon, and by extension, the last post of the year, I think it is fitting that I finished off with a rather contemporary work in 2006's Dreamgirls.  While I started the marathon with an early Astaire classic Top Hat, whose structure is decidedly in the classic setting, Dreamgirls made nearly seventy five years later and a century after the medium of film came into its fullest form, represents a return to the classic filmic structure, one with a linear narrative and poised look at a period in music that was heavily competitive and troublesome when one was oppressed by layers of intersectionality.  Dreamgirls is a new consideration of the Busby Berkeley style backstage musical, reconsidered for a modern audience, one that is further extended by it being an adaptation of a Broadway musical, helping to navigate some of the more showy elements at play in the film.  I worked my way through Dreamgirls wondering as to whether or not it was actually an exceptional film, or a reworking of the Oscar-bait Hollywood fare that manages to pique critics interest for subject matter alone.  Dreamgirls would be slightly more impressive were it to have committed to a stylistic cohesion of some sort, relying on musical numbers in a singular style, instead of using them both as a point of narrative advancement, as well as dialogue construction.  Furthermore, while it should be very much embraced for possessing  cast that is almost predominantly composed of African-American actors, it seems hesitant to navigate some of the more challenging and troublesome racial spaces that would have existed in the era to save face and make a universally palatable film.  I would much rather have revisited 2005's Hustle and Flow, a film that challenges 'safe' depictions of race in cinema, while also technically falling within the definition of the musical, although it is in a decidedly modern context.  The sum of all the parts of Dreamgirls are nice, but it suffers from a few too many missteps to make for a worthwhile and praiseworthy filmic experience.  Indeed, if this is one of the premier examples of the musical in the past decade, it truly is at a low point.

Dreamgirls focuses on the musical aspirations of a group of young African-American woman hoping to make it big as singers.  The three women Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles),  Effie White (Jennifer Hudson) and Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose) are young small town girls who hope that by appearing at a local tryout for a musical competition that they could win a recording contract and subsequently make it big in the industry.  While they lose out to a blues guitarist they do catch they eye of manager and eye for musical talent Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx) who hopes to use them as back up singers for the aging star James 'Thunder' Early (Eddie Murphy).  While the group is hesitant, particularly Effie, to serve as backup singers, when they are promised money and a chance to make it big they jump on the opportunity, taking with them Effie's brother and performance choreographer C.C. (Keith Robinson).  While the initial stardom proves ideal for the group things quickly come to a halt when the advances of James and at various points Curtis lead to a fracturing within the group, made all the more complicated when Curtis decides to push the three women as a group act detached from James.  It is the idea of Curtis to have Deena sing lead, although both she and Effie realize that Effie is clearly the better performer.  This choice to market the group called The Dreams leads to confrontation amongst the members of the group and eventually Effie leaves in frustration.  While on sabbatical from singing, Deena makes a name for herself, although her and Curtis' relationship suffers considerably.  When James Early's old manager Marty Madison (Danny Glover) approaches Effie about returning to singing, she is initially quite hesitant, only working in small lounge fair, until the return of C.C. affords her a chance to make it big.  When this realization is discovered, Curtis takes to unethical tactics to stifle her career advancement, but after a legal battle aided by the help of Deena, the returning star finds success and eventually The Dreams make one final goodbye performance, going out on the top, much less the case for James who has by this time passed away and certainly for Curtis whose respect in the industry is all but squandered.

I want to make it rather clear that Dreamgirls is not an unwatchable film.  Indeed, many of the musical numbers are quite evocative and the performances are, for the most part, tempered by the various actors.  Eddie Murphy, much to my surprise, was probably the most well-executed acting in the film.  My concerns, come, instead from how music is used to add emotive elements to scenes that could have just as easily gained equal intensity from normal acting.  This is most glaringly troublesome during the middle section of the film when Effie decides to leave The Dreams.  While it does have a musical number proper, it is bookended by unnecessary sing-talking between the various characters that causes their dialogue to take on a nauseatingly unlistenable quality.  As a pseudo-backstage musical, the film could simply have relied on the musical performances proper as an expression of the problems at play by the characters.  Certainly, this occurs in two of the most famous backstage musicals 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933 wherein the characters' emotions are affirmed by their diagetic musical numbers.  Considering that the narrative is afforded a rather large temporal space and uses the spatial breadth of radio and television to extend its narrative, the choice to use these central singing moments is somewhat baffling.  Indeed, it is in this insistence that the film require some sort of singing dialogue that Dreamgirls traipses as a rather contentious line between well-intended narrative on the black experience in music and something that is exploitative in its veiled use of grandstanding through musical dialogue.  I am not saying that this is an impossibility in the musical genre, in fact, many of the films I have encountered this month involve sung dialogue, but this is also the main means with which narrative is delivered in the film, probably the most realized in Oklahoma, wherein it is rather clear that more of the film is sung than actually spoken and from the onset it is clearly established as a film with a reality where people sing their feelings.  For Dreamgirls it has no context and its execution becomes glaringly in its poor delivery.

Key Scene:  The initial on the road sequence, when the girls join James' show is a perfect joining of cinematic tricks and performance, it is a shame the film does not attain this level of intensity throughout.

Dreamgirls is a film worth watching, but only if renting is an option.  With that being said Hustle and Flow from a year earlier is far more worthwhile.

