The Greatest Showman [2017]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-II)  RogerEbert.com (3 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (S. O'Malley) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review


The Greatest Showman [2017] (directed by Michael Gracey, story by and screenplay cowritten by Jenny Bicks along with Bill Condon) is a (let's be clear / kind...) "broad stroke" Broadway style musical tribute to P.T. Barnum [wikip] [IMDb] (played in the film by Hugh Jackman) founder, eventually, of the Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Yet, to those who'd complain that this "Broadway Musical" was not rigorously historical ... well, let's be honest, that's _not_ what "musical theater" has ever been about.  Instead, in the tradition of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida or Giacomo Puccini's Madame Butterfly, it's always been about grand, sweeping themes.  (I would _not_ want to write a term-paper on Evita Peron based _solely_ on Madonna's performance in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita [wikip] [Amzn] ;-) or for that matter base my understanding of Founding Father, the founding Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and arguably founder of the entire U.S. economic system, Alexander Hamilton _solely_ on the current rave (and rapping ;-) musical Hamilton [wikip] ;-).

And to get an idea of the "far reaches" of "what's possible" the realm of musical theater (if then a fair question could be asked, "why?" ;-), consider the "creation" of compatriots from my parents' country, the Czech Republic (where BOTH "Opera" AND "Ice Hockey" are King), where "enthusiasts" wrote an actual Madame Butterfly-esque TRIBUTE to the Czech ice hockey team's "Grand Gold Medal Victory" entitled Nagano [wikip article about the Olympics] [cs.wikip article about the subsequent Opera]* ;-)

To the film at hand ... ;-)

The story here portrays P.T. Barnum as someone who was born quite poor and consequently had a chip on his shoulder, trying in various ways to both _eliminate distinctions_ (explaining his affinity to the kinds of people he'd hire to work in his circus) and _rise up_ to the upper class that he felt had looked-down-upon and rejected him.

These two "projects" of building a truly egalitarian community where "all were for one and one for all" and his trying to "rise up to a higher station" did, of course, often clash with each other, notably when Barnum underwrote the American tour of a then famous European opera singer named Jenny Lind [wikip] (played in the film by Rebecca Ferguson).  Then, as I noted in a number of years ago, in my review of a bio-pic about J. Edgar Hoover, a personal project seeking to "restore honor" to one's family / name, is something of a fool's errand ... How much "honor" does one have to "restore" before it has been, indeed, restored?  It would seem that it's never enough ...

So P.T. Barnum is portrayed in this film as both a flawed and driven man, but also one who did, in fact, bring happiness to a lot of people, notably to the various people that he brought together to work in his circus.  These were often people, as one character in the story noted, whose "own mothers had been ashamed of (on account of their deformities)."

Overall, this is crowd pleasing film.  A number of reviewers (and biographers, in as much as P.T. Barnum has been the subject of biography) have noted that Barnum was not necessarily all that kind / altruistic to the various people who made up his circus acts.  Indeed, a strong case could be made that he exploited them.  Still ... where-else would these people go? and they also did stay.

So it all makes for ... a grand show ;-)


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