El gran showman the other side

other side villain deku

This is a musical with more virtues than defects. It does not have the pretensions of La La Land, nor the showiness of Moulin Rouge, nor the songs of The Sound of Music, nor the drama of Les Miserables, and yet it works reasonably well. For starters, it has a limited length, which compared to all of the above, gives it a very attractive lightness. The script is very simple and linear, which makes it easy to digest.
In short, it is a musical, family film, of limited duration, with a simple script and a charismatic protagonist who is very likeable. It will not win over the critics or sweep the festivals, but I sense that it will leave very good memories in viewers who come to see it without great pretensions.
The soul of the show is an exultant Hugh Jackman, who has rarely shone at a higher level than in this chamber piece full of fireworks and fairground tricks, supported with luminous success by a beautiful Michelle Williams, Rebecca Ferguson and Zendaya, all brightness and charm. Zac Efron’s performance is perhaps a bit blurred and flat, but his character lacks substance and interest. Mention should also be made of Keala Settle playing the bearded lady, with a presence and voice that dazzles.

the other side cover

Beyond the awards is the certainty of being a classic that has marked millions of viewers around the world. And in that sense, ‘City of Stars: La La Land’, can breathe more than easy. Because, over wrong envelopes and wave of merciless haters, Damien Chazelle’s masterpiece has resurrected, for the umpteenth time, an essential genre in the history of cinema, and has done so with elegance, respect, sensitivity and inspiration. City of Stars’, the beautiful Oscar-winning song, perfectly exudes the scent of melancholy and beauty that surrounds a wonderful film. Hopefully time will place it in its rightful place. That of eternity.

greatest showman in spanish

The relationship between cinema and circus/show/freak show is excellently understood by Gracey. Already from the name circus we find a constitutive Jesuitical/baroque gesture, by transforming that insult (as the New York critic of the film puts it) into the name, into the face of the spectacle.
But the baroque consciousness of The Greatest Showman does not end there. Thinking of the baroque defined as that which is sickly beautiful; which is not grandiloquent for its own sake (as La La Land believes) but implies that element which, however strident or bombastic, is deeply attractive to us. Isn’t Freaks (as Barnum puts it) precisely that? We answer in the affirmative.
Cinema in its gesta (as Coppola illustrates in Dracula) was nothing other than a Freak show in the heart of a megalopolis (London in Dracula and New York in The Greatest Showman), a profoundly fantastic spectacle where the dead come back to life. In this way Gracey mirrors the birth of the circus with the birth of cinema (remember that the film takes place at the dawn of the invention of the cinematograph) and judges both as part of the other. Barnum takes the potentially fantastic elements (Freaks) and organizes them into a realistic and anti-romantic decision making: “I have just invented show business”.

burn hamilton spanish

And to want to dance, to climb on the ropes to fly, to run around running white sheets on rooftops, to shine on a stage… and not stop singing. And this is another of the attractions of The Greatest Showman, to enjoy the lyrics of the songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who are also behind those of La La Land. So we remain silent when Lind performs Never enough on stage or we follow the trail of a song that the bearded woman sings with force, This is me, as she demands the right to be different: “and I won’t apologize, this is who I am” or “I won’t let them tear me apart”.

Eduardo José Cazorla