2021, the great year of musical (and political) cinema

Just as there is an unwritten legend that says that a new version of ‘King Kong’ always appears at the dawn of an economic crisis or as a product of it, there is also another cinematographic myth that confirms that musical films emerge to help us out of a complicated or convulsive social moment. It may be a coincidence, but the musical has become one of the genres that have helped define this season through a good handful of proposals of the most diverse nature that have been characterized by risk and by his ability to put on the table issues that are related to the interests of our present, with problems that needed to be addressed from a fresh perspective and a more demanding social conscience. Intolerance, racism, sexism, machismo, homophobia and the stigmas they provoke they have become the fundamental themes of a handful of musicals that perfectly define the moment in which we live.

The year began with the unconventional ‘Music’, the project of the singer Sia in which autism, drug addiction and the identity crisis were combined in an ‘indie’ drama with moments of escape as dreamlike and colorful video clips. It was so rare that it could provoke rejection, but it had the peculiarity of trying to break stereotypes and conventions and adapt them, in this case, to the personality of the artist.

After having succeeded in streaming during the quarantine with ‘Hamilton’, Lin-Manuel Miranda has become one of the great protagonists of the season. In June the film version of his first play, ‘In a neighborhood in New York’, in which he wanted to talk about structural racism, exclusion, but also energy and hope, the dreams and the fighting spirit of the Latino community, of the ‘dreamers’.

The adaptation by director Jon M. Chu (who already contributed his psycheptic style in ‘Crazy Rich Asians’) and screenwriter Quiara Alegria Hudes became a veritable explosion of luminous street choreography in which it was revealed that in addition to the songs, the rhythms and the dances, the important thing was the message: “We are not invisible, we have a voice & rdquor; or “together we will be stronger & rdquor ;.

Shortly after it appeared on Netflix ‘Vivo’, animated film with Lin-Manuel Miranda as voiceover and composer of the soundtrack that showed that Sony Pictures Animation, after ‘Spider-Man: a new universe’ and ‘The Mitchell against the machines’, seemed to be willing to experiment from the bowels of the system, in this case giving free rein to Miranda to explore her musical roots, something that she has also been commissioned to practice in the Disney production ‘Encanto’, another film in which the Latino identity is vindicated and that he benefited from his wonderful songs, ready to remain anchored in the collective imagination, as already happened with ‘Vaina’.

Finally, just a few weeks ago the long-awaited ‘tick, tick… Boom!’, in which Lin-Manuel Miranda finally got behind the camera to sign his debut. How could it be otherwise, it is a very personal and special project, a love letter in the form of a free ‘biopic’ to a man, Jonathan Larson, which managed to introduce social issues on Broadway, such as multiculturalism, the rights of the LGTBI community, addictions or AIDS (in ‘Rent’) becoming the bridge between Stephen Sonheim and Miranda himself. In ‘tick tick & mldr; Boom! ‘ there is talk of creative obsession, of the struggle to achieve dreams from the depths of the purest marginality, which permeates the film with the spirit of the ‘outsiders’. A true wonder.

The new version of ‘Cinderella’ starring Camila Cabello also included news. In addition to dancing to the rhythm of pop hymns, the fairy godmother was ‘queer’ (Billy Porter), the protagonist did not want to marry Prince Charming, but rather to be a fashion designer and there was a greater inclusiveness of genders and races, as well as a unequivocal feminist breath. A fairy tale for the new generations away from the stereotypes that have weighed down these stories based on classism and misogyny.

In Amazon Prime Video we could also enjoy ‘Everyone talks about Jamie’, adaptation of a musical about the life of a 16-year-old who wants to be ‘drag queen’ and that they must face ‘bullying’ and systematic harassment for being different in their day-to-day lives. Jonathan Butterell composes an exciting ‘coming-of-age’ with songs by Dan Gillespie Sells that speak of repression, identity and the need to break free from taboos.

Also inscribed in the delicate stage of adolescent discovery we find ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ by Stephen Chbosky, which again investigates, as it did in ‘The advantages of being an outcast’, in this youthful impasse as a source of all our subsequent insecurities, in this case, through another issue of great social impact such as health mental.

Perhaps it has been Leos Carax with ‘Annette’ who has risked the most when it comes to bringing the essence of the musical (deconstructed) to its last circumstances through a score composed by the duo Sparks Entirely sung to tell the story of a couple through whom the shadow of toxic masculinity emerges until the sexist violence ends up revealing the monstrous nature of man.

The year ends in a big way with Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’, in which the director recreates Robert Wise’s musical history from a renewed ideological perspective that translates into greater racialization in the cast, as well as in the embodiment the xenophobia that the emigrant must face in a hostile environment, the North America of yesterday and today.

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Gone are the musicals in which only visual pyrotechnics and mere entertainment triumphed. Now the genre becomes a political space to talk about the problems that concern today at a time when there is little room for the purest fantasy that sponsored, for example, ‘The Wizard of Oz’. Even in a seemingly harmless movie like ‘Sing! 2 ‘we find not only a discourse of overcoming, but also a criticism of the’ establishment ‘and capitalism that annuls our freedom of expression.