Review: The Greatest Showman
Unlike last year's La La Land, which fused the grand MGM musicals of the Forties and Fifties with the more melancholic French ones of the Sixties, The Greatest Showman is an unapologetically old-fashioned movie musical that aims to entertain whilst joyfully exhorting its audience to celebrate the differences that define each and every one of us. What it is most definitely not, however, is a biography of its title character, one Mr. Phineas Taylor "P.T." Barnum, the man who invented the business of show.
Yes, Barnum was the son of a tailor as depicted in the film. He may have met his future wife Charity when they were mere children, it may have even happened at her family's estate whilst his father was fitting her father for a new suit. Yes, they married; he may have promised her a world of wealth and happiness and he may have initially failed to do just that for her and their two daughters. Yes, he assembled a show featuring a group of eccentrics and oddities, promoted the hell out of it and made it and himself the talk of the town. Yet this is the same man who began his career by purchasing and exhibiting an old, blind and almost completely paralysed former slave, working her for 10 to 12 hours a day, and then hosting a live autopsy of her dead body for 50 cents per spectator. Yes, his decision to tour and promote Swedish nightingale, Jenny Lind, was a risk that paid off, establishing him as a legitimate impresario in the eyes of high society, but their parting was caused by the devout and charitable Lind's discomfort in his relentless marketing of the tour, not the result of a rebuffed romantic advance.
That The Greatest Showman plays as loosely with the facts as old Hollywood musicals and glosses over the darker, more ethically suspect aspects of its central figure is not necessarily a terrible thing. For one thing, there's Hugh Jackman at its centre. Jackman, it should be remembered, got his start in musicals and no actor today is as comfortable as he is in this genre. He understands that, in order for a number to truly soar and transport, there is a fine line between reality and fantasy that must be tread. Jackman is a song and dance man at heart and it is always gratifying to watch him in a genre he obviously adores.
The Greatest Showman moves at a brisk pace, the numbers are splashy and energetic and often beautifully staged, and its tunes are catchy. It embodies the racist attitudes of the time in the interracial love story between playwright and playboy Philip Carlyle (Zac Efron) and black trapeze artist Anne Wheeler (Zendaya, who continues to prove what a natural born star she is with each passing film). The two perform a lovely duet called "Rewrite the Stars," wooing one another as they swing and spin on acrobatic ropes. Its best song, "This is Me," is a triumphant battle cry: "I'm not scared to be seen / I make no apologies / This is me."
And yet... For all its trumpeting of diversity and embracing of the differences that are strengths rather than failures, it gives short shrift to the very characters that define its overarching ethos. Yes, the film is predominantly focused on Barnum's rise and fall and rise trajectory, but Tom Thumb, the Bearded Lady, the Tattooed Man, the Irish Giant, and all the others are never more than their monikers. More than its fudging of the facts and overlooking Barnum's less admirable nature, the film's shabby treatment of the very characters it extols is its most egregious crime.
The Greatest Showman
Directed by: Michael Gracey
Written by: Jenny Bicks, Bill Condon
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Keala Settle, Paul Sparks, Ellis Rubin, Skylar Dunn
