Let's start with the story. During the 1920's in Chicago, Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) is so desperate to be famous she commits adultrey with a man who claims to get her to the stage. When she learns that he was lying just to get into her pants, she shoots and kills him, and is arrested for murder and sent to jail. Meanwhile, another performer who is already famous, Velma Kelly, kills both her husband and sister after catching them together and is sent to the same jail as Roxie. Roxie manages to hire a famed lawyer, Billy Flynn, who manages to make her famous by lying through his teeth about her. Velma is jealous since Flynn was promised to be her lawyer, and that's the farthest I can go without spoiling anything about the story.
The Cinematography in this film is absolutely amazing. The use of shadows, lights, colors where colors need to be and the lack of colors where colors shouldn't be, the reflections, all of these and more make the movie look fantastic. I have some grudges against the editing. Although it is very good with the pacing and the timing of the cuts, sometimes it is a little too fast paced and you cannot really see what is going on.
There are also a lot of good performances. My favorite had to be Catherine Zeta Jones as Velma Kelly. Other than just having dancing chops and a great belt, she made Velma the right combination of theatricality, grit, strength, weakness, determination, and desperation. After watching her, it was hard for me to imagine anyone else who would have pulled off the role in this movie. Other memorable mentions are Queen Latifah as the neutral sided matriarch of the jail, Mama Morton and John C. Reiley as the dim and pitiful Amos Hart, husband to Roxie. Richard Gere as Billy Flynn makes the character appear to be a suave charmer, but at his heart, he is really as greedy and self-centered a jerk as you can get. With his Chicago twang and smug grin, I can't decide weather to smile or spit. Renee Zellweger as Roxie is completely new to singing and dancing, and I would be lying if I said that it didn't show, but since she is naturally an actress, her acting comes through. The hard thing about playing Roxie is that the character must be able to be both a doe-eyed innocent and a cunning schemer who will get what she wants no matter what she has to do to get it. Zellweger pulls off both and is able to naturally combine the two sides into one character.
What makes this film unique as a musical film is that most of the song and dance sequences take place in Roxie's imagination (with the exception of when a character who is a performer is performing on a stage for an audience), instead of being strictly grounded in reality. This allows two things; first, film can be a genre that can be very strict about its realism and to have something that stretches the mind such as people bursting into song grounded in fantasy gives a new dimension to what can be believed. Second, since it is all done in her imagination, the song sequences can be as over-the-top, surreal, and magical as Marshall wanted.
Since the story takes place in the Jazz age, naturally, the music and dances are all in the jazz style. Although all of the songs are catchy, they can feel repetitive and musically uninteresting. There were about three that did stand out for me. One was, obviously, Cell Block Tango, with its symbolic choreography, entertaining stories, and perfect camera work. The second was "We both reached for the gun", which not only gave the story its much needed boost, but had a fun rhythm, perfect buildup and climax. Finally, the third was Amos Hart's character number "Mister Cellophane." Not only are the lyrics sadly relate able but First, it makes him a hobo clown, which for Amos is perfect, second, it feels more dynamic than a lot of other songs in the musical, and third, while a lot of the other songs in the film are fast paced and fun, this one is slow and more sober, which makes it stand out.
I have a couple major problems with the direction. First of all, at its heart, the story of Chicago is a comedic satire. It criticizes our worship of the wrong people just because of an exciting story which may or may not be true and how people crave fame so much they are willing to lower their moral standards to get it. One of the taglines for the movie is "If you can't be famous, be infamous." That theme is not done often and its interesting. It should be the main focus of the film (like the stage show). Sadly, the focus seems to be the fan service, the gratuitous sexuality bumped from a motif to a full out theme, the armies of singing girls scantily clad. Its not that sexuality is not present in the original musical, its just that in the movie, it seems to be too much. Although there are stripes of dark realism in the film, they appear in merely those stripes. A lot of it seems to be just pretty, glitzy, feast-your-eyes and turn off your brain glamour and the issues it brings up it sometimes dodges. This makes it more about the superficial prettiness than about thinking about life and the human condition. So technically, Chicago is not a perfect film. But no piece of art can ever be perfect and if one person thinks the piece is perfect there will always be someone out there who does not agree. There are problems in the editing and direction, and most of the songs are quite standard. But what is good about the film, from performances to choreography, is really good. But did it deserve Best Picture?
Probably not, but if you haven't seen it, rent it, and see what you think.