He Is A Rambunctious Sort, Ain't He?: Django Unchained (2012)

Quentin Tarantino has over the years become one of the handful of directors whose works are sure to become points of media contention, whether it be for their complete disregard of historicism or as a result of what some find to be problematic appropriations of racial or gendered identities.  These controversies aside, I place Tarantino in a special category of filmmaker, one where I go somewhat out of my way to assure that I see his films in theaters, and while I have only been able to see his two most recent works in theaters, I am always keeping an eye out for retrospectives of his work to emerge.  Like the work of Paul Thomas Anderson, I feel that Tarantino's films exude an undeniable amount of cinematic outpouring that demands they be viewed on the biggest screen possible, although viewers are often awarded a more lively experience with the latter director, in so much as he provides such high levels of action and comedy that it is impossible not to become enthralled with its magnificence.  Of course much can be said about the manner with which Tarantino glorifies violence and revenge to push his narratives along, however, Django Unchained is a particularly well written piece by the always absurdist director, one that does indeed display some of the more intense moments of the direness of slavery, while also infusing it with the wily and revolutionary elements so inherent to the tradition of spaghetti westerns.  This heavy tie to the spaghetti western genre is apparent through out various cinematic references, although I found some of his nods to classic silent film directors rather impressive most notably to the grandeur of D.W. Griffith, as well as to Eric Von Stroheim's tragically lost classic Greed, what with a giant ass tooth flailing around in some of the opening scenes.  I am thoroughly impressed by everything offered in this film, although I will admit that it proved to be exactly the film I expected going in and really runs within the same vein as Inglorious Basterds.  Basically, Django Unchained will probably prove to be the last thing I see in theaters this year and I am happy for that to be the case.

Django Unchained it what may prove to be Tarantino's most straightforward title since Kill Bill, focuses on the events surrounding slave Django (Jamie Foxx) receiving his freedoms from the hands of German dentist turned bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) who employs Django to help him find a set of slave overseers with criminal records.  After realizing that he will be provided with his freedom for helping Schultz, Django informs Schultz that he desires nothing more than to save his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) from slavery after they were separated for being caught as runaway slaves.  Schultz immediately seeing the connections to Wagner's Ring Cycle cannot help but offer his hand in aid, mostly because he is fully aware that Django's status as black, regardless of freedom will not allow him anywhere near the slave trade insiders.  Suggesting that he train with him as a bounty hunter, Schultz creates an elaborate plan to pass as "mandingo fighters" in which Django will pretend to be an expert in the subject, accepting that he is only performing a theatrical role of sorts.  This plan leads them to the world of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), whose post-modernly named Candieland is a centrifuge for a variety of slaves, including Broomhilda whose markings as a runaway mean that her relatively privileged status as a house servant are quick to become that of a comfort girl.  Calvin is of course incredibly protective of his world and wealth and picks up on the possibility that Schultz and Django may be playing up a ruse.  However, it is the head house servant Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), and his over zealous desire to be liked by his white owners, that picks up on Django and Broomhilda's loving glances.  Blowing the lid on the ruse, Calvin demands that Schultz pay the amount of twelve thousand dollars for Broomhilda.  Schultz quickly agrees and while attempting to leave Calvin demands that Schultz shake his hand, as a form of southern tradition, which leads to Shultz shooting Calvin.  This ultimately follows with a huge shoot out and an extra final act of retribution in the films closing that is hyper-violent and destructive, but to be fair it is right in line with what fans of Tarantino have come to expect.

So the major question circulating around Django Unchained is as to what degree of racism occurs within its construct.  This critique is not new to Tarantino, as theorist bell hooks has often been critical of the director's lack in providing for revolutionary spaces within his films for characters with intersectional oppressions to transform and transcend their suffering.  This is true, in so much, as characters often either accept that they have become part of a larger system and simply find their own means to navigate said system, without deconstructing it or seeking its removal.  One could make readings like this apply to Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and Death Proof with little difficulty.  However, the criticism circling around Django Unchained, specifically, seems to be the Tarantino's use of racial epithets and slavery in an exploitative manner, to revel in revenge, much like that of Inglorious Basterds.  There is a degree of validity to this claim, however, I think unlike Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained really drives home the questions and reflections on how illogical slavery was, in that  it provided one group of people with unbridled power over another based on various degrees of misinformation, most notably the illogical nature of phrenology, which Calvin seem preoccupied with throughout the film.  Let us not forget that this film is mostly about a slavery getting his freedom and obtaining the freedom of his wife, one that begins with him attempting to navigate through the oppressive world according to the oppressor's rules, which occurs in some of the earlier mentioned works.    As Audre Lorde would suggest, "one cannot dismantle the master's house with the master's tools," however, in the alternate absurd world of Quentin Tarantino this is completely possible as Django obliterates a slave master's house with weapons.  To be fair in all this I am a white male watching this film so my reading is informed by certain elements of privilege and a back catalogue of film viewing that includes some truly racist cinema.  I look forward to reading other criticism of the film  as it becomes more watched and reflected upon, however, I am not looking forward to more blind anger directed towards the film by people who have flat out refused to even consider its existence.

Key Scene:  The Cleo Lounge scene is incredibly intense and exceptionally sobering and reflective of a new level of seriousness on the part of Tarantino, a reminder that he may make a film with exploitative elements, yet be fully aware of the historical seriousness of his subject matter.

As I argued earlier, Tarantino films were born to be viewed in theaters, do yourself a favor and catch a matinee this week.