June 2010 Film Review by Joe Stead
Nine on DVD
"Nine" is the story of a director and author who is having a creative breakdown. That seems as good a way as any to describe Rob Marshall's 2009 film adaptation of the Tony Award winning musical, which was itself based on Federico Fellini's 1963 movie masterpiece "8 1/2". We all know that Marshall is a talent, even a visionary perhaps. His Oscar winning 2002 treatment of Kander and Ebb's "Chicago" almost single-handedly reinvigorated interest in the dying movie musical genre. One would think he would have been the perfect man to breathe life back into a musical whose roots are fully vested in Italian cinema. And yet Marshall constantly makes many of the mistakes that have plagued movie musicals throughout the past century.
Screenwriters
Michael Tolkin and Anthony Minghella have all but decimated Arthur
Kopit's stage script, and while there are vestiges of Maury Yeston's
glorious score here and there, they are so poorly performed,
truncated and disconnected from the rest of the film that they seem
like separate components in a frustratingly abstract art piece.
Putting musical numbers on film is always a tricky business to be
sure. What works so beautifully live on stage in musicals often
feels phony, or to use to the expression of one of my musical-hating
co-workers "cheesy". No, people do not generally
burst out into song and dance in real life. But neither do they
communicate with extra-terrestrial aliens, fly or perform any number
of the fantastical stunts we see frequently on film.
Music we must remember is simply another means of telling a story, and filmmakers have used music to thrilling use in plenty of non-musicals to heighten the drama and provide the appropriate mood and motivation. The movie "Jaws" for example would not have been nearly as terrifying without John Williams' sinister underscoring, which tapped into our deepest fears and kept us out of the water for years. Unfortunately in the movie of "Nine," the musical numbers act as no more than vulgar side show acts.
In "Chicago," Marshall brilliantly came up with a way of integrating the fantasy style musical segments into the grittier and more realistic film medium. It made sense for murderesses Velma and Roxie to be belting show tunes in the slammer because in their minds it was all show biz, and even murder was considered a form of "razzle dazzle" entertainment. The concept here is that all the musical segments are taking place on a half finished set, perhaps in Guido Contini's schizophrenic mind. Contini is the maestro of his own fantasies and a conflicted genius of movie making. His real life and "reel" life are invariably intertwined as the many women of his past and present collide for his attention.
Not
a bad concept, on paper at least. So where did Marshall's
talent and vision go so awry? For starters, he sold out to the
lure of big Hollywood names, which we have all learned by now does
not translate to big talent. I am reminded of how much more
Director Walter Stearns and Musical Director Eugene Dizon go out of
Porchlight Theatre's small-scale Chicago stage revival of
"Nine" in 2008. The style of that stripped-down
production was fully in synch with what Kopit and Yeston wrote, and
the lesser known Chicago talent ran circles around their cinematic
counterparts. Apples and oranges, you think? Maybe.
But I will stick to my argument that bigger is not always better, and
the money spent on Marshall's big-budget film could have fueled
several seasons of Porchlight's superior work.
There will certainly be those who will clamor to see Sophia Loren, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman and Judi Dench on the big screen, or on the smaller TV screen via their DVD players. Cruz does supply the needed sexual heat for her "Call from the Vatican" number, and the singer Fergie makes a big vocal impression in her sultry "Be Italian". But who exactly is her character, the earthy beachcomber Sarraghina? Aside from her vocal performance, possibly the highlight of the film, she has absolutely no character to play.
Loren is little more than a presence, albeit a distinguished one. Dench's rendition of "Follies Bergeres" is painful to the ear, and Kate Hudson's "Cinema Italiano" feels like a trashy Madonna music video. Both Dench and Hudson are playing distinctly altered characters here. In the stage version, Lilliane was a French film producer and Stephanie was an acerbic critic. Here the former is a costume designer and confidant, the latter a sexy fan. The changes aren't justified by the results. Marion Cotillard is a lovely actress who reminds me of a young Audrey Hepburn, however she is miscast and far too young to be believable as Guido's long-suffering wife Luisa.
Perhaps the biggest problem with "Nine" is its central character. Guido Contini, often considered a stand-in for Federico Fellini, is an egotist and womanizer, a dreamer and a deceiver all rolled into one. This self-obsessed jerk, whose body's clearing fifty as his mind is nearing ten, is hardly an attractive subject for a leading man. The accomplished actor Daniel Day-Lewis fails to make us give a damn for his character, and his allure to all the women in his life and the masses who have swarmed to his films seems unsubstantiated. This is a major stumbling block, which both Antonio Banderas in the Broadway revival and Jeff Parker in the Porchlight production managed to overcome with depth and charisma, not to mention exceptional talents. Banderas was supposedly under consideration for the film along with George Clooney and Johnny Depp. How sad to see a talent like Rob Marshall floundering in mediocrity by playing the old Hollywood "name game".
About Joe Stead
Joe
Stead has enjoyed a lifelong passion for the theatre, which has
involved acting, directing, producing, designing and reviewing for
the past twenty-five years. He served as founder, producer and
Artistic Director of Curtain Up Productions in Baltimore, Maryland
and Four Star Players in Tampa, Florida. Favorite productions
have included "Life With Father," "Deathtrap,"
"The Odd Couple," "The Miracle Worker,"
"Brighton Beach Memoirs," "You're A Good Man, Charlie
Brown" and "Godspell". He has also performed
leading roles in "Fiddler on the Roof," "Pippin,"
"The Phantom of the Opera," "The Front Page," and
most recently as Hucklebee in "The Fantasticks" for
Waukegan Community Players. Joe holds a degree in Commercial
Art from Tampa Technical Institute. As a critic, he has
reviewed everything from Broadway to community theatre and major
regional theatres throughout the United States including the Kennedy
Center in Washington, D.C., Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey,
Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, and the Asolo Theatre in
Sarasota, Florida.
Since 1998, he has been a proud resident of Chicago, the greatest theatre city in America. He served for two years as Theatre Editor for College News and Central Newspapers. He created the website Steadstyle Chicago in 2000 to showcase the city's outstanding and diverse theatre scene. Joe was proud to serve alongside a distinguished panel of theatre professionals as a judge for two seasons of Speaking Ring Theatre's "Vitality" Festival of original short plays. His most fulfilling role, in addition to reviewer and all-around theatre fanatic, was as director of the 2007 production of Peter Shaffer's "Equus" at Actors Workshop (now Redtwist) Theatre, which was nominated for five Joseph Jefferson Award Citations and won for Best Actor (Peter Oyloe).